Another cause of famine is through the arms trade. Several facts about the arms trade as stated by the UNDP bring to light the gross waste of money that could easily be spent on helping developing countries to ‘develop’ and help themselves out of poverty.
The arms trade is a massive problem for developing countries as internal conflict wastes money that could be spent on food production
In 1995 the world suffered a record 71 conflicts (most were in the developing world and many were internal to states rather than between states). In its 1994 Human Development Report the UNDP notes that world military expenditure in 1992 equalled the combined income of 49% of the world’s population. The UNDP estimated that world military expenditure in 1995 would total $744 billion.
This stark reality of the causes of famine relates somewhat directly to the recent plight for food aid by the Zimbabwean government. Zimbabwe (formally known as Rhodesia) under the rule of President Mugabe, has seen some ruthless political policies recently.
The merciless eviction of white farmers in much of the land has caused uproar not least because of the ethical value involved but because of the fact that Zimbabweans now find themselves suffering the grip of famine.
Nearly half of Zimbabwe's 14 million people are facing severe food shortages due to drought, although many people also blame the crisis on President Robert Mugabe's controversial land reform programme, which has disrupted the country's commercial agricultural sector.
Most recently, the U.N. World Food Programme warned that Zimbabwe's food crisis was deteriorating rapidly, with the government and foreign aid agencies apparently unable to mobilise enough stocks to feed millions of people. The World Food Programme said there was a rise in hunger-related diseases, children were dropping out of school and families were resorting to desperate measures such as surviving on wild fruit to cope with shortages affecting half the southern African country's population. "The humanitarian crisis in Zimbabwe is deteriorating at a dangerously rapid pace," the WFP said in a statement issued in Harare for the BBC.
"At the same time, there is a growing concern that food imports by both the government and humanitarian agencies are falling far short of the amount required to feed the Zimbabwean people up until March," it added.
The UN further reports: ‘The WFP says its food distribution operations in Zimbabwe have been allowed to proceed relatively unimpeded, although there have been reports that the government has interfered with other food aid projects with an aim to prevent food from reaching its political opponents.’ (28 November 2002).
So this goes to show how political conflicts can hinder the progression of food aid and support from outside agencies and in turn limiting the effectiveness of food aid. Clearly, feeding the people would help considerably but inevitably there needs to be tough action to prevent political issues obstructing the distribution of food to Zimbabwe’s people.
Therefore political conflict is another way in which food aid becomes questionable in terms of its effectiveness to eradicate famine. Ethiopia has experienced perpetual famine problems throughout its history. It is the classic example the media use to define poverty, and quite rightly so. Ethiopia is presently suffering another food shortage, one of many to devastate the region since the efforts of Bob Geldof with ‘Live Aid’ in July 1985. The problem arises from many factors but mainly drought, which causes soil to dry up and crack making it useless for farming, causes livestock to die and people to in-turn starve.
In 1985, one of the largest humanitarian efforts to save lives in Ethiopia took place. A moving documentary about the suffering of Ethiopians by Michael Buerk prompted Bob Geldof to produce a song named ‘Do They Know its Christmas’ which in itself made £8 million for charity. He subsequently organised the ‘Live Aid’ concert involving 16 hours of pop music from major stars to over 70 000 people that raised in excess of
£40 million for famine relief.
Live Aid Raised Approximately £40 Million for Famine Relief
This large sum of money undoubtedly saved millions of lives in Ethiopia and development projects are still underway which derived from that sum of money over 17 years ago. Nevertheless, the money may have stemmed the consuming effects of famine at the time, yet the Ethiopians now suffer similar effects from famine as those in 1984. Therefore, even extravagant events like ‘Live Aid’ prove to be of little use when we consider their short-term effect. Other methods of development need to be considered if Ethiopia is to sustain itself for the future.
According to Dr. Ghelawdewos Araia:
“The precondition to development and the eradication of famine in Ethiopia, should, as a matter of course, entail ‘ecological awareness’ that will enable Ethiopians to preserve the remaining forests (only 2.7% of the original forest is now in existence) and replenish the now barren lands with a massive reforestation program. Planting trees, however, is not enough unless supplemented by a sustainable and stringent forest management program.
Most importantly, famine can be defeated with certainty if a holistic and highly diversified development package is seriously considered to overhaul the Ethiopian economy and lead the country toward a sustainable agricultural and industrial development. In this context, the ‘agriculture-led industrial development’ is a suitable policy and development agenda if fully implemented to realize a situation beyond famine.”
This then leads me on to the problem of disease in developing countries, especially those in Africa where HIV/AIDS is at pandemic levels, and how this directly relates to famine.
"The famine in southern Africa brings the world face-to-face with the deep and devastating impact of AIDS," said Dr Peter Piot, Executive Director of UNAIDS. "What we are seeing today in a number of countries of sub-Saharan Africa is an HIV epidemic that is overwhelming the coping resources of entire communities. We must act now, on a much larger scale than anything we have done before, not only to assist those nations already hard-hit, but also to stop the explosive growth of AIDS in the parts of the world where the epidemic is newly emerging."
The HIV/AIDS pandemic represents one of the greatest challenges facing developing countries. An estimated 38 million people are living with HIV/AIDS in LEDC’s (less economically developed countries) - 95% of global infections. HIV/AIDS is increasing in the Asia Pacific region with about 7.5 million people currently infected. The burden falls most heavily on those countries that have the greatest difficulty in confronting this challenge.
The flooding of Mozambique in 2000 is a good case study of how disease through natural disaster grips a nation and provokes wide-scale famine.
Classified as one of the fastest growing economies, Mozambique was one of the success stories of Africa. However, between January and April 2000 Mozambique experienced the worst floods in its history mainly around the Maputo region. Nearly 2 million people were affected, with 500,000 displaced and over 700 fatalities. Around 10% of the country's agricultural land was damaged, 200,000 cattle were lost and much of the rural infrastructure in southern Mozambique was either damaged or destroyed. Consequently, due to the flooding, the potential for an outbreak of diseases such as cholera, malaria and meningitis increased significantly and the need for clean food and water became critical.
People flee the floods that devastated parts of Mozambique
The main relief project was organised by the United Nations, who worked with various charities and food organisations to provide supplies to those they could reach. This meant dropping food from the air as the flooded roads and infrastructure prevented any form of ground vehicles from accessing the stranded people. So the literal form of ‘food dumping’ took place in this situation but was highly necessary as obviously these people were in need of fast famine releif rather like the other two cases explained previously. However, in this case food aid is a crucial, fast-acting method of stemming famine until further relief works can be carried out. Unlike the other cases where there are better chances for development, the floods of Mozambique wasted agricultural land and hence left the people without any way to help themselves.
Conclusion
It appears to me from studying these case studies that famine is not caused by insufficient food but by peoples’ lack of access to and ownership of land and the resources to buy food. Therefore if developing countries are to escape the grasp of famine they need to associate themselves with the ‘bottom up, not top-down’ approach to famine relief. By this I mean that famine-affected countries should close all political barriers preventing food reaching the starving, re-assess their land use to provide more land for food to be produced and cut spending on weapons that are draining the economy. In turn, the MEDC’s should provide support for these projects and should only dump food on the country when the situation is immediately in danger of creating thousands of fatalities such as those in Mozambique.
In answer to the title of this report I would suggest that food aid is sometimes the answer to famine though cannot be the sole means of ‘helping’ a famine-affected country.
