Hiiraan Online

Louise Boyle
Thursday November 10, 2022

Isha Kerow, left, and other Somalis displaced by drought fill jerrycans with water distributed by the Norwegian Refugee Council, on the outskirts of Baidoa, in Somalia last month (AP)

The world has looked away from the spiralling global hunger crisis for too long, David Miliband has warned, as the “telltale signs” of famine loom in East Africa.

During the first week of the global climate summit Cop27, the president of the International Rescue Committee (IRC) travelled to East Africa to draw attention to a humanitarian disaster fueled by a climate-driven drought.

Humanitarian appeals are dangerously underfunded. In Ethiopia, a lack of money has meant that food rations for refugees have been cut in half. Of what international support there is, the overwhelming majority has come from the United States.

“The US, who take a whacking quite often and sometimes for good reason, are the only country who stepped up on this hunger crisis in East Africa,” Mr Miliband told The Independent. “The Americans are leading and no one is following.”

The war in Ukraine appears to have taught the US that they need to do more to support vulnerable places amid the global hunger crisis, he said.

On the other hand, the United Kingdom had been absent in financial support for East Africa, he added. “The lesson that the UK seems to have taken is to do less. That’s how you end up with the UK playing no effective role at this moment of real danger.”

Mr Miliband spoke on Wednesday from a “very bumpy road” in eastern Ethiopia, near the Djibouti border, dotted with local militia checkpoints.

“This is an area where there is significant evidence of climate change,” he said.

He described the drive alongside fields of sorghum plants, a basic commodity in the region, which were emaciated and yellowed at the roots. The region is experiencing its fifth consecutive failed rainy season, according to the World Meteorological Organisation.

“There’s also the indirect effects,” he added. “The conflicts over territory in this part of the world are also conflicts over resources.”

East Africa is uniquely vulnerable to the global “poly-crisis” of climate change, the pandemic, and the war in Ukraine as it relies on Ukraine and Russia for 90 per cent of its wheat imports. Severe droughts also now happen more frequently with three major events in the past decade.

This year, for the first time in its history, the IRC added an urgent alert on East Africa to its emergency watchlist of countries most at risk of a new emergency or worsening humanitarian crisis.

Since that warning, the situation in Somalia, Ethiopia, and Kenya has worsened with 21 million people starving.

The situation is not yet a famine - as per the data-driven standards of classification needed for such a declaration - but it is on the horizon.

“In 2011, half of the 250,000 people who died did so before the famine was declared,” Miliband noted.

“There should be no hiding behind the idea that level three or four food insecurity is okay. The idea that we should wait until level five - which is famine - before taking action is just terrible.”

And local communities are keenly aware that their environment has become hostile, he said.

At one of IRC’s village-run sustainable water projects, one woman in her 30s spoke of the changes. “She said, ‘I remember when the climate was different. I remember when the water pressure was higher,’” he said.

“What changed? Lake Haramaya is basically gone. It was a source of fishing and food. There’s a long-term trend here that is absolutely evident.”