Can a new UN emergency fund help southern Africa

Abstract

A new Humanitarian Emergency Fund, which received initial pledges of US$ 175 million towards a US$ 500 million target at the Millennium Summit in September, is due to be operational by early next year, subject to final approval by the UN General Assembly. The fund should speed up delivery of relief supplies in the event of natural disasters, like the tsunami, and allow for more timely interventions in crises such as those in Niger and the Darfur region of Sudan. But with its launch planned for next year, the fund may be in place too late to alleviate the situation in the southern African nations of Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Under-Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs Jan Egeland said he regretted that the fund was not already operational as this would have allowed the UN to jump-start its aid operations in southern Africa, where an estimated 12 million people face malnutrition. The UN launched a flash appeal in August for US$ 88 million to provide food aid, seeds and fertilizers for the hardest-hit country, Malawi, where up to 5 million of the 12 million population are at risk following failure of the all-important maize crop, But responses trickled in too late to buy agricultural inputs for the October planting season, which would have reduced Malawi's dependency on emergency relief next year. Some win and some lose, and Malawi is now losing, Egeland said at a recent press conference. It drowned in the drama of so many other things, he said in reference to disasters, such as the hurricanes in the Americas. With an average four-month time lag before aid pledges actually reach recipients, the World Food Programme (WFP) has warned of a race against time in raising funds to avert starvation, Villagers in worst affected areas have already started eating water lily roots, which lack nutritional value but are one of the few sources of food available. My children have all suffered from diarrhoea as a result of eating the water lilies. But I have no choice but to dive for them because there's nothing else [to eat], said Dona Kijani, a mother of three young children in the village of Chigayeni in southern Malawi. Her husband died last year, leaving her to cope on her own. Malawi's Ministry of Health in the capital Lilongwe was due to conduct a nutrition assessment in October in the most vulnerable regions of the country. But even before the latest crisis, some 48% of children aged under five were classed as stunted--an indication of long-term chronic malnutrition--and 5% suffered from wasting as a result of acute malnutrition. More than 1000 acutely malnourished children were admitted to nutrition rehabilitation units (NRUs) in August; compared to 775 children in the same month last year. The Saint Montfort NRU in the southern district of Chikwawa, for instance, admitted 23 children in August, a rise of 130% over during the same period in 2004, Nursing officer Gertrude Mkwapu said admissions rose further in September and were expected to climb in the looming lean season ahead of harvest next March. …