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Hunger Countries at Risk
updated April 2008
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| Infant weighing |
The dramatic rise in world food prices has once again forced hunger to the top of the humanitarian agenda. These extracts from OneWorld Country Guides serve as a reminder that many poor countries were experiencing food insecurity even before the current alarm about prices and shortages of food aid. With the impact of climate change injecting another dimension of uncertainty, it is no wonder that the World Food Programme is striving to create a greater sense of urgency amongst international policymakers.
» Food Security Guide
updated April 2008
Afghanistan
An immediate concern for 2008 is the impact of sharply rising food prices on both urban and rural poor households. The World Food Programme has issued an appeal for funds to assist over 2.5 million people, in addition to its existing plans for 3.7 million.
Bangladesh
Unfortunately, there is a stubborn hardcore of extreme poverty in Bangladesh which is not responding to government or NGO programmes. Possibly as many as 35 million people are in this category - 25% of the population – unable to provide themselves with sufficient food, creating widespread severe malnutrition, and overwhelming social safety nets. With nearly 50% of children underweight, the child mortality rate has not fallen in recent years.
Burkina Faso
Concerns focus on the predominant livelihood of subsistence agriculture which is inefficient and highly vulnerable. For example, although the harvest for 2007 has exceeded basic food needs, poor distribution and poverty ensure that child malnutrition remains over 30%. All regions are known to have poor coping capacity for drought, flooding, and locusts, each of which is a regular hazard in Burkina Faso. The prospect of climate change aggravating these sensitivities undermines the already formidable challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Burundi
Food security has been declining in Burundi since 1993, with conflict-related displacement and disruption undermining agricultural productivity. This was already hampered by its fragile profile of small farms, frequent land disputes, bad water management and lack of modern equipment. The situation has been aggravated in 2006 and 2007 by unstable climate conditions, firstly the drought that has affected all of East Africa, and secondly from serious flooding after torrential rains in the western provinces.
Burundi already faces many worrying environmental challenges in the form of deforestation, degradation of soil and marshlands, and the reduction in the water level of Lake Tanganyika, all of which impact on food security. On top of these problems, there is underlying pressure on land and agriculture through the high population growth rate in Burundi along with the large number of refugees returning to their home villages from Tanzania. Land density is already the second highest in Africa. The consequence of all these concerns is that Burundi’s food situation is described by the UN as “chronic insecurity” requiring constant attention. Over 800,000 people received food aid in 2007.
Cambodia
Cambodia’s tortured recent history is responsible for a legacy of structural obstacles to poverty reduction plans. For example, the Khmer Rouge abolished the concept of private ownership in favour of communal farming which has evolved into a profile of very small farms; about 70% of the country’s workforce is engaged in hand-to-mouth subsistence farming. Cambodia’s rice yields are the lowest in the region. With minimal investment in inputs and irrigation and with little opportunity to supplement their incomes, most of these households experience seasonal food deficits. The Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Dr.Peter Piot, has said that there is a “chronic and persistent food insecurity problem in Cambodia”. Over 35% of children under age 5 are underweight.
Although a new law awards title to farmers who have been working on their land for more than 5 years, few have taken advantage due to the expense and bureaucracy involved. This has led to unscrupulous land grabbing by wealthy agricultural interests seeking land for cash crops such as sugar. The government is aware of the strategic need for investment in agriculture, land rights and alternative livelihoods but there is great uncertainty as to how the dramatic increase in the price of rice will impact on this vulnerable rural economy. One immediate painful consequence is the WFP announcement in 2008 of termination of its school feeding programmes for 450,000 Cambodian children.
Cameroon
The core problem is not hard to identify; the World Food Programme describes Cameroon as a food insecure country and has further demonstrated that food intake is lower now than in the early 1980s. The result is that over 30% of young children are classified as suffering from “moderate chronic malnutrition” and the child mortality rate is rising rather than falling. High population growth – almost 70% since 1987 – presents a tough challenge to food production; in particular that the provinces in the extreme north of the country have simultaneously the highest population density and the lowest yielding drought-prone land.
Eritrea
The fundamental challenge for poverty and hunger targets in Eritrea is food security. Much of the land is semi-arid, weather patterns are unpredictable and some of the most fertile regions are minefields. About 80% of the population lives in rural areas, the majority being poor subsistence farmers and nomadic herdsmen. Even in years of favourable rainfall, crop yields have fallen well short of the country’s needs. Eritrea has a long history of droughts and, after the failure of seasonal rainfall every year in the period 2001-2004, received assistance from the world community to feed more than 2 million people, two-thirds of its population.
With the feeding programme in full swing in 2005, the Eritrean government embarked on a radical change of strategy. Distribution of food aid provided by the World Food Programme was abruptly ended and a “work-for-food” programme installed in its place. The government claims that with this additional labour, improved agricultural techniques and increased budgets for irrigation, alongside a new spirit of self-sufficiency, the country can manage without external assistance. Three successive years of good rains have prevented catastrophe but the true position is difficult to assess. A 2007 UN report estimated that 70%-80% of people are short of food essentials as prices rise beyond the means of the most disadvantaged groups. By contrast President Isaias Afewerki stated in an October 2007 interview that “we don’t have any humanitarian problems….. we do not need any food aid”.
Ethiopia
Food security remains the greatest concern in Ethiopia with UN estimates suggesting that 42 million people receive below the minimum nutritional requirement. While the country continues to suffer the ravages of successive drought and floods and has received millions of dollars in emergency food aid since the severe famines in 1984, the root causes of hunger and poverty - insecure and inadequate land tenure and lack of investment in rural infrastructure amongst others - have not been adequately addressed.
Nevertheless, the government has shown its willingness to become more accountable for the 7 million people classed as chronically food insecure, largely in the highlands region where drought is most unrelenting. They qualify for the “Productive Safety Net Program" which provides food and cash in return for labour. In addition the government grasped the nettle of a resettlement program starting in 2003 which aims to move over 2 million people to more productive lands. Both these strategies are fraught with difficulty and their long term potential is questionable.
The 2007 harvest is expected to be 50% above the 5 year average due to an increase in rainfall, but over 1.3 million people will continue to need emergency food aid during the year, over 70% in the Somali region.
Guinea-Bissau
Though the country is a major rice producer, the focus on cashew production and regular damage from salt water inundation have recently led to major food shortages, and resulted in a famine warning for the Tombali region in 2006. Contrary to global trends, agriculture has grown in importance to the economy in recent decades, but the country remains a net importer of food (most significantly of cheap rice from the USA and Southeast Asia).
India
Of the statistics that undermine the image of India as an industrialised nation, none is more telling than the decline in food available to the rural population who have less to eat than in the 1950s. Over 200 million people are malnourished, most of them children. In the scramble for food, girl children are particularly at risk and comprise the majority of the 2.7 million annual deaths of children under 5. The government’s safety net for feeding, known as the Public Food Distribution System (PDS), reaches less than 100 million people and is impaired by corruption at district level.
The crisis has been caused by inadequate and misdirected investment in agriculture, aggravated by regulations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which force Indian farmers to compete on an unlevel playing field. Agricultural imports have increased four times since the WTO came into effect in 1995 and at least 4 million farmers have been rendered jobless. A tragic human consequence has been the suicide of about 100,000 farmers in the decade to 2003, most of them faced with crippling debts for expensive seeds and chemicals.
India's understandable insistence on the removal of protective subsidies and tariffs in rich countries was a contributing factor to the 2006 collapse of the Doha round of WTO negotiations. The internal strategy to boost the rural economy is the Bharat Nirman programme which since 2005 has directed substantial investment to rural infrastructure - housing, roads, water and electricity together with cheaper credit for farmers. Targets for food production will have to contend with reduced availability of land and significant water scarcity. Plans to invest in the biofuel crop jatropha with millions of hectares set aside for the purpose will need immense care in the context of India’s current inability to feed itself.
Kenya
In spite of its glossy image for tourists, the majority of Kenya’s land is arid or semi-arid, the home of pastoral and nomadic people living on the margins of subsistence. The country lacks robust food production and is vulnerable to unstable rain patterns. Successive years of drought up to 2006 compelled the World Food Programme to provide support for over 2 million people. Severe floods towards the end of 2006 affected a further 700,000, most of them cut off from help by inadequate roads. The return of the rains has however improved overall prospects for food production in the immediate future.
Malawi
Maize is the staple of the Malawian diet. Good rains and generous government subsidies for agricultural inputs led to bumper harvests in the late 1990’s. However, delayed rains, cutbacks in government subsidies and the prior sale of the country’s strategic grain reserves resulted in a huge shortfall in the 2000-01 growing season, creating famine conditions by early 2002. The price of maize increased four-fold over a few months, leaving millions hungry and possibly causing several thousand deaths. The country faced a potentially even more serious food shortfall in 2005, when the lowest maize harvest in a decade left nearly 5 million people in need of food assistance. However, prompt government action to import 300,000 tonnes of maize from South Africa, coupled with a large-scale emergency feeding programme undertaken by the World Food Programme, prevented a humanitarian disaster.
Perhaps creating the foundation for a longer-term solution to recurring food crises, the 2005-06 Budget incorporated reforms exempting small-holder farmers from taxation and reinstating subsidies for agricultural inputs, while the 2006-07 Budget further increased development expenditures for agriculture and irrigation. Good rains in the 2005-06 and 2006-07 growing seasons, coupled with the effective distribution of subsidised seed and fertilizer have led to two years of bumper harvests, and early in 2007 Malawi commenced exporting large volumes of surplus grain to hungry Zimbabwe. However, malnutrition remains a significant problem for vulnerable sections of society.
Mali
Agriculture is the basis of the Malian economy with over 70% of the working population employed in agriculture and contributing 40% of the GDP. The majority are subsistence farmers (growing millet, rice, sorghum and corn) or, for nomadic populations, herders (tending cattle, goats and sheep). Commercial crops include cotton, peanuts, sugar, tobacco and vegetables. With most crops and animals dependent on rain, drought and/or locusts can greatly impact production and bring suffering as occurred in 2004-2005. The Government is now backing public-private-partnerships to develop home-grown agricultural research efforts to address Mali’s needs.
Namibia
Land reform in Namibia juggles the cause of social justice with the risk of food insecurity. Securing food production in a drought-prone environment has always been a key challenge for the country. Indeed the post-independence period has uncovered the painful reality that the white farmers with all their advantages were unable to vanquish the harsh arid Namibian climate. Even where adequate skills and investment are available, the subdivision of these farms into half a dozen smaller units tends to exacerbate any underlying weaknesses. Reports suggest that many of the families working on the 800 farms established under the reform programme remain beneath the poverty line.
The total 2006/07 harvest was down 40% on the previous year and 2007/08 is forecast to be only a little better. 24% of children under-age-5 suffer chronic malnutrition. Namibia is not self-sufficient in essential cereals and will be exposed to the dramatic rise in food import costs.
Nepal
A 2007 report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation describes Nepal as “chronically food insecure”, its inefficient production further undermined by natural disasters and climate change. WFP is already targeting over one million people with food aid. Regions that are the focus of poverty alleviation programmes tend also to be those most affected by the Maoist conflict and successful implementation of the peace agreement is critical to the MDG programme in Nepal.
North Korea
What is certain is that North Korea is not only the poorest country in North Asia, but lacks even the foreign currency necessary to create food security for its people. In average harvests, production of rice and maize is thought to fall short of basic needs by 15%-20%. Harvest failures in the mid-1990s led to a full scale famine in which up to 2 million people died, often described as the worst global humanitarian disaster of that decade.
The traditional sources of food aid have been South Korea, China and the World Food Programme (WFP), their distribution networks often hampered by fickle and opaque government regulations. For a period during 2005/06, North Korea refused all food and fertiliser aid, in deference to the dogma of self-reliance and in denial of a WFP nutritional survey conducted in October 2004 which found that 37% of children suffered stunted growth whilst a third of all mothers were malnourished and anaemic.
In 2007 WFP reported that “having enough to eat is still a daily struggle for one-third to one-half of all North Koreans”. Most people are dependent on the government’s Public Distribution System, a notoriously inefficient programme which is supposed to ensure fairness through defined rations but which instead tends to favour elitist groups at the expense of others. The rations themselves typically fall far below the recommended daily calorific intake. In cities people may be able to buy extra food whilst those in the country may enjoy the luxury of a smallholding. Reports of people foraging for wild plants or selling their last possessions for food continue to filter out of the country.
Food stocks in North Korea are at their lowest in the months leading up to harvest in September. Severe floods in 2007 destroyed an estimated 16% of the harvest boosting the need for aid from 1.0 to 1.4 million tons. Given the uncertainty of the acute international political tension over North Korea’s nuclear programmes, there is concern amongst development agencies that 2008 will be a particularly difficult year.
Philippines
Free trade rules may have undermined domestic food production to the extent that the Philippines is now the world’s biggest importer of rice. As the crisis of sharply rising food prices takes hold, the government was unable to buy its required supplies of rice during the first quarter of 2008, the consequences of which remain uncertain.
Somalia
Recent years of severe drought in the Horn of Africa region have been followed by widespread flooding towards the end of 2006, compounding Somalia’s uncertain food security - projections for 2007 suggest improvement in some areas and high risk of shortages in the more dangerous and unsettled central and southern regions. UN agencies estimate that about one million people will require humanitarian assistance in 2007 including 400,000 long term internally displaced persons scattered throughout the country, many of them living in camps where conditions are very poor. Relief efforts are hampered by conditions on the ground as well as ongoing dangers of violence and piracy which have resulted in Somalia being declared the most dangerous and difficult of all countries for aid workers, to the extent that four out of every five Somalis in need do not receive assistance.
Sri Lanka
The World Food Programme (WFP) has listed the country as one of “hunger’s global hotspots,” where half of the population consumes less than the recommended daily calorie intake and malnutrition affects 29% of children. Likewise the FAO has put Sri Lanka among 14 countries facing "food emergencies" due to rising prices. This is partly because the country is unable to grow enough rice to feed itself, and partly because of poor internal infrastructure for food distribution. Import duties on rice have been removed and the government is depending on friendly neighbouring countries to make available sufficient supplies.
The escalating civil war creates the worst possible environment for dealing with a potential food crisis, especially as the rice surplus regions in the north coincide with the conflict zone. A recent WFP report states that the conflict presents a “serious threat to overall food security”. An unsettling development in 2008 is the temporary suspension of the WFP feeding programme for 175,000 people in the northeast, due to lack of funds.
Tajikistan
The World Food Programme describes Tajikistan as a food deficit country, where 27% of the population experience degrees of food insecurity and 36% of children under 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition. After two consecutive poor harvests, an energy and food crisis brought about exceptionally cold weather in early 2008 has led to an emergency UN appeal for $25 million. It illustrates how infrastructure and supply routes are threatened regularly by floods, landslides, and other natural disasters, compounding the struggles of an already vulnerable population.
Tanzania
85% of farming is by hand tools with minimal inputs and poor access to credit. Although Tanzania is normally able to feed itself, as recently as 2006 prolonged drought compelled an appeal for international food aid. Arid and semi-arid regions such as Lindi, Mtware and Kigoma are especially vulnerable. Malnutrition is the cause of about 50% of child mortality.
Timor-Leste
Irrevocably linked with poverty is the decline in food security in Timor-Leste. In the absence of policies to assist them, farmers are too poor to upgrade their equipment, maintain irrigation or even to purchase seeds. The country lies in a region known to be particularly sensitive to the unpredictable impacts of El Nino and climate change. This combination of factors in 2007 caused a reduction of 30% in cereals and 20% in rice production; in West Timor yields are believed to be down as much as 50%. The country is in any event nowhere near self-sufficient in food and therefore exposed to increasingly expensive imports. 46% of children are assessed to have stunted growth due to malnutrition. The World Food Programme has projected that over 200,000 people, 20% of the population, will need assistance in the “hunger” months leading up to March 2008.
Yemen
The country is presently in the midst of a food crisis where approximately one-third of its population remains undernourished rising to 46 per cent of children under-five. Almost 18 per cent of Yemenis exist below the food poverty line and the World Food Programme is actively assisting about one million people.
Zimbabwe
Until recently commercial farming contributed 50% of Zimbabwe’s export earnings. Although these figures include tobacco, the country was known as the bread basket of Southern Africa. Land reform had aimed to reverse the racially divisive distribution of the colonial period but the government’s expropriation of properties managed by white farmers proved unplanned and chaotic. Production in the most recent harvest of 2007 will exceed barely 50% of Zimbabwe’s own requirements. Drought and floods have been partly to blame but government policies have failed to ensure adequate training and access to seed and fertiliser inputs, irrigation structures have not been maintained and price controls have diminished the basic incentive to farm. With stories circulating that many farmers find it more profitable to sell firewood than tend their land, the government is now stepping in to reclaim some of the expropriated farms.
Although imported food is arriving from Malawi and Zambia, Zimbabwe lacks the foreign exchange necessary to feed its own people. Having refused entry to the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme (WFP) in 2006, the government has backtracked in allowing these agencies to conduct an assessment during 2007. Their prediction is that, by the peak of the hunger season in March 2008, 4.1 million people will be in need of food aid, a third of the population and a very substantial increase over current beneficiary numbers. The UN has consequently launched a massive humanitarian appeal for 2008 for over $300 million. Donors will be concerned that the government's aid distribution will overcome a history of inefficiency and bias at election times.
An immediate concern for 2008 is the impact of sharply rising food prices on both urban and rural poor households. The World Food Programme has issued an appeal for funds to assist over 2.5 million people, in addition to its existing plans for 3.7 million.
Bangladesh
Unfortunately, there is a stubborn hardcore of extreme poverty in Bangladesh which is not responding to government or NGO programmes. Possibly as many as 35 million people are in this category - 25% of the population – unable to provide themselves with sufficient food, creating widespread severe malnutrition, and overwhelming social safety nets. With nearly 50% of children underweight, the child mortality rate has not fallen in recent years.
Burkina Faso
Concerns focus on the predominant livelihood of subsistence agriculture which is inefficient and highly vulnerable. For example, although the harvest for 2007 has exceeded basic food needs, poor distribution and poverty ensure that child malnutrition remains over 30%. All regions are known to have poor coping capacity for drought, flooding, and locusts, each of which is a regular hazard in Burkina Faso. The prospect of climate change aggravating these sensitivities undermines the already formidable challenge of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).
Burundi
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| Settlement outside Bujumbura © Alexandra Illmer |
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| View of Lake Tanganjika from Bujumbura © Alexandra Illmer |
Cambodia
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| Food stalls, Battambong, Cambodia © Thnam Kanha Net |
Although a new law awards title to farmers who have been working on their land for more than 5 years, few have taken advantage due to the expense and bureaucracy involved. This has led to unscrupulous land grabbing by wealthy agricultural interests seeking land for cash crops such as sugar. The government is aware of the strategic need for investment in agriculture, land rights and alternative livelihoods but there is great uncertainty as to how the dramatic increase in the price of rice will impact on this vulnerable rural economy. One immediate painful consequence is the WFP announcement in 2008 of termination of its school feeding programmes for 450,000 Cambodian children.
Cameroon
The core problem is not hard to identify; the World Food Programme describes Cameroon as a food insecure country and has further demonstrated that food intake is lower now than in the early 1980s. The result is that over 30% of young children are classified as suffering from “moderate chronic malnutrition” and the child mortality rate is rising rather than falling. High population growth – almost 70% since 1987 – presents a tough challenge to food production; in particular that the provinces in the extreme north of the country have simultaneously the highest population density and the lowest yielding drought-prone land.
Eritrea
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With the feeding programme in full swing in 2005, the Eritrean government embarked on a radical change of strategy. Distribution of food aid provided by the World Food Programme was abruptly ended and a “work-for-food” programme installed in its place. The government claims that with this additional labour, improved agricultural techniques and increased budgets for irrigation, alongside a new spirit of self-sufficiency, the country can manage without external assistance. Three successive years of good rains have prevented catastrophe but the true position is difficult to assess. A 2007 UN report estimated that 70%-80% of people are short of food essentials as prices rise beyond the means of the most disadvantaged groups. By contrast President Isaias Afewerki stated in an October 2007 interview that “we don’t have any humanitarian problems….. we do not need any food aid”.
Ethiopia
Food security remains the greatest concern in Ethiopia with UN estimates suggesting that 42 million people receive below the minimum nutritional requirement. While the country continues to suffer the ravages of successive drought and floods and has received millions of dollars in emergency food aid since the severe famines in 1984, the root causes of hunger and poverty - insecure and inadequate land tenure and lack of investment in rural infrastructure amongst others - have not been adequately addressed.
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| Cattle carcasses at Denane, north of Gode, Ethiopia © Rachel Stabb / Oxfam Great Britain |
The 2007 harvest is expected to be 50% above the 5 year average due to an increase in rainfall, but over 1.3 million people will continue to need emergency food aid during the year, over 70% in the Somali region.
Guinea-Bissau
Though the country is a major rice producer, the focus on cashew production and regular damage from salt water inundation have recently led to major food shortages, and resulted in a famine warning for the Tombali region in 2006. Contrary to global trends, agriculture has grown in importance to the economy in recent decades, but the country remains a net importer of food (most significantly of cheap rice from the USA and Southeast Asia).
India
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| Farmer in Punjab © Centre for Science and Environment |
The crisis has been caused by inadequate and misdirected investment in agriculture, aggravated by regulations of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) which force Indian farmers to compete on an unlevel playing field. Agricultural imports have increased four times since the WTO came into effect in 1995 and at least 4 million farmers have been rendered jobless. A tragic human consequence has been the suicide of about 100,000 farmers in the decade to 2003, most of them faced with crippling debts for expensive seeds and chemicals.
India's understandable insistence on the removal of protective subsidies and tariffs in rich countries was a contributing factor to the 2006 collapse of the Doha round of WTO negotiations. The internal strategy to boost the rural economy is the Bharat Nirman programme which since 2005 has directed substantial investment to rural infrastructure - housing, roads, water and electricity together with cheaper credit for farmers. Targets for food production will have to contend with reduced availability of land and significant water scarcity. Plans to invest in the biofuel crop jatropha with millions of hectares set aside for the purpose will need immense care in the context of India’s current inability to feed itself.
Kenya
In spite of its glossy image for tourists, the majority of Kenya’s land is arid or semi-arid, the home of pastoral and nomadic people living on the margins of subsistence. The country lacks robust food production and is vulnerable to unstable rain patterns. Successive years of drought up to 2006 compelled the World Food Programme to provide support for over 2 million people. Severe floods towards the end of 2006 affected a further 700,000, most of them cut off from help by inadequate roads. The return of the rains has however improved overall prospects for food production in the immediate future.
Malawi
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| Farming in Malawi © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
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| Distribution of maize seeds in Malawi |
Mali
Agriculture is the basis of the Malian economy with over 70% of the working population employed in agriculture and contributing 40% of the GDP. The majority are subsistence farmers (growing millet, rice, sorghum and corn) or, for nomadic populations, herders (tending cattle, goats and sheep). Commercial crops include cotton, peanuts, sugar, tobacco and vegetables. With most crops and animals dependent on rain, drought and/or locusts can greatly impact production and bring suffering as occurred in 2004-2005. The Government is now backing public-private-partnerships to develop home-grown agricultural research efforts to address Mali’s needs.
Namibia
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| water pump in the kalahari © Adrian Arbib |
The total 2006/07 harvest was down 40% on the previous year and 2007/08 is forecast to be only a little better. 24% of children under-age-5 suffer chronic malnutrition. Namibia is not self-sufficient in essential cereals and will be exposed to the dramatic rise in food import costs.
Nepal
A 2007 report by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation describes Nepal as “chronically food insecure”, its inefficient production further undermined by natural disasters and climate change. WFP is already targeting over one million people with food aid. Regions that are the focus of poverty alleviation programmes tend also to be those most affected by the Maoist conflict and successful implementation of the peace agreement is critical to the MDG programme in Nepal.
North Korea
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| Malnutrition in North Korea © CAFOD |
The traditional sources of food aid have been South Korea, China and the World Food Programme (WFP), their distribution networks often hampered by fickle and opaque government regulations. For a period during 2005/06, North Korea refused all food and fertiliser aid, in deference to the dogma of self-reliance and in denial of a WFP nutritional survey conducted in October 2004 which found that 37% of children suffered stunted growth whilst a third of all mothers were malnourished and anaemic.
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| An elderly North Korean woman © Mercy Corps |
Food stocks in North Korea are at their lowest in the months leading up to harvest in September. Severe floods in 2007 destroyed an estimated 16% of the harvest boosting the need for aid from 1.0 to 1.4 million tons. Given the uncertainty of the acute international political tension over North Korea’s nuclear programmes, there is concern amongst development agencies that 2008 will be a particularly difficult year.
Philippines
Free trade rules may have undermined domestic food production to the extent that the Philippines is now the world’s biggest importer of rice. As the crisis of sharply rising food prices takes hold, the government was unable to buy its required supplies of rice during the first quarter of 2008, the consequences of which remain uncertain.
Somalia
Recent years of severe drought in the Horn of Africa region have been followed by widespread flooding towards the end of 2006, compounding Somalia’s uncertain food security - projections for 2007 suggest improvement in some areas and high risk of shortages in the more dangerous and unsettled central and southern regions. UN agencies estimate that about one million people will require humanitarian assistance in 2007 including 400,000 long term internally displaced persons scattered throughout the country, many of them living in camps where conditions are very poor. Relief efforts are hampered by conditions on the ground as well as ongoing dangers of violence and piracy which have resulted in Somalia being declared the most dangerous and difficult of all countries for aid workers, to the extent that four out of every five Somalis in need do not receive assistance.
Sri Lanka
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| Farmers in Sri Lanka |
The escalating civil war creates the worst possible environment for dealing with a potential food crisis, especially as the rice surplus regions in the north coincide with the conflict zone. A recent WFP report states that the conflict presents a “serious threat to overall food security”. An unsettling development in 2008 is the temporary suspension of the WFP feeding programme for 175,000 people in the northeast, due to lack of funds.
Tajikistan
The World Food Programme describes Tajikistan as a food deficit country, where 27% of the population experience degrees of food insecurity and 36% of children under 5 years suffer from chronic malnutrition. After two consecutive poor harvests, an energy and food crisis brought about exceptionally cold weather in early 2008 has led to an emergency UN appeal for $25 million. It illustrates how infrastructure and supply routes are threatened regularly by floods, landslides, and other natural disasters, compounding the struggles of an already vulnerable population.
Tanzania
85% of farming is by hand tools with minimal inputs and poor access to credit. Although Tanzania is normally able to feed itself, as recently as 2006 prolonged drought compelled an appeal for international food aid. Arid and semi-arid regions such as Lindi, Mtware and Kigoma are especially vulnerable. Malnutrition is the cause of about 50% of child mortality.
Timor-Leste
Irrevocably linked with poverty is the decline in food security in Timor-Leste. In the absence of policies to assist them, farmers are too poor to upgrade their equipment, maintain irrigation or even to purchase seeds. The country lies in a region known to be particularly sensitive to the unpredictable impacts of El Nino and climate change. This combination of factors in 2007 caused a reduction of 30% in cereals and 20% in rice production; in West Timor yields are believed to be down as much as 50%. The country is in any event nowhere near self-sufficient in food and therefore exposed to increasingly expensive imports. 46% of children are assessed to have stunted growth due to malnutrition. The World Food Programme has projected that over 200,000 people, 20% of the population, will need assistance in the “hunger” months leading up to March 2008.
Yemen
The country is presently in the midst of a food crisis where approximately one-third of its population remains undernourished rising to 46 per cent of children under-five. Almost 18 per cent of Yemenis exist below the food poverty line and the World Food Programme is actively assisting about one million people.
Zimbabwe
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| Zimbabwean food shortages © United Nations' Integrated Regional Information Network |
Although imported food is arriving from Malawi and Zambia, Zimbabwe lacks the foreign exchange necessary to feed its own people. Having refused entry to the Food and Agriculture Organisation and World Food Programme (WFP) in 2006, the government has backtracked in allowing these agencies to conduct an assessment during 2007. Their prediction is that, by the peak of the hunger season in March 2008, 4.1 million people will be in need of food aid, a third of the population and a very substantial increase over current beneficiary numbers. The UN has consequently launched a massive humanitarian appeal for 2008 for over $300 million. Donors will be concerned that the government's aid distribution will overcome a history of inefficiency and bias at election times.
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