Margaret McElligott
7 July 2004
interview
Washington, DC — James Morris, Executive Director of the UN World Food Programme, who recently returned from a two-week trip through southern Africa, says there is a humanitarian crisis in the region that is greatly exacerbated by HIV/Aids.
The WFP fed nearly two million people in southern Africa during June and has extended its emergency feeding operation through December 2004. However, the WFP expects to experience shortfalls in July, which will become acute by August. At current funding levels, WFP programs in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zambia will be unable to maintain existing food programs in October. Other areas in Africa are also facing severe food shortages. Morris spoke by telephone from New York City to AllAfrica's Margaret McElligott about the challenges his agency is facing in southern Africa, Sudan and northern Uganda.
What did you conclude about the situation from your time in southern Africa?
The world needs to know there is a humanitarian crisis in Africa that relates in part to weather but is dramatically complicated by the HIV/Aids issue. HIV/Aids is pervasive. It affects every single dimension of community life and its impact on human resource capacity and talent - the loss of doctors and nurses and school teachers and agricultural extension workers - is considerable.
There are millions of people at risk here and the world has a humanitarian responsibility, especially for the children. There is no substitute for a child going to school. And a child can only be successful with school if they are well-fed and nourished. They need clothes and they need shelter and they need healthcare and they need food. We need the world to support the NGO community [and] to support UN community.
The key issue is a sense of urgency in responding to the humanitarian agenda. To have the capacity on the the ground to deliver services - and services are always more effective when they are delivered by people who live in the region - but the scale of the response to these issues needs to be commiserate with the magnitude of the problem. You've got millions and millions of people at risk, who need help.
What was the purpose of your trip?
Initially, my responsibility was to look at the food security issues, the hunger issue. The more we've gotten into our work, the more serious, complex and compounding the food issues [and] the whole HIV/Aids issue and its pervasive impact on the region [is]. As a subset of that, the extraordinary impact of HIV/Aids on the human resource capacity, either to produce food or to do work in government agencies - teachers, the medical health professions, agricultural extension workers. There has been a huge loss of talent because of HIV that has impacted the ability of government and civil society to do its work.
You tried to go to Zimbabwe but couldn't. Why was that?
Zimbabwe has been a very important place for our work. I have visited there before, and we did intend to travel there this time. The government came back to us and said that the timing of our visit was not good for them and they would like for the visit to be rescheduled sometime later in the year.
From your assessment, approximately how many people in southern Africa have some degree of food insecurity right now?
It's a tough question, but it is the most important question. [It] is difficult to answer, because of the Zimbabwe numbers. We can give you numbers for each of the other countries of the number of people we are committed to feed. We fed 4.4 million people in Zimbabwe in March. Zimbabwe now believes it has adequate food resources [and does] generally not need our involvement going forward. They believe that their crop production and their ability to import foods will meet the needs of their citizens generally.
We have an emergency operation that was due to expire in March. We extended it through June and we now extended it through the end of the year and that was focused on feeding about 6 million people. The large percentage of them were in Zimbabwe, although very substantial numbers relative to the population in Lesotho and Swaziland. We've added about 110,000 people in the north of Namibia and we're feeding 400,000-500,000 people in the southern part of Mozambique. We'll be feeding no one in Zambia as a result of the drought. We still have a program there, but it is more related to school feeding and food for work. Then in Malawi the number is still several hundred thousand.
One of the significant issues is that food and nutrition is the most important factor in the fight against HIV/Aids. If they're infected and well nourished, they'll resist the opportunistic diseases. And if they have access to antiretroviral drugs, they have to be well-nourished and fed for the drugs to work. So we have a huge responsibility with our NGO partners to work to see that people who are affected by HIV have adequate food.
What impact does HIV have on agriculture?
It's enormous. In sub-Saharan Africa, more then seven million people who work in agriculture have lost their lives to HIV. That's more than the entire on-the-farm population in the United States and Canada. Those that are still living are sick and tired and worn out and are not able to work the farms as they once were. If they're able to work at all, they do the simplest forms of agriculture as opposed to the more intensive kinds of garden farms. So the impact on food production is significant.
Have growing numbers of Aids orphans impacted countries' abilities to produce their own food?
Women do 80 percent of the agricultural work in southern Africa. There has been a transfer of this knowledge of how to farm from parents to children. If the parents are either too sick or gone, the transfer of knowledge is really compromised. You not only have parents who aren't productive and able to take care of their families, you have many who are lost and you have so many hundred of thousands - if not millions - of children on their own, trying to fend for themselves. There are 14 million orphans in sub-Saharan Africa because their parents have died of HIV. When I talk about the seriousness of the tragedy, we're talking about lives that have been lost, we're talking about the way life expectancy across the region in southern Africa has been reduced by more than 20 years. So you're talking about orphans, life expectancy, the loss of life, and then the loss of capacity across countries.
Did you see anything in southern Africa that gave you hope for the future?
I must say I was also very encouraged by this trip, because clearly the leaders of each of these countries understand perfectly how serious the issues are. Lesotho has a very comprehensive plan to address the issue of HIV/Aids in its country, because they know it touches every single facet of life in Lesotho. This is a place with 120,000 orphans with a prevalence rate approaching 35 percent. It's a place that is having very tough weather problems, which means a tough agricultural environment is further strained, and then you have all the loss of capacity, the huge loss of teachers. But to their credit they have been very thoughtful in trying to gather the country in order to address the issue.
In Swaziland, we visited with the prime minister and the deputy prime minister as well as the king, and clearly they understood the urgency of this. But the challenge [is to] have a real sense of urgency to get on with programs that address the problem, to have capacity to provide services to people on the ground where they are needed. These issues of a sense of urgency and capacity are really important.
What is the current status of WFP programs in Darfur, Sudan and eastern Chad?
I led a humanitarian mission to Darfur about a month ago, and it is a very, very serious problem. At least 1.2 million people have been chased, driven from their homes. Their homes have been destroyed, their possessions have been destroyed or stolen, their fields have been harmed, [and] essentially a crop has been lost during this particular time. You now have 1.2 million displaced people - probably 60 percent of them are in camps - a couple hundred thousand have now crossed the border into Chad as refugees. We're probably going to be able to feed about 700,000 people in June, 800,000 people in July and then by October we will be feeding 2 million people. That's because of the huge number of internally displaced people, but with the loss of the crop, there will be people who were able to stay home but will have no food. Whatever food is left, supply and demand takes over and the prices are just astronomical.
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