“Famine” is not a term to be used casually. Nor is it a condition world leaders can ignore. While most in America are focused on our new Administration taking shape in Washington, famine—the most severe phase of food insecurity—has struck in one part of South Sudan. It threatens millions more in that country; its specter looms across East Africa where 14 million people are now in urgent need of food assistance; and left unchecked it could reach as far as north-east Nigeria and Yemen, affecting 20 million people in total.
Being out of sight here in Washington, however, does not diminish the horrible reality that so many confront on a daily basis in East Africa. In his February 28 speech to a joint session of Congress, President Trump said his foreign policy would involve “a direct, robust and meaningful engagement with the world.” Now is the time for direct American action to assist people and governments in East Africa, and to do so on a robust scale, driving a broad international response. Nothing would be more meaningful to the millions struggling to find their next meal for the family table.
2011 was the last time “famine” was declared, on that occasion in Somalia. Our collective response was late, and 260,000 died, more than half of whom were children. Both Save the Children’s “Dangerous Delay” report, published with Oxfam after that crisis, and history tell us that it is important to gear up immediately in response to information from early warning systems, and not wait for the lethal certainty the comes from formal declarations. Quicker responses are both more effective and ultimately less expensive.
Save the Children has made this acute drought and hunger crisis its highest priority for our humanitarian response work, alongside the Syrian crisis in the Middle East that enters its seventh year next week. In South Sudan, we are conducting mass screenings for malnutrition, running feeding programs and stabilization health centers, and training community health workers. We have deployed our Emergency Health Unit to Somalia to help scale up cholera treatment and are targeting malnourished children and mothers in Puntland and Somaliland. In Ethiopia, where the government has boosted its investment in drought relief, we are providing people in the hardest hit regions with therapeutic food and water as well as helping families protect their assets, providing feed for livestock and increasing the resilience of smallholder farmers. In Kenya, we are providing technical assistance to county governments on their response plans. But like other organizations working urgently on the ground, we need all hands on deck beyond our own to marshal the kind of international response needed to avoid catastrophic loss of life as happened in 2011.
Governments in the region and the UN have rung the alarm bells. The international response to the appeal so far falls well short of what is required. The Somali Prime Minister announced this past weekend that 110 people, mostly women and children, died in the previous 48 hours in a single region of Somalia. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees predicts, for example, that in 2017 at least 600,000 children between the ages of 6 month and 5 years old will need to be treated for severe acute malnutrition in Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia. Who will do that?
That is where American leadership can make the critical difference. Besides our longstanding commitment as a nation to help alleviate suffering around the world, and the catastrophic scale of suffering we are witnessing in East Africa, the United States has viewed that region, at least from the time of the Reagan Administration onwards, as an area of strategic importance. Playing a “direct, robust and meaningful role” in this international response would save lives as well as project our values and advance our national interests.
Such a role would also require Washington to mobilize a sophisticated combination of both humanitarian assistance and engaged diplomacy. Preventing famine is not a simple task. The hunger crisis in the region reflects a complex, lethal combination of persistent drought, conflict and governance challenges that requires a sophisticated response to enable East Africa to turn the corner in a sustainable way.
But the bottom line is simple – we need to act and we need to act now. While the transition in Washington is far from complete, President Trump has set a broad direction relevant to this crisis. There are existing teams in place ready to step up American leadership and, I believe, bipartisan support in Congress to resource it.
Recent discussions among donors and UN agencies in London and Nairobi are encouraging signs of a gathering international response. This is the moment for President Trump and Secretary Tillerson to shift that into higher gear in support of national efforts to avert the worst in East Africa.