Tom Arnold with Beverly Oda of the Canadian International Development Agency and Etharin Cousin of the UN World Food Programme

I have just returned from a whirlwind visit to Washington, DC and Chicago, where I participated in a number of events around the G8 and NATO Summits focused on food and nutrition security.  Among so many world leaders and high-level representatives from civil society and academia, I felt a sense of critical mass beginning to form in the fight to end global hunger.

It’s a feeling I’ve had before – perhaps not this strong – only to be disappointed when promises went unfulfilled.  We must keep calling our leaders to persevere, especially those in the G8, to ensure that does not happen this time.

At the Chicago Council on Global Affairs’ Third Annual Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security on May 18 in Washington, DC, I witnessed President Barack Obama’s landmark announcement of the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition.  It’s a partnership between G8 nations, African countries, and private sector leaders that promises to raise some 50 million people out of poverty over the next ten years through investments in agriculture and nutrition.

Let me be clear from the start:  as the CEO of an organization working on the front-lines of hunger, I loudly and wholeheartedly applaud the leadership of President Obama, Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, and USAID Administrator Rajiv Shah in establishing the New Alliance.  Concern Worldwide is committed to doing everything we can to ensure that it succeeds. But so much more needs to be done, and the time is now. The force behind the New Alliance can be leveraged and multiplied if we keep our existing promises to the world’s hungry.

Before the G8 Summit at Camp David, Concern launched a paper, “The Time is Now: The G8’s Opportunity to Make Undernutrition History,” that outlined how members should structure a new commitment to food security and nutrition and the risks if they don’t.

Thankfully, much of what we know works is part of the New Alliance, such as the creation of country-owned plans and alignment behind those plans, an explicit focus on women and smallholder farmers, and the aim to reduce risks for vulnerable economies and communities. We know from our work on the ground in 25 of the world’s poorest countries that this multi-pronged approach to tackling food insecurity and undernutrition is critical and effective in saving lives and protecting the futures of millions of vulnerable children.

Keynote Speaker, President Barack Obama

We also celebrate that the private sector has stepped up in the fight against hunger. At the time of President Obama’s announcement on Friday, some 45 local and multinational companies had already signed Letters of Intent to invest more than $3 billion in Africa’s agricultural systems – a milestone that will greatly help lay the foundation for a strong agricultural base that can foster food security and stimulate Africa’s economy.

While the New Alliance signals a commitment to ending hunger and malnutrition, it is still unclear whether or not G8 member nations will fulfill their original promise to invest some $22-billion in food security at the 2009 Summit in L’Aquila, Italy. Nearly half of that commitment is still pending, and while President Obama emphasized that promises made at L’Aquila must be met, there are no concrete timelines in place to ensure that members will disburse those funds by the end of 2012, as originally planned.

Following through on L’Aquila is also vital because the New Alliance does not represent a strong financial commitment in comparison. The New Alliance has laid out $1.2 billion for food security and nutrition initiatives through G8 nations and new donors, a sum that, while significant, is a fraction of what was committed in L’Aquila. While we welcome the $3-billion committed by private-sector partners, it cannot replace public-sector investments, particularly when it comes to social safety nets for the poorest and support for those who may not be as attractive to for-profit investors.

The New Alliance must also take a broader approach to promoting food security. Despite some mentions of nutrition, including support for the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) movement, the New Alliance still focuses very heavily on improving agricultural yields through new technology. While important, this is only one part of what it will take to end food insecurity and malnutrition. G8 members cannot forget the importance of complementary initiatives such as social safety nets, direct nutrition interventions, and stronger health systems, all of which ensure that the most vulnerable, who may not directly benefit from more food being produced, do not slide further into poverty.

As Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in her remarks  following President Obama’s announcement on Friday: “Nutrition is just too important to be treated as an afterthought. Children’s entire lives are shaped by whether they receive enough of the right nutrients during those crucial 1,000 daysfrom pregnancy to second birthdays. And this, in turn, heavily influences whether a country will have a healthy and educated workforce. So when we overlook nutrition, we set ourselves up for a less healthy, less productive, and less prosperous future.”

Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton at the Symposium on Global Agriculture and Food Security

She is right. Over the course of a 40-year career, I have seen first-hand how a child’s potential slips away when we neglect to focus on nutrition. Any delay or failure by G8 members to follow through on what they committed at L’Aquila will directly impact entire generations of children, ultimately dragging down the GDPs of low-income countries by an estimated 2-3 percent per year.

The fact is that keeping these promises will not directly affect me, President Obama, Secretary Clinton, Bono, and the other people present at the announcement of the New Alliance. But they will make a life-and-death difference for the lives of millions of people, children in particular, whose lives are lost or bodies and minds are stunted because they do not have enough nutritious foods to eat.

President Obama eloquently said on Friday: “As the wealthiest nation on Earth, I believe the United States has a moral obligation to lead the fight against hunger and malnutrition.”

And he concluded his speech by pledging that “this will remain a priority as long as I am United States President.”

We all share the obligation to make malnutrition history. The good news is that we have never been this well-positioned to make it a reality. The time is now. All we have to do is seize the moment, starting with our leaders filling their promises. The ones who will benefit – or suffer – may never know that such promises were made, but we know. We know what is at stake. And we know that empty promises are not an option.

Two month old Ejereya Kahale sitting with her mother in Kargi, Kenya

Almost 1,000 days ago, on July 10, 2009, the G8 met at L’Aquila, Italy and issued a joint statement  launching the ‘L’Aquila Food Security Initiative’ (AFSI), committing the member nations to a  $22-billion investment over three years aimed at  responding to the ‘urgent need for decisive action to free humankind from hunger.’

Of the roughly 385,000 children born on that day, many of the poorest of them would have died in infancy and early childhood.  Those who survived would now be nearing the critical 1,000^th day between their mother’s pregnancy and their second birthday.

The 1,000 days soon to be marked by those children also marks the closing of a window in which irreversible damage can be caused to a child’s cognitive and physical development if he or she is undernourished.  Fulfillment and implementation of the L’Aquila Initiative in the 1,000 days since the summit could have saved the lives and changed the destinies of millions of children.

Sadly, by the time of last year’s summit, only 22 percent of the pledges had been fulfilled, with another 26 percent ‘on track’ – a total of less than half, according to the G8 Deauville Accountability Report.  As G8 leaders convene this week at Camp David, there is an imperative, both moral and political, to renew and redouble the commitments made in L’Aquila.  Millions of lives hang in the balance.

Even in these recessionary times, an investment in nutrition and food security has tremendous economic returns. Countries where children are chronically undernourished and stunted as a result often lose approximately 2-3 percent of their GDP each year, a trend that we could reverse by scaling up nutrition interventions, particularly during the critical 1,000-day window.

Mother Ronica feeding her one-year old baby in Mumbwa, Central province, Zambia

The fight against hunger, especially child hunger, is at a critical crossroads. We have never had as much knowledge, evidence, political will and grassroots engagement as we do today to make malnutrition history. Despite this, almost one billion people face food insecurity and 171 million children are stunted, physically, mentally or both, because they did not have enough nutritious food to eat in their early childhood.

The United States is slated to fulfill its pledge with Senate authorization of the fiscal year 2012 budget, but President Barack Obama, as this year’s summit host, has a particular responsibility to ensure that food and nutrition are not only on the agenda, but that the U.S. and G8 partners renew and strengthen their pledges.

As the CEO of an organization working on the front-lines of hunger in 25 of the world’s poorest countries and a recent appointee to the United Nations’ SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) Lead Group, it is a responsibility I must bear as well, and I feel it deeply.

I traveled last year to the Horn of Africa during the height of the drought that pushed 12 million people to the brink of crisis.  I had witnessed suffering and death caused by hunger before, but I was nonetheless shocked.  We are at a point in human history when famineshould no longer be in our vocabulary, and food security and hunger should no longer be viewed strictly as a “poor country” problem.  We can and must correct these deadly errors.

Tom Arnold at a health clinic in Dollow, Somalia

Concern this week has released a report, “The Time is Now: The G8’s Opportunity to Make Undernutrition History” , that details our recommendations on how the G8 funds should be distributed so that they have maximum impact.

We call on the G8 to renew its food security initiative and target women smallholder farmers in particular. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, if women had equal access to productive resources, yields could increase by 20 to 30 percent in low-income countries, a jump that could greatly reduce food insecurity and increase purchasing power among small-scale farmers.

The G8 should also expand its investments beyond smallholder farming to also include other interventions such as social safety nets and protection systems, increased access to direct nutrition services and stronger health care systems. Social protection systems in countries like South Africa, Brazil and Mexico have helped lift the poorest out of extreme poverty and sustainably increase their food security.

It should, of course, also place particular focus on scaling up nutrition during that crucial 1,000 days between a woman’s pregnancy and a child’s second birthday.

Let us all commit to meeting again some 1,000 days from now, having actually taken ‘decisive action to free humankind from hunger’ and  to report on the evidence of the millions of lives saved and futures changed by the commitments that must be made by the G8 at Camp David.  There is too much at stake.

Felicitas Wairimu works on her grocery stall in Nairobi's Korogocho slum. She was one of the beneficiaries of Concern's cash transfer program at the height of the 2011 drought crisis. Photo: Phil Moore

Even though $22 may seem small in our context, you have to remember that for the poorest, having this amount every month means, for the first time in their lives, they are receiving predictable and reliable income. For the first time, they are able to plan. We know that by giving people the opportunity to solve their own problems and make decisions about how to best fulfill their needs, families’ educations, health and nutrition standards are all raised.

Take Margaret Atieno from Kisumu, a city on the shores of Lake Victoria in western Kenya, who, for the first time in her life, was able to plan because she had a reliable source of income. “When Concern came and said I qualified for the cash transfer each month, I was delighted,” she said. “But at the same time I just sat down and thought ‘I need to do things differently – what can I do with this money that will improve our lives?’ So I decided to keep aside some of the 1,500 shillings ($18) I received each month and gradually I was able to open this butchery.”

Beneficiary Emily Nyambura holds her daughter, one year old Lynette Wambui, outside her shop in the Korogocho slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Photo: Phil Moore

This is not the first time that the Government of Kenya has implemented cash transfers. What makes this particular program, called the ‘Urban Food Subsidy Program,’ unique is its scale in targeting the poorest of the poor, many of whom live on less than $1 a day.  They will now have $22 a month that will help them put food on the table, send their children to school, access health care services and just as Margaret was able to do, improve their quality of life.

“I now earn 800 schillings ($10) per day,” said Margaret. “It’s such a big increase from where we were a year ago. My kids are happy as I’ve bought them school bags, they have better clothes and they are being fed. My next goal is to reach the point where I can buy and slaughter a full cow and expand my business even more.”

It is cases like Margaret that illustrate that cash transfers are not hand-outs that enable dependency or encourage people not to work. To view them as such would be to ignore the larger context of what life is like for Kenya’s poorest.

Many move to the city from the countryside in the hope of finding better work, a better life and better opportunities for their children. However, with unemployment said to be 40 percent and higher in some urban areas, they often have to settle for casual part time work like cleaning, washing clothes or laboring on nearby building sites. These jobs typically pay $1-$1.50 per day, making the most basic necessities largely out of reach. As a result, most can only afford only one meal a day and increases in food prices – like we saw last year during the drought crisis – can push the poorest onto the brink of crisis.

Hunger is an everyday reality in Nairobi’s slums: most people live on the edge, spending 40 to 60 percent of their average $1.50 a day household income on food. When the worst drought in 60 years, combined with dramatic spikes in food prices, sparked a catastrophic food crisis across the Horn of Africa, Nairobi’s urban poor faced a life-threatening emergency. With prices for basic staples like maize up by 200 percent in some Nairobi slums, food became an unaffordable luxury. During this time, the nutrition centers that Concern supports in the slums saw a 62 percent increase in admissions for treatment of severely malnourished children.

Bessie Nikhozi, Concern project officer shows Irene Adhiambo how to use the "M-Pesa" system on a mobile phone to receive her first monthly cash transfer. Photo: Phil Moore

In response, Concern launched an emergency program that gave 20,000 of the most vulnerable people cash transfers each month through their mobile phones. For women like Alice Duta, the monthly cash injection was a lifeline – because food prices got so high, she was forced to resort to prostitution, a job that only earned 50 shillings (55 cents) a night on average, just to feed her children.

With the rains expected to be late and below-average once again this year, there are warnings that crops could once again fail, driving up food prices. If the worst-case scenario – a food crisis – does unfold once again in the Horn of Africa, the poorest, who have barely recovered from last year’s hunger emergency, will be the hardest hit. For that reason, the government’s cash transfer program could not be timelier.

This is not to say that cash transfers will instantly solve all the problems that families face. The causes of and solutions to poverty in urban areas and complex, but we do know that cash transfers can go a long way in ensuring that people who are already teetering on the edge do not fall further into poverty. In some cases, like Margaret’s, the small monthly allowances will allow them to do something much larger – break the cycle of extreme poverty.
What the government’s cash transfer program represents is a deliberate and targeted move to lift more of its citizens out of poverty. Because of this program, 10,000 people will have an opportunity to get past living day-by-day and have a safety net to catch them if food prices increase as they did last year. The government is also planning to roll out the program to all urban areas in Kenya over the coming years, an ambitious initiative that could very well put become a model for reducing the 53 million people living below the poverty line in East Africa, all of whom should have the opportunity to build better lives for themselves and their children.

As the warmth of springtime settles across North America and Europe, northern Afghanistan is just now thawing from what many consider to be the worst winter in living memory – the destruction it leaves behind will be felt for some time to come. In February this year, stories emerged that children were dying in Kabul’s displacement camps because of the extreme cold, while in Badakhshan, a province in the far northeast corner of the country, heavy snowfall triggered catastrophic avalanches, burying entire villages in feet of snow.

Concern Worldwide’s emergency response team delivers fodder to 2,000 households by donkeys and horses to remote villages in Badakhshan Province.

However, little has been told about what the people of Badakhshan endured this winter and how they continue to be at-risk as the snow begins to melt. This is largely because it is so incredibly difficult to access. An extremely remote and mountainous region, communities in Badakhshan can be entirely cut off from the outside world for up to seven months a year. Most villages can only be reached by horseback or foot across treacherous paths dotted with ravines, rockslides, and landslides.

After a string of avalanches left dozens injured and trapped in their homes, Concern Worldwide launched an emergency response program to bring lifesaving assistance to some 30,000 of the most affected and isolated people.  Because people had no access to markets, Concern began to clear snow roads using donkeys and horses and provided fodder to some 2,000 households in 30 villages to help their animal’s feed – and sole livelihoods – survive the winter.

Last month, I travelled some 12 hours by horse to six different villages with a team of remarkably committed and courageous Afghan colleagues that to reach one village to the next – or even one part of a town to another – is nothing short of a miracle.

In Sori village, there is a two-foot wide path connecting sections of the town, straddling a cliff roughly six-stories high. I was told ten people died in 2011 by falling off of these paths or by being hit by falling rocks.  A farmer firmly gripped my arm and guided me along around the trails the entire time to keep me from breaking my neck. This was something I resisted at first, until I fully realized how lethal this place is.

In this unforgiving terrain, it is impossible to ignore the impact that erosion has had on the roads and the people who live there. In the village, I met a family of eight who were living in shelter meant for animals because their house collapsed into a ravine.

After their house fell into a ravine, Jamaluddin, his wife, and his six children have been living in a one-room shelter built for animals for the past five months.

Jamaluddin, his wife, and six children have been living in the one-room shelter for the last five months. With no chimney and only two tiny windows for insulation, any fires for warmth or cooking leave the entire house filled with smoke.

When I walked inside, the air was suffocating.

A shallow pool of water roughly three inches deep greeted me when I walked in.  Because water trickles in from the hill, the entire house is damp and a thin stream of water covers the floor, except from a small raised platform in the corner of the room where the entire family sleep. “What use is it of talking about human rights when people are living like animals?” Jamaluddin said. “We are living worse than animals.”

Jamaluddin’s story is a common one among the poorest in Badakhshan.  Without money or land to build a new home, he and his family face grave and very real risks.  In Sori village and across the province, dozens of children died this winter because of respiratory diseases like pneumonia.  Malnutrition and exposure to damp, cold conditions amplify a child’s risk of falling ill.  With at least two children in each family younger than seven years old and two of the children suffering from hacking coughs when I visited, the delicate edge that Badakhshan’s poorest children live on became very real to me.

Rashid, 12, is now the man of his family after his dad left for Iran to find work. He and his family are also living in an animal shelter after a landslide crashed into the side of their house.

Other children, like Rashid Ahmad, 12, are forced to become adults far too quickly.  When I met Rashid, he and his neighbor were stripping the wood beams from his old house before it fell down a six-story ledge.  Throughout the winter, he had cleared the snow from the roof of his family’s house every day to prevent it from caving in.  Unfortunately, his efforts were fruitless after a landslide crashed down on the side of his house, destabilizing it to the point where it was no longer inhabitable.

Just like Jamaluddin and his family, Rashid, his mother, and his sister were forced to move into an animal dwelling.  Like so many men across Badakhshan, Rashid’s father moved to Iran to find work. They have only had sporadic contact with him since and very little financial support.

For Rashid, that means he is now the man of the house at only 12 years old. He and his family are relying on hand-outs to survive. The wood beams that he was salvaging when I met him would become one of his family’s only and most valuable assets.

Jamaluddin and Rashid embody the struggles of what life is like for the poorest people in Afghanistan. Without the resources to relocate to safer ground, they are forced to constantly fight the elements just to survive.  In particularly harsh winters like this one, they are the ones who are most vulnerable to winter-related illness and death and are at a high-risk of losing the few assets that they have, like houses and cattle, to sub-zero temperatures or landslides.

These are the people that Concern is working with in Afghanistan. The teams that I travelled with risk their own safety to ensure that communities have fodder to keep their livestock alive through winter.  We also offer cash-for-work opportunities, and in some cases immediate cash transfers, to provide vulnerable families a financial cushion that helps them meet their basic needs.

Last month, I travelled some 12 hours by horse with a team of remarkably committed and courageous Afghan colleagues to deliver fodder to six different villages.

Because the poorest do not have the means to relocate their families to safer terrain, Concern also works with them to identify areas that are most prone to avalanches, landslides, and rockslides and then take measures that help to mitigate the risk. As the land begins to thaw, these activities will continue to be just as needed, as the avalanches will gradually be replaced by landslides and rockslides when the snow begins to melt and the spring rains arrive.

After witnessing first-hand how unforgiving nature is on the people of Afghanistan, I can attest that these interventions are life-and-death. I left wondering what life would be like if no assistance ever reached them, how many more children would be dead and how many more families would be without livestock when winter ended. The journey to deliver this assistance is gruelling, and treacherous, but it is insignificant in comparison to the daily struggle that people like Jamaluddin and Rashid face every day, just to stay alive and protect their families.

Today, Dok Sareth went to the bank. He came home with a bag of rice.

“Before the rice bank was set up, I had to borrow rice seed to plant my rice crop,” Sareth told me on a visit to his village.  “Every time I borrowed, I had to repay the loan with a 100 percent interest rate.  Now because of the rice bank set up with Concern’s support, the villagers can help each other and the interest rate is much more affordable.  It has made a huge difference to my life and I am extremely grateful.”

Local farmer Dok Sareth proudly shows off his rice bank. Conor Wall / July 2011 / Pursat, Cambodia

The people who Concern works with in Cambodia depend heavily on rain-fed rice production for their income. They are rural farmers who grow and sell rice on the small amounts of land that they own. Those without land work on other farmers’ paddy fields for a small daily allowance.

Planting season is in June and July, when the annual monsoon rains begin. Then, from August to December every year, they wait for the rice to grow. And whilst they wait, they often run out of rice and money. With no employment in the fields, and precious few alternatives, they typically turn to local lenders. These lenders offer very flexible services but, as Dok Sareth explained, at interest rates of 100 percent or more.

Poor rural households often end up indebted to multiple creditors at the same time. And when a sudden illness strikes in the family, as is often the case in rural Cambodia, many struggle to repay the multiple and mounting debts they’ve incurred.

Rice banks are how we in Concern help poor people in Cambodia avoid such indebtedness. They also help stave off the long months of hunger during the rice planting season. And they work just like a normal local bank that we would find at home.

Villagers in poor communities become members of their local rice bank, set up and capitalised with the help of Concern. They then receive a ‘loan’ of rice weighing between 100 and 200 pounds. The loan is given at the beginning of the food hunger months, typically in August. This is also the time when rice prices are high, so a good time to avoid buying extra bags.

After the harvest in December, the villagers pay their loan back. This is also the time when rice is plentiful and farm-gate prices are low. The loan is either from their own yield or bought from the proceeds of working in other fields collecting in their neighbours’ harvest.

The loan is accompanied by a low interest rate of 10 to 20 percent on the original amount. Some banks use this interest to feed the elderly, handicapped, disabled or chronically ill, or orphans within their own communities. It is this additional rice that helps those who cannot work or support themselves, people like Srey Met.

Local widow Srey Met is among those who benefit from rice banks that help feed the elderly, handicapped, disabled or chronically ill. Conor Wall / July 2011 / Pursat, Cambodia

“I am a widow with no children to look after me,” Srey Met told me. “For a few years I have benefitted from a community-based savings scheme.  Last year Concern’s partner sponsored me to raise some chickens. Unfortunately this year I have been sick a lot so I have had to sell all my chickens to pay for medicine.”

Without ‘social protection’ measures, Srey Met would struggle to survive. Instead, the community uses their own mechanisms, like the rice banks, to ensure that they have enough food for their daily needs.

If managed well, rice banks can assist 50 to 70 families in a village. And, just like a local bank that has money, these rice banks help people to borrow, to save, and to keep safe what’s most important to them.

For the third time in less than a decade, the Sahel region of West Africa could once again face a food crisis. The most urgent question now is not whether a response is needed, but when it will happen and at what scale.  But perhaps the most important question is: what can we do to reduce the likelihood that we will be having the same conversation, facing the same life-or-death consequences, next year, or the year after?

The landscape in rural Niger. Photo by Tim Peek for Concern Worldwide, 2006.

We saw the deadly costs of delayed intervention last year in the Horn of Africa, where widespread hunger in Ethiopia and Kenya and famine in Somalia led to the deaths of as many as 100,000 people, according to figures collected by the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development (DfID).  While the early warning signs from East Africa were far more severe than that from West Africa (in Niger, food production was 10-15 percent below average in 2011, but was an estimated75 percent below average in Somalia.), we should take them no less seriously, particularly when it comes to the value of early and preventative action.

In Niger alone, 2.6 million people today do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs – they are living with hunger on a scale most of us will never experience. The Tahoua region is the most affected, where Concern has worked since 2003 and responded to previous food crises in 2005, 2008, and 2009. And now again in 2012, nearly 24 percent of the population is expected to be facing severe food insecurity. After a poor harvest last year, food supplies are rapidly declining, with many families expecting to completely run out of food by as early as March unless they receive immediate assistance. For communities that raise livestock as their primary assets and source of food, there is less pasture and water to keep their animals – and sole livelihood – alive.

Low food supplies means higher prices for basic staples, such as millet. Cereal prices are now an alarming 40-50 percent higher than they were last year. This, coupled with a loss of income from failed crops and weakened, unhealthy livestock, could make food an unaffordable luxury for Niger’s poorest. In addition to increasing the risk of malnutrition, the rising food prices have other consequences. Children often drop out of school because they need to help their families run the household and earn income. Families may also be forced to sell assets for quick cash or leave rural communities to find work in urban areas and send money home, travelling as far as Libya, the Ivory Coast, and Nigeria.

In response to the clear early warning signs, Concern is rolling out a short-term emergency response program to give the most vulnerable people in Tahoua access to cash so that they can buy food and meet other basic survival needs.  The program includes cash-for-work projects, in which Concern will involve more than 3,018 community members from villages in Tahoua to prepare the land for the next agricultural season. Concern will also distribute emergency cash transfers using mobile phone technology and manually, reaching 6,350 extremely poor households. As we get closer to the lean season, Concern is also maintaining ‘surge capacity’ to screen and treat children for malnutrition and to build the capacity of local health facilities to provide emergency nutrition treatment and services.

For women like Saheba, these interventions mean she will not have to borrow just to feed her family. Like many in Niger, Saheba and her family were forced to borrow food in order to make it to the next harvest. To not put her family too far into debt, Sabeha would take as little food on loan as possible, often feeding her family just one meal a day through the lean season. She then became a recipient of Concern’s cash transfer program. “Since receiving cash transfers, we no longer have any debts and we have been able to meet our household’s needs,” she said.

However, these interventions are only a short-term solution to Niger’s hunger problem.  The fact is, droughts and food shortages are happening more and more regularly in the Sahel region, and we cannot wait to intervene only when thousands, mostly children under five years old, are dying from malnutrition.

That is unacceptable.

To break this pattern, we need to make sure people have options for earning a living beyond just agriculture. Currently, 82 percent of Niger’s population relies on farming for survival and 60 percent live below the poverty line. Concern plans to support the most vulnerable people in Tahoua to develop other income opportunities through cash-for-work programs that improve community infrastructure, asset transfers like cash or goats that enable households to cover their basic food needs, and training in other vocations like water management.

We also have to give farmers the tools and skills they need to be successful. Concern is providing the poorest farming communities with trainings on new techniques and methods for rehabilitating land. We are also distributing improved, drought-resistant seeds as well as fertilizer, all locally sourced, and helping introduce irrigation systems and other mechanisms that prevent crop loss.

Together, these efforts build resilience to emergency conditions.  The world produces enough food for all of us, and we should not be tolerating so many people suffer from hunger. What we need is long-term investment in livelihoods, education, poverty reduction, local capacity to deliver health services and prevent, screen and treat malnutrition. .

We now have that opportunity in Niger and the Sahel. I am personally encouraged by the current momentum among international donors to make early response a priority when it comes to food crises. But the help needs to arrive now—not tomorrow, not next week. The early warning signs are loud and clear and the longer we wait, the more lives hang in the balance.

Last week, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Assistant Administrator Nancy Lindborg announced a contribution of $33 million to support food security, nutrition and short-term cash assistance efforts across the West African region of the Sahel, bringing USAID’s total humanitarian assistance to the region to more than $270 million in fiscal years 2011 and 2012.  The announcement caused barely a ripple in the US media, and many who heard the news may have even asked ‘What crisis?’ or ‘What’s the Sahel?’  As aid organizations, it is our responsibility to issue and amplify calls to action to respond in the Sahel, and to broadcast the important message that coordinated action now will save lives and prevent costly interventions later – and we have the evidence.

Millet is the staple crop that keeps most people alive in Niger, but this year, drought and poor harvests threaten to leave 13 million people in need of emergency food assistance by April. Photo: Tim Peek for Concern Worldwide US, Tahoua town, Niger

Right now, a series of factors—including volatile spikes in food prices, failed harvests and cyclical drought—have triggered widespread food shortages across the Sahel, according to the USAID Famine Early Warning System Network. Levels of malnutrition among children under five have already reached the internationally recognized emergency threshold of 15 percent in parts of many affected countries, which include Niger, Chad, Burkina Faso, Mali and Mauritania.

The world saw East Africa deteriorate into a catastrophic food crisis in mid 2011. But early warning signs were evident far earlier in the year. We know that suffering and malnutrition among children could have been significantly reduced if a large-scale response had been launched much earlier. Today, we are watching another crisis unfold before our eyes. In light of the inestimable cost of responding late to the East Africa emergency—and mobilized by what we know already about the lifesaving impact of early intervention—we cannot afford to wait to act until conditions reach crisis levels in the Sahel.

Cyclical crises in this region are, unfortunately, nothing new. Massive food shortages occurred in Niger in 2005, causing significant loss of life among children under five. Drought hit the region again in 2008 and most recently in 2009. But since the tragedy of 2005, early warning systems have been established in the region, similar to those that exist in East Africa. These systems monitor data such as fluctuations in food prices, rainfall levels, pest plagues, cereal production, the availability of food staples in the region and national food reserves.

Communities that raise livestock as their primary assets and source of food in drought-stricken Niger have less pasture and water to keep their animals – and sole livelihood alive. Photo: Jenny Matthews for Concern Worldwide, Barmou village, Tahoua, Niger

The early warning systems for the Sahel are now signalling an escalating, large-scale crisis that threatens to leave 13 million people in need of emergency food assistance by April.

According to former United Nations under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs, Jan Egeland, it would have cost $1 per day per child to prevent malnutrition in affected areas if international donors had launched an early response to the 2005 Niger food crisis. But the response came only when conditions deteriorated to near catastrophic levels, and by July 2005, huge numbers of children were severely malnourished, and it cost $80 per day to provide emergency therapeutic medical care per child. Prevention is not only better than cure, but also much less expensive.

In the very short-term, the international community must allocate greater support to screening and treating malnourished children. In the longer-term, the international community must invest in country-led programs that address the root causes of hunger and scale up nutrition interventions such as those outlined by the 2010 SUN movement launched, including agricultural assistance, sustainable food production, improved infant and young child feeding practices, social protection, health, water, hygiene and sanitation.

Concern has already seen the impact of responding early. In 2010, we launched an early emergency response prompted by early warning signs in Niger: the program integrated efforts to mitigate and prevent malnutrition among children under five with efforts to build the resilience of communities by distributing emergency cash to the most vulnerable, and distributing improved varieties of seeds with short harvest times to targeted villages. The program reached 650,000 people in Tahoua District, and delivered very promising indications of impact. In our program areas in 2010, rates of malnutrition did not reach the emergency threshold of 15 percent, and 80 percent of the targeted villages that were at risk of extreme food shortages enjoyed above average harvests in 2010.

Today, Concern has launched early interventions in both Niger and Chad. But work like this requires investment in order to achieve sustainable impact and scale.

While we recognize and applaud the generosity of donors such as USAID and the EU, there still remains a severe funding shortfall to deliver the humanitarian assistance required in the Sahel. There is also a ‘vision gap’ in terms of funding. Emergency grants often only cover short-term program needs (for periods of 12 to 18 months). Funding for disaster risk reduction and long-term recovery is fairly scarce. Yet, this long-term work is most effective in preventing emergencies and reducing their impact when they do occur.

Without strategic investment in integrated, long-term development programs and serious commitment at the global, national and local level for efforts to scale up nutrition, we will be limited to isolated examples of progress. The time for funding efforts to prevent hunger and emergencies among the most vulnerable is now. We literally cannot afford the cost of delaying our response until 13 million people’s lives are at risk.

Last year was a tough one for Kenyans. Drought racked the land and food prices rocketed, pushing three decent meals a day out of the reach of most Kenyans. Now that 2012 is here, everyone is wondering what this year will bring. According to economic experts, food prices may ease slightly, but will likely remain high and hunger will continue for the poorest.

But far removed from economic experts and predictions are the residents of Nairobi’s vast slums who are struggling to put food on the table for their families. I visited one of Concern Worldwide’s local partners, Redeemed Gospel Church (RGC), in Korogocho slum in Nairobi. We have been working with RGC since 2009 to provide assistance to almost 1,500 families with emergency cash transfers, small business loans, and training to set up businesses.

A child walks down a street past typical corrugated-iron house-fronts in the Korogocho slum of Nairobi. Photo: Phil Moore, 2011.

Grace, a social worker Concern partners with through RGC, explained how hard life has been for Nairobi’s slum residents. “Most of our beneficiaries are engaged in day-to-day odd jobs like washing people’s clothes,” she said. “They earn between 70shs to 150shs a day (approximately $1.30/day). These people are living on the edge.” Indeed, the volatile spikes in food prices in 2011 drove many of these families over the edge and into desperation. Food shortages in slum markets combined with increases in food costs meant that the most vulnerable slum families required such as emergency interventions such as cash transfers to meet their daily survival needs.

Meshack Alara, a resident of Nairobi's Korogocho slum, shows off the shoes he makes and sells, thanks to a cash grant from Concern Worldwide. Photo: Concern Worldwide.

Meshack Alara is one of the Korogochu residents who are struggling to get by. He received a cash grant and business training from Concern and RGC in 2010, which allowed him to transform his shoe repair vocation into a shoe production business. While sales were strong in 2010, the food price increases in 2011 meant that few people were able to afford shoes, and the raw materials to make them were more expensive for Meshack to stock.

“2011 was a tough year,” Meshack told Concern. “The year before I used to make a profit, with which I managed to meet all the needs of my family, pay my two assistants and save for the future. However, with the recent increases in basic food prices and the high cost of living, the cost of raw materials for the shoes also went up and I was forced to make and sell fewer shoes.”

However, as a father of seven, Meshack still considers himself one of the lucky ones because he can afford to send his children to school.  He and his assistants have high hopes that 2012 will be a better year.  “But I have great plans for this year,” he says. “I want to boost my business and at least buy a machine this year.”

My hope is that 2012 will be a year that brings Meshack and millions of the poorest Kenyans in urban slums and in drought-ravaged rural areas much-needed support for long-term development in education, livelihoods, food security and health that will give people the knowledge and resources to lift themselves out of poverty. But no matter what the year brings, Concern will be there, working alongside local partners to build resilience to crises and to build local infrastructure to strengthen communities. We are committed to helping fathers like Meshack achieve self-reliance and to making sure that hope is never lost.

Bangladesh recently celebrated two significant 40^th anniversaries. As a Bangladeshi and a member of Concern Worldwide for the past 20 years, the events have a dual-significance.  In addition to marking the independence of my country, it also was the anniversary of Concern’s first mission to support vulnerable and under-served Bangladeshi refugees in Calcutta, India following the liberation war. The response in Calcutta was Concern’s second mission as an organization and led to what is now four decades of high-impact quality programming inside Bangladesh.

This month, Concern is recognizing its 40^th year in Bangladesh with events in Dhaka and our headquarters in Dublin. While much work remains to be done in Bangladesh, what we have accomplished since that first mission to support Bangladeshi refugees in 1971 is remarkable. In many ways, our work in Bangladesh has shaped Concern’s programming and how we bridge emergency response and development, and I am honored and very proud to have been a part of it, both on-the-ground in Dhaka and now in Dublin, Ireland.

My first interaction with Concern was in 1989.  I was a chartered accountant student in Dhaka and had the opportunity to be a part of consultancy project to review Concern’s financial systems. As part of this assignment, I traveled to Saidpur to review the financial systems of Concern’s programs.

At that time, Concern was implementing projects in education, health and nutrition and income-generation and running a women’s training center for the poorest and most vulnerable in Saidpur.  When I reached Bangalipur and Munshipara, where Concern worked, I was immediately struck by how well-known the organization was in these areas. Everyone I asked, regardless of his or her socioeconomic status, could point me in the direction of Concern’s unmarked office and were fully aware of the work that Concern was doing to help the community’s poorest and most underserved people.

It is still my belief that you could travel back to Saidpur today and almost everyone would know and remember Concern for what they did in their communities.

This experience left its mark, and three years later in 1992, I applied for a position with Concern as an internal auditor at our office in Dhaka. It was just one year after a category-five tropical cyclone struck Bangladesh, killing 135,000 people and wiped out numerous villages. Concern responded to this emergency and was working to reconstruct 7,000 homes for families along the coast, while also providing health and sanitation services in camps housing refugees that poured across the border from Myanmar that year.

What struck me the most about joining Concern Bangladesh was how committed the entire team was in reaching those most in-need, wherever they were. We were the only organization providing services in many of the places we worked, international or national. For our program sites in the Haor region, we would have to travel some five hours by road and then another three hours by boat just to get there. No other international or national NGO worked in that area at that time.

Probably our greatest strength in my view was our emergency response capabilities. Bangladesh is a disaster-prone country, constantly threatened by cyclones, flooding and other natural catastrophes. I remember the floods of 1998 like they were yesterday: 75 percent of the country was underwater and Concern worked quickly and effectively to reach as many people as possible in the worst-affected areas with food and other emergency relief items.

However, disaster response is one component of Concern’s work in Bangladesh. Progressively, we moved towards implementing development programs, such as health and education, and began to support local NGOs and government actors in providing these services. We also started to create mechanisms that allowed Bangladesh’s poorest to make lasting improvements in their lives. In the early 2000s, this included Self-Help Groups, through which the extremely poor ran saving-credit schemes under their own leadership, creating a sustainable business model.

Bangladesh has made incredible economic progress over the past 40 years and a recent partnership between Concern and the Government of Bangladesh to develop and implement policy to reduce extreme poverty in the country makes me optimistic that this positive trend will continue. However, population increase (Dhaka is the fastest growing mega-city in the world) and climate change could be significant challenges to Bangladesh, and the country’s poorest in particular. Just as we have in the past 40 years, Concern will continue to be committed to tackling these problems together with the Government of Bangladesh, local organizations, and most importantly, the people we are there to serve.

The changes I have seen in my country are nothing short of remarkable and, looking back, I am profoundly grateful for that very first opportunity to see Concern’s programming in Saidpur. That first visit was the spark that inspired me join Concern and become part of a team of people who are dedicating their lives to making the lives of the world’s poorest better. I feel incredibly proud to have been a part of the Bangladesh’s and Concern’s shared history and the 40 years that helped drive Bangladesh’s progress as a country and Concern’s evolution as an organization.

Bakhtwar sits proudly in front of her small shop which she reopened with the support of Concern after the floods washed it away. Jamshoro District, Sindh. Photo: Emily Bradley

Driving through Southern Sindh province in Pakistan on a bright, sunny day in early December 2011, it is difficult to imagine the catastrophic scale of the destruction caused by the floods of 2010. Beyond the bounds of the irrigated sites, the land is now dry and dusty and the heat is immense. As I meet with Concern’s beneficiaries and partner organizations, it is all too clear however, that, although the flood waters have receded, their devastating legacy lingers.

In August and September 2010, villages across Jamshoro district were entirely submerged in water. We all recall the media images of the floods in Pakistan, but it is often difficult to fully comprehend the extent and reality of the devastating impact until you speak with those who were directly affected. Imagine losing everything you ever possessed; imagine fleeing your home with your children to save your lives; imagine watching as the mud walls and thatch roof of your home and business disintegrate in the floodwaters before your eyes.

Now try and imagine all of this as a severely disabled mother of eight.

Bakhtwar Parhar was born healthy, but, at six years old, she contracted polio, which left her severely disabled. She is no longer able to stand upright and can only walk in a squatted position using her hands to support and leverage herself. As the flood waters continued to rise, Bakhtwar was evacuated by boat to higher ground with her family, where they stayed in a makeshift camp for two months, while her village lay submerged in water.

When she returned, everything had been washed away: homes, small businesses, livestock. With great determination, Bakhtwar, with the help of her sons, began to rebuild their home and her convenience store, which had supported the family prior to the floods. With her husband elderly and unable to work, the family was entirely dependent on this income to get by.

Bakhtwar came in contact with Concern through our partner organization, Pakistan Fisherfolk Forum (PFF), who learned of her extreme poverty and particular vulnerability given her disability. She was subsequently selected to receive a cash grant that enabled her to re-establish her micro-enterprise and start earning a living again to support her family. Concern provided Bakhtwar with a grant of PKR 20,000 ($220), which she used to finalize the construction of the shop and purchase stock. She now earns approximately PKR 200 ($2.20) per day – an amount that covers their basic household expenses, plus a little on the side for transport to medical treatment in the nearest town, 40 km away.

Bakhtwar is one of those people you feel privileged to meet. She is full of determination and hope; she is resilient and energetic; she is inspirational. I couldn’t help but wonder how many of us would cope so remarkably at losing everything we owned and being forced to start re-building our lives with nothing.

She is one of more than two million people that Concern has supported in the aftermath of the floods.  Prior to the disaster, Concern had an emergency response plan in place with pre-selected and trained local partner non-governmental organizations (NGOs), like PFF. Consequently, Concern was able to provide immediate life-saving assistance through partners located in the affected areas and who have extensive knowledge of the local context. This helped make it possible for Concern Pakistan to deliver our largest emergency response ever. In the initial aftermath of the floods, Concern distributed temporary shelters and shelter kits, hygiene kits and basic domestic utensils and equipment and provided immediate access to clean water.

However, at 18 months on, the needs that remain are enormous, as the affected communities strive to re-establish their livelihoods. Concern is there, and remains fully committed to supporting these communities so that they can resume some sense of normality and independence in their lives.  Concern continues to work with the affected communities in restoring their livelihoods through agriculture and livestock, irrigation repair, trade-specific training and cash grants.

Concern has invested considerable time and effort in developing the capacity of our local partners, which was so important in enabling a speedy and effective emergency response to the floods in Pakistan’s four provinces. Our partners have emphasized the “culture of partnership” that exists with Concern and they are appreciative of Concern’s timely support in emergencies, building their emergency response capacity and supporting in developing systems, including those that strengthen their accountably and transparency.

In a recent evaluation of Concern’s emergency response to the floods, Concern was found by partners “to be respectful, collaborative and flexible” and referred to Concern as an organization that “allows a true partnership.” The evaluation also highlighted the cost-effectiveness of Concern’s response, which was largely attributed to our partnership approach. This is testament to the ethos of Concern and our commitment to helping those living in extreme poverty, like Bakhtwar and her family, to achieve major improvements in their lives in a sustainable way.