From: barnhart@ddsw1.MCS.COM (Mr. Aaron Barnhart)
Subject: IPS:FOOD: Will there be another Somalia?
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 1992 17:52:11 GMT
Organization: Evanston, Illinois, U.S.A.

Copyright Inter Press Service 1992, all rights reserved.  Permission to re-
print within 7 days of original date only with permission from 'newsdesk'.

Title: FOOD: Will there be another Somalia?


an inter press service feature

by ramon isberto

rome, dec 11 (ips) -- is there any other country where things can
go so terribly wrong, where so many people die so wretchedly in
the glare of global tv, that the world's big powers have reason
enough to intervene?

this is the question that hovered ominously over the week-long
international conference on nutrition (icn) which ended friday.

the possibility of another food emergency inviting united nations
intervention breaking out has driven the heated debate between
developed and developing countries over food aid.

southern states resisted attempts to write into the icn documents
provisions which in any way suggested food aid could be forcibly
delivered, somalia-style, to a famine-struck country.

but will there be other somalias?

no other country seems close to matching somalia's agony. and no
other state has fallen so deep into the pit of anarchy that all
governmental authority has vanished, leaving a vacuum that the
u.n. says it must fill.

but the world is not short of famine hotspots. mozambique, which
itself is just emerging from a long and destructive civil war,
''may be next,'' warns peter newhouse, the chief of the food and
agriculture organisation's (fao) famine early warning system.

fao's latest food outlook report says the food supply situation
is ''especially critical in southern sudan with deaths from
starvation reported in several towns.''

in ethiopia, harvests are expected to be good this year, but the
situation of vulnerable communities in the ogaden is said to be
''extremely serious.''
liberia was also reported (more/ips)
---


food: will (2)

fao experts reject criticisms that somalia's slide into mass
starvation took them by surprise. the first famine alert on
somalia was raised by the fao as far back early 1991.

the january-february 1991 edition of the 'foodcrops and
shortages', an fao publication regularly sent to donor
governments, agencies and relief ngos, reported that because of
''civil disturbances in december and january (1990) .. marketing
channels have been seriously disrupted and severe food shortages
(were) now being reported.''

in may 1991, the fao reported that the country's cereal crop had
failed and that ''without an improvement on the security
situation'', large parts of the population would suffer from
hunger and malnutrition.

in september 1991, the fao warned that 4.5 million people were at
serious risk of starvation.

by then, various u.n. agencies through the world food programme
(wfp) and relief ngos were in the thick of the crisis, vainly
trying to deliver desperately-needed food stocks.

but as fao reports throughout 1991 and 1992, fighting between
warlords and gangsterism kept supplies from getting where they
were needed.

in july 1991, when the first reports of deaths from starvation
came, the fao reported that only "limited supplies" of wfp relief
food was getting through.

three months later, it reported that ''without a rapid
improvement in the security situation'', the famine would quickly
spread.

governments which support the u.n. security council resolution
authorising the deployment of a u.s.-led multinational military
force stress that somalia should not be taken as a precedent.

still, the u.n. action has opened the questions of whether there
will be similar interventions in the future and under what
conditions can such actions be taken.

at the icn, the developing countries won the round. the final
conference declaration has been purged of provisions which open
the possibility that national sovereignty could be set aside for
''exceptional humanitarian situations''. (more/ips)
-----


food: will (3)

instead, the declaration says that food aid should be sent to
those in need ''in accordance with the charter of the united
nations'' which requires that national soverreignty be respected
and aid be given only at the request of the country concerned.

but this is not likely to end the debate. the failure of the
international community to act earlier has cost the somalis
hundreds of thousands of lives. governments may be more sensitive
to future calls for action to save starving civilians.

moreover, there are nasty civil wars threatening to create
famines of somalia-like proportions.

in liberia, fighting between competing factions is keeping
humanitarian assistance out. in sudan, the people in the southern
regions are suffering the consequences of from what some critics
call a genocidal policy.

proponents of intervention need to remember, however, that
somalia's misfortune was itself at least partly the product of
past superpower intervention gone dreadfully wrong.
(end/ips/ip/ri/ph)
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