A Ugandan paper says theKaramoja region of eastern Uganda is suffering from famine. Other Africa-basedpapers talk about a famine underway in Zimbabwe and Ethiopia and a potentialone next year in Kenya.
Margaret Aguirre ofthe worldwide relief NGO the International Medical Corps makes frequenttrips to Eritrea:
"I would not trust a mediainterpretation of what constitutes famine," says Aguirre. "You?d have to talk to a nutritionistor public health expert to define the crisis. The problem is famine is atrigger word that sets of alarm bells and gets people interested in asituation, but it [leads to] crises that don?t rise to the level of afamine?You can have [mass deaths by] deadly diseases like cholera that are not famine."
"We are not prepared to call whatis happening a famine," she says. "We want to be careful we are not crying wolf. Thesituation is severe and dire, and we don?t want to say it is something that isit not; in the event it does become a famine, it will sound like 'Oh, onceagain? [a false alarm]' "
Echoing that sentiment is DanMaxwell. He?s is the research director for Food Security and Livelihoods inComplex Emergencies at of the Feinstein Center at Tufts University in Medford,Massachusetts.
"If you say there is a foodsecurity crisis you see a ho-hum response by journalists, newspaper editors,the public and donors," says Maxwell. "But if you say there is a famine, even though intechnical terms the difference between those terms may only be a shade, youwould see newspaper headlines screaming and politicians lining up to make sureit does not happen."
Analysts say a full-blownfamine includes two deaths per day for every 10,000 people, often during apandemic. A man or woman stricken by famine consumes per day less than 2,100kilocalories and less than four liters of water. In order to find food,families have likely sold all of their assets, including livestock, and mayhave migrated with the whole community to areas miles from their home. Effortsto leave for a safer environment may be limited by armed conflict or abreakdown in law and order.
But Maxwell says that type ofsevere crisis is not implied in the way local communities define famine.
"There [are] also local definitionsof famine that may not have anything to do with what professionals talk about," he says. "For example, there was a famous book about the earlier famine in Darfur in84-85 called . It implies that in a localunderstanding, there are famines that are relatively mild, they cause you tolose assets or to be displaced, but do not necessarily kill people. But the onein ?84-?85 was an extreme famine in the local perception, but that?s not to saythat other less intense crises would not be [called] famines by the localpopulation."
Getting the terminology right isimportant to relief workers. They say the wrong designation, such as theexaggerated use of the highest state of alarm, famine, could undermine outsidesupport ? by giving NGOs a false reading of the equipment and interventionstrategies needed to fight a given level of crisis.
Chris Leather is the humanitariancoordinator for Oxfam. As an example, he discussed the food shortages in Malawia few years ago.
"A lot of food aid came from donorcountries," says Leather. "If there is food available locally, as there was in Malawi, [thefood donations] can undermine local traders and small scale feed producers, wholose out because food aid is brought in and distributed, undermining their ownlivelihoods. A more appropriate response might be [to support with money]people who need to buy food or to [support] traders struggling to import foodfrom neighboring countries."
Aine Fay is the directorof programs for the NGO Concern in Ethiopia. She disagrees with reportscoming from some in the media speaking of famine underway in Ethiopia.
"I think that there are certainlysigns of severe stress ? we cannot deny that ? but we have to acknowledge theyare in pockets of Ethiopia and are not yet widespread," she says. "The government andorganizations are doing food distributions. All of the stakeholders are workinghard to contain the situation. We are not seeing major deaths attributed tostarvation at the moment."
According to the scale used bymany relief agencies the UN Food and Agriculture's Integrated Food Security and PhaseClassification Reference Table, no countries in the world are todayexperiencing famine. But pockets of the Horn of Africa (and the world) fit thecategory of ?humanitarian emergency? ? the stage just before famine.
Relief agencies are working diligently to seethat millions of vulnerable never cross that threshold.
