Tackling Hunger

United Nations leaders, donors governments, and humanitarian organizations plan to meet this Wednesday, 15 February 2012, to discuss continued efforts to address the drought crisis currently afflicting Africa's Sahel region.  The meeting will take place in Rome as a continued effort to implement strong aid programs in the volatile region.

The Sahel is a regional belt spanning West and Central Africa immediately south of the Sahara Desert and it includes a number of countries which have been regularly afflicted by food insecurity.  Largely the result of poor rain conditions and record heat, the drought has put millions at risk of starvation.

The participants of the meeting met earlier in the year to discuss the issues and challenges facing the region.  The Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, B. Lynn Pascoe, led much of the discussion stating, "To be able to deal with the challenges in the Sahel region and to have a comprehensive, long- lasting impact, we need to put in place a mechanism that would bring together all the affected countries and major outside actors in a coordinated manner to discuss the issues and devise solutions."

-Kenneth Louis

SOURCE: UN News Centre (Update: UN News Centre)

Horn of Africa Needs More Humanitarian Aid

UNICEF has released its "Humanitarian Action for Children 2012", which focuses on the importance of humanitarian aid within the Horn of Africa. The ongoing crisis in this region necessitates funding that focuses on the most vulnerable groups: women and children. UNICEF has requested the international community to give US $1.28 billion. Over half of this would go towards combating food scarcity in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. UNICEF Director of Emergency Programmes Louis-Georges Arsenault points out that this year the programme will focus on Somalia and the Dadaab in Eastern Kenya.

In addition to focusing on the Horn of Africa, the programme also details the needs of other regions. The funding statement discusses the flooding of Pakistan, the needs of children effected by violence in Cote d'Ivoire and South Sudan, and the efforts to rebuild Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. The UNICEF report also addresses the "silent" emergency in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The funding programme highlights that as of 2011, more than 1.5 million people have been displaced because of violence in the Congo.

In this report, UNICEF stresses the need for flexible and immediate funding for the regions of Sahel, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Chad, and many more African nations. According to UNICEF, if the women and children of these nations are to survive, this emergency funding is critical.

-Akshika Patel


SOURCE:UNICEF

Building U.S. Support

Earlier this month, President Barack Obama and his administration passed the $1 trillion Omnibus bill in an effort to bolster the economy and prevent further stagnation.  Most surprisingly, this bill contained an allocation of nearly $2.6 billion to multilateral, international agencies such as the IMF (a 37 percent increase from 2011) and $21.5 billion allocation to foreign assistance programs.  This funding comes as a surprise to many developmental analysts who found recently polling of Americans to suggest that "70 percent of respondents said cutting foreign aid would have a large impact on reducing the U.S. deficit."  Perhaps even more concerning was the fact that polls also found that "Americans believed that 20 percent of the federal budget was being spent on aid, when the actual figure is less than 1 percent."

This monumental shift toward globalized, rational funding sends a clear message to the world that the United States is intent on maintaining its influence on the global market.  More importantly, this sends a message that the U.S. is intent on fostering relationships in the global market while focusing on providing aid to those that need it most.  As any policy analysts can attest to, there is always a desired return on social investment.  According to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, the return is "enormous."  In a policy sense, the U.S. is able to ensure that they, "encourage a level global playing field for businesses...apply rigorous social and environmental standards to development projects...and focus more on fragile states, which helps address global security concerns and also advances U.S. security interests abroad."

As the quoted Brookings Institute article frames it, "The amounts involved are a very small fraction of the U.S. budget but can help hundreds of millions of the world’s poorest people."

-Kenneth Louis

SOURCE: The Brookings Institute - Global Economy and Development