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.
I visited the Mornei camp, a place of 60,000 people, 17,000 women, 9000 men, [and] 34,000 children. Probably 20-25 percent of the women are pregnant [and] another 40 percent are nursing. One in four or five [are] substantially malnourished [and] underweight. The rainy season is coming - in fact, it's in part of the area right now - and the health issues that wet weather causes are astronomical, so this is a very, very serious matter. Lots of people are seriously at risk here.
What is the security situation inside Sudan? Have you had trouble getting access to internally displaced people and do WFP staff feel safe going about their work?
I think the security issue is the key issue. I visited with lots of internally displaced people. People are frightened to death. I have never seen people so scared. They have been driven from their homes. They want to go home but they are afraid to go home. They are afraid to go outside their village [or] outside the camps to look for water or firewood or grass to feed their animals. They are afraid of being attacked.
So the first security issue relates to the people that have been abused. Women have been raped and harassed and obviously lots of people have been killed. Secondly, I think we now have access to probably 80 percent of the people in camps. There are some security problems right now. Some of the rebels continue to stop trucks. We have about 650 trucks distributing food in the region now, in Darfur, and on occasion they're stopped and intimidated by rebels. And third, the government has to get on top of the security issue so people can go home eventually and go back to work. These were people that had a decent life, that had good livelihoods by their own traditional standards and all that has been taken away from them.
What is your involvement in northern Uganda? How does this compare to other food aid programs in other conflict countries?
We have a huge operation in northern Uganda. There are probably another 1.6 million internally displaced people - huge impact on children, once again - and we're feeding 1.6 million in northern Uganda today.
What is life like for children in Uganda on a day-to-day basis?
Children are combatants in Uganda. Children who are not involved in the fighting are frightened to death of being captured or abused. Any time there is conflict, education is interrupted. The military are huge conveyers of HIV/Aids. When they go back home, it's a major carrier of the disease. I forget the number of orphans in Uganda but it's in the hundreds of thousands. So the impact of all of these issues on children is extraordinary.
With major operations in Darfur, Chad, northern Uganda and southern Africa, what are the biggest challenges you're facing in each of these situations to get food to the people who need it most?
Obviously, the first challenge is to have support from the international community to pay for it. We try to buy as much food as we possibly can locally. One of the good stories this year is that we have now purchased about 80,000 tons of food in Zambia. This is a place we were providing food just a year or two ago, so this a success story.
Our challenge is to have the resources available to get food to be distributed to be sure that it is fortified and has the most powerful nutritional value possible. We try to fortify it with iron, iodine, vitamin A, vitamin B and zinc and other things that people need. The issues of distribution in places where there is conflict is clearly the security issue. Our people are very much at risk, as are the folks that represent the NGOs in the community that help us distribute the food. So you've got resourcing issues, you've got logistical issues, you've got tremendous challenges of security and then all of this is happening in an environment where the health issues are unprecedented.
Have you been able to raise all of the food and non-food items needed for WFP programs in southern Africa?
Sign up for free AllAfrica Newsletters
Get the latest in African news delivered straight to your inbox
We raised all of the resources we needed to provide food the first two years of the crisis, when the food issue was so substantial. I think we have now raised about two-thirds of what we need for food. We have had a much more difficult time raising money for the non-food items. And the non-food items are very, very important - water and sanitation, simple irrigation systems, education. It is so critically important that kids go to school. The most important issue in the fight against HIV is educating children five to15 years of age about HIV, and the best way to do it is in school. We have been very focused on encouraging governments to eliminate school fees, so that families who are already stretched financially don't have to pay for their kids to go to school.
But we have been encouraging the international community to help us with water and sanitation, with issues related to education, clearly issues related to health, but included there would be therapeutic and supplemental feeding. There is no substitute for being sure that a mother who is pregnant or nursing is well-nourished and that requires supplemental feeding [and] supplemental nourishment for children the first couple years of life.
This is one of the best examples in the history of the United Nations and the nongovernmental community and the regional community in southern Africa and the governments that are involved of how we worked together. There's been very good spirit of partnership and now as we think how we go forward with a huge focus on the HIV/Aids issue and its impact on food security, its impact on families, its impact on children, the production of all these orphans, we need to keep this partnership mentality going forward as we go on to the next phase.
What else should people know about what the WFP is doing?
Thank goodness that the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada, Japan, the European community, the Netherlands, the Germans, the Italians, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, [and] Australia are places that are very, very generous. However you look at it, investment in these issues - whether you look at it from a humanitarian point of view or an economic point of view or social point of view or political point of view - the world has a vested interest in sort of solving, addressing these problems.
Have you seen any donor fatigue in the international community?
I think people generally don't want other human beings to starve, especially highly vulnerable women and children. So I think when we have the opportunity to tell the story and to visit with government leaders and people who make decisions about resources required to do this work, people are very responsive.
But I must say, [there are] two or three times as many natural disasters today as there were thirty years ago and the weather has changed. This health issue of HIV is unprecendented. The President Bush initiative, $15 billion for HIV, is an extraordinary commitment from the United States to address these issues. But for that to work, there needs to be people on the ground who are capable of administering the services and people have to have clean water and they have to be fed. It's a big, big project.
