Press Release
For Immediate Release: October 31, 2006
Contact: Anuradha Mittal, (510) 469-5228; [email protected]
A Case Study of the 2005 Food Crisis in Niger
Oakland, CA October 2006: Last year the world rocked to Live Aid concerts, and the Make Poverty History Movement celebrated developed countries' fresh commitments toward the International Development Goals, development assistance, and debt cancellation. Despite these noble sounding goals, chronic hunger continues to strike some 852 million people, killing nearly 6.5 million children each year. United Nations estimates that 300,000 children under the age of five face the risk of death from malnutrition every year in Sahel alone—which includes Senegal, Mauritania, Mali, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso. In light of this ongoing crisis, the Oakland Institute’s new report, Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? examines the 2005 food crisis in Niger to explain the cause of this chronic emergency and recommends strategies that can help make hunger in Sahel a thing of the past.
In 2005, Niger’s poverty and widespread hunger hit the world news. Some 230,000 children under the age of five were treated by NGOs–surpassing past records of relief intervention. And despite this effort, thousands of children died of hunger related causes. Intensive campaigning by international relief organizations triggered an international response in June 2005, after eight months of delay. Along with France and the EU, United States was a major donor and provided $19 million, of which $13 million was in-kind food aid. It was too little, too late compared to the need, and by October 2005 subsidized sales and free distribution had covered only 22 percent of the country’s food deficit.
The 2005 food crisis has been blamed on locust invasion and drought. However it cannot be singled out as an isolated episode in Niger's history – hundreds of thousands of children require this type of intervention every year in a country where under-five mortality rate is the second highest in the world. Doctors Without Borders, an international humanitarian agency, has reported that it treated some 60,000 Nigerien malnourished children in their emergency program this year.
What is the cause of this chronic emergency? How have several decades of development programs failed to eradicate hunger and malnutrition? What needs to be done to end this cycle of poverty and famine? What if any are the obligations of the international community during these food crises? These are the key questions that Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? intends to answer.
In a departure from economic liberalization promoted by the international financial institutions as a solution to poverty and hunger, Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? finds the region reeling from a free market famine. "Development policies dictated by the international financial institutions and rich nations have promoted deregulation of markets and cash crops as the silver bullet solutions to hunger. Niger’s experience shows that relying on the market to solve food shortages leaves the poorest people hungrier and drives small farmers into further poverty while large food traders gain monopoly power," said Frederic Mousseau, the Oakland Institute’s Senior Fellow and the co-author of the report. “While there was food in the markets and Niger continued food exports in 2005, domestic food prices sky rocketed almost 150-200 percent. While 63 percent of the population lives on less than $1 a day, in July 2005 a Nigerien farmer paid more for more a kilogram of millet at the local market than a European or an American consumer paid for a kilogram of rice in the supermarket," he continued.
“Delayed response in providing aid and insistence of donor countries like the U.S. to provide in kind food aid, does little to strengthen national economies and tackle hunger. The design of development policies has silently accepted the sacrifice of a whole segment of region’s population–primarily young children from the poorest families,” said Anuradha Mittal, executive director of the Oakland Institute and co-author of the report. “Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? is a reminder that there is more than enough food on the planet to feed every human being and to meet the standards set in international human rights law. It is time to apply these standards rigorously and relentlessly until all are free from hunger.”
The report recommends both short-term and long-term solutions to combat hunger in the region. These include:
First tackling hunger requires that rich nations support small farmers in developing countries so they can provide for their own populations. Subsistence farmers who constitute 75 percent of the world’s poor should be at the center of development policies. These policies should promote consumption and production of local crops raised by small, sustainable farms rather than encouraging the poor nations to specialize in cash crops for western markets. 78 percent of countries that report child malnutrition are food-exporting countries.
Second the fight against hunger needs to shift away from the free market ideology that has been driving development policies over the past three decades. No industrialized country has been capable of developing its agriculture without protective barriers. However, poorest farmers and consumers in the developing world have been deprived of such protection.
Third, more, not less aid for rural development is necessary. Policies that help affected countries develop their own agricultural sectors actually feed more people and decrease developing countries' dependence on aid programs in the long run. For instance, alternative agricultural development models such as agro-forestry projects in the Sahel have shown to yield lasting improvements in food security.
Several preeminent personalities including Jacques Diouf, Executive Director of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations and Gordan Brown, British Chancellor, have called for a “Marshall Plan for Africa,” including 100 percent debt relief and a boost in Western assistance to Africa. A country like Niger with its annual budget of $320 million would be an ideal first recipient of funding from such a plan. When compared to over $360 billion the U.S. has spent on the Iraq war, this is hardly a drop in the bucket. This plan, if implemented, would need to be non-conditional and non-paternalistic, if it were to be successful.
Sahel: A Prisoner of Starvation? is a publication of the Oakland Institute (www.oaklandinstitute.org), a think tank for research, analysis, and action whose mission is to increase public participation and promote fair debate on critical social, economic, and environmental issues in both national and international forums.
Some Country Facts on Niger
• Niger was ranked the poorest country in the world, last out of 177 countries on the United Nations Development Program’s Human Development Index in 2005.
• Sixty-three percent of Niger’s population is estimated to live on less than a dollar a day.
• Social indicators are low: life expectancy is 44.7 years; the literacy rate is 17 percent; and Niger’s under five mortality rate is the second highest in the world.
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