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Contributions from
the Column
Focus
Too blunt an instrument?
Responding to complex crises
Fewer adverse side-effects
“We try to work ourselves out of the job”
Cash would be better
6/2004
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Responding to complex crises
Food aid can help improve a country’s long-term food security prospects. To do so, it needs to be embedded in programmes which go beyond emergency aid. It needs to be geared to development. Relief aid, rehabilitation and development cooperation belong together and need to take place simultaneously. The notion that one should come first, then the other, fails to take account of the complexity of food crises.
[ By Jochen Donner ]
Access to food is a basic human right. Where people are starving, they are entitled to help. But the way food aid is provided needs to take account of the causes of food shortages and to lay foundations for tackling them. Where this is not the case, the aid itself can become the problem. Food aid requires intensive planning at the places where it is delivered, close consultation with the communities affected and consideration for local and regional food markets. If food aid is to play a constructive role in the long-term fight against hunger and poverty, it needs to be geared to development – that is to say, it needs to be embedded in a package of programmes aimed at creating domestic capacities to reach food security.
This is the approach adopted by Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action (DWHH/GAA). The instruments it uses range from direct emergency aid and reconstruction assistance to food for work programmes aimed at rehabilitating rural infrastructures, to classic development cooperation (promotion of institutions and civil society) in rural – and sometimes urban – areas. Ethiopia can serve as a good example of food aid kept geared to development.
Ethiopia:
from relief aid to structural support
German Agro Action has been working in Ethiopia since the early 1970s. Its involvement started during the great drought and famine of 1972 to 1975 which led to the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a military dictatorship. By 1982, DWHH/GAA had developed a multi-facetted programme extending from relief aid (distribution of food and basic necessities such as blankets and household utensils) to rehabilitation of drinking water supply systems and reconstruction of health centres. The second great drought and food crisis, from 1982 to 1986, brought the need for more food aid for famine refugees as well as food for work programmes for creating infrastructures such as roads and tracks into remote mountain regions. While the crisis was ongoing, it was found that some parts of Ethiopia were producing grain surpluses which could be bought and shipped to the drought-hit areas without disrupting local markets. Since 1986, DWHH/GAA has simultaneously promoted food aid programmes and food for work projects (reforestation, irrigation and drinking water supply) geared to boosting agricultural production. It also supports farmer’s cooperatives and domestic grain processing. All this is done in cooperation and consultation with the government and the governmental and non-governmental donor organisations operating in Ethiopia.
In 1986, when the country programme had to be extended to meet requirements, Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action set up an office in Addis Ababa to make for better coordination of the individual projects under the food aid, food for work and agricultural development cooperation programmes. In 1989, DWHH/GAA drafted a comprehensive country concept defining its contribution to food security and rural development. Since then, that concept has been regularly updated. In the 1990s, Agro Action stepped up cooperation with domestic NGOs, a move considerably facilitated by the overthrow of the military dictatorship and regime change in 1991. As a result, the number of Ethiopian NGOs increased, and so did the number of project proposals submitted to Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action. At the same time, that development cleared the way for more vigorous promotion of the technical and organisational skills of partner organisations in Ethiopia’s burgeoning civil society. The changed conditions for operations in Ethiopia create more scope than ever for supporting long-term development projects based on self-help and democratic participation.
Short and long-term aid go hand in hand
Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action’s work in Ethiopia reflects a learning process which other organisations also underwent during the African crises of the 1980s and 1990s. The practical experience of such crises gave rise to a conceptual debate which found that emergencies, food crises and so-called natural disasters need to be perceived as “complex crises”, in which the dividing lines between relief, rehabilitation and development assistance need to be erased. In the 1980s, when relief aid and reconstruction work did not have the status they have now, development policy was geared to the concept of continuity: relief aid was provided in an emergency, regular development cooperation was the answer thereafter. Today, it is clear that that notion does not make for an effective response to complex emergencies: there is no linear progression from emergency to “normal” development – not in Angola, Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan or anywhere else. The cause of a crisis that makes development-geared relief aid necessary is poverty – and poverty is part of the economic, social and political structure of crisis-hit countries. The flaws in the social fabric of a society are merely revealed or dramatically underlined by the consequences of a natural catastrophe or violent conflict.
In such situations, relief, rehabilitation and development programmes need to be conceived as a contiguum, not a continuum. That is, they need to be synchronous, not sequential. The watchword since the late 1990s has been “Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development” (LRRD). The contiguum approach attempts to meet acute need and at the same time create structures that make communities less vulnerable to emergencies and help them prevent future crises. The number of countries in which development organisations provide a mix of food aid, reconstruction assistance, rehabilitation programmes and rural development projects has sharply increased since the 1990s. The new awareness particularly benefits countries where development cooperation started within that decade.
Tajikistan is a good example. The last Soviet republic to declare independence in 1991 lacked a balanced economy and relied on close trade relations with the other Soviet republics, exporting cotton and importing food. When those economic ties broke, considerable food shortages ensued, leading to internal armed conflict.
After starting work in Tajikistan in 1994, Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action’s main focus in the early years was on relief and rehabilitation. Its relief operations span three areas: food aid, provision of basic necessities (providing social institutions and groups in need with fuel, winter clothing, blankets and soap) as well as emergency aid for victims of drought. This is particularly geared to helping people get through the winter months. As early as 1996, however, Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action expanded its project portfolio in Tajikistan – not least to support the land reform implemented by the government – launching agricultural programmes for distributing seed, getting advice to farmers and strengthening agricultural organisations. The advisory component is two-pronged, comprising advice for farmers during the growing season and year-round work on the development of domestic advisory services. Selected farmers’ groups are provided with organisational support and information on production planning and the relevant laws. The objective is to strengthen private-sector farming and farmer’s associations, encourage credit programmes based on bank loans rather than loans repayable in kind and help create regional agricultural extension systems organised and financed by farmers’ groups and government agencies. Parallel to this are food for work programmes designed according to local needs, focused, for example, on bridge and road repairs, land reclamation, reforestation, horticulture, small animal husbandry, craft enterprise, rehabilitation of drinking water facilities or waste water management. The food for relief programmes come partly from local agricultural projects, which reduces the need for imports and strengthens local markets.
It is widely accepted today that food crises have complex causes. International relief aid and development cooperation are increasingly shaped by this fact and delivered as parts of an integrated, holistic approach to the fight against hunger (although the old continuum model with its strictly separate co-financing tools still often predominates in the donor bureaucracy). Food aid is an element of that. The risk of it becoming part of the problem it seeks to address exists only where it is improperly implemented – where help comes at the wrong time, for instance, (e.g. when the harvest is being brought in), where it fails to reach those in need, where too much of it is supplied, where the quality of the commodities is bad – or where aid is primarily intended to promote exports and serves the interests of the donors. Another key consideration is the need for the cooperation of all the relevant actors – from local communities and government authorities to the World Bank and international NGOs.
What form aid should take is a decision that needs to be left to those affected. This is important – for one thing, because terrorist actors in crisis countries identify and increasingly target food aid and other forms of relief as an instrument of Western influence. The risk of this happening can only be countered by ensuring that food aid is enshrined in the poverty reduction and food security strategies developed by the countries themselves – and kept clearly separate from military missions.
Literature:
Deutsche Welthungerhilfe/German Agro Action (2004):
Mind the Gap. Linking Relief, Rehabilitation and Development. Bonn
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