JOINT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS debate -
Wednesday, 12 Mar 2003

Vol. 1 No. 10

Food Crisis in Ethiopia: Presentation.

Chairman

While the news media has been preoccupied with other issues in recent weeks, the humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa continues and millions of lives remain at risk. We must not allow our preoccupation with immediate worries to distract us from helping those who have little or no voice. Where we can have some effect in relieving the burden of the world's least fortunate, we must not turn our backs on or long-finger our aid.

Accepting the enormous humanitarian needs of the region where 11.3 million people will require food assistance this year alone, the joint committee, on its establishment, made Ethiopia a priority issue. With the agreement of the committee, I suggest we begin the process of examining the size of the problem in the region, ascertain what is currently being done to try to alleviate the famine and its accompanying diseases, examine Ireland's current contribution to this work, determine what more could and should be done to speed up assistance to the area and make recommendations to the Government on the committee's views on the way forward. You might encapsulate that by saying we are undertaking a "project Ethiopia" to ascertain what is happening, who is doing what and what more is needed.

Here, as in many other areas, Ireland's contribution comes in many forms. Ethiopia is a priority country for Ireland Aid and the Government has generously committed a good deal of funding to the area in the form of development co-operation. This aid has been expanded to include humanitarian assistance in response to the crisis there. This year alone grants to Ethiopia are expected to be in the region of €29 million compared with €23.7 million last year. Apart from the Government's contribution, like many other parts of the developing world, particularly the poorest, the Irish public, continuing to remember its own past, has reached out to give assistance to people who are less fortunate than themselves. Representing this side of the public's generosity are the NGOs which perform exceptional and at times heroic work and which continue to make the difference in these extraordinary and dreadful circumstances.

Acknowledging their contribution and recognising their views are important in identifying the areas which need to be tackled, the committee has asked representatives of the Irish based NGOs working in the region to come before it and to inform us of the magnitude of the crisis and to give us their valued judgment on what in addition needs to be done to further help the region. Representing many of the Irish organisations working in the region are Ms Niamh Carty of Christian Aid Ireland, Tom Arnold and Ms Angela O'Neill of Concern, Ms Fiona Quinn of GOAL, Ms Clodagh Heagney of Oxfam Ireland, Mr. Noel McDonagh of Self Help Development International and Ms Mary Healy of Trócaire. We received regrets from Action Aid Ireland which is unable to have a representatives present at today's meeting, although it provided us with a written presentation which has been circulated.

Each presentation will take approximately three to four minutes. Following the presentations, we will have an opportunity to have a question and answer session with the delegations. Before we commence, I remind people that while members are covered by privilege, others appearing before the committee are not. I invite Ms Niamh Carty of Christian Aid Ireland to begin her presentation.

Ms Niamh Carty

I am very grateful for this opportunity to address some of our concerns regarding Ethiopia to the committee. As many members will already know, Christian Aid is the official agency of the Protestant churches in Ireland and in the UK and was founded in the 1940s as a response to the refugee crisis engendered by World War II. As a largely non-operational agency, our projects and programmes are undertaken with and through local partners, such as grassroots groups of urban or rural poor, churches or church based agencies and other support groups working to help poor people. We currently work with more than 500 partners in 56 countries where the need is greatest, helping people of all faiths and of none.

We have been working in Ethiopia since the early 1970s. Food security is the main sectoral priority of our programme, which aims to increase the quality and quantity of food produced locally. Up to 85% of the programme focuses on ensuring food security through work on seed estuaries, cereal banks and soil and water conservation. Our approach is primarily oriented towards long-term development needs, although we also respond to more immediate needs, such as those associated with the current food crisis.

Our response to the current situation in Ethiopia is two-pronged. In practical terms we are supporting a number of partner implemented emergency response programmes. These include supplementary feeding programmes for 7,000 children under the age of five years as well as pregnant women and nursing mothers, and animal restocking for 21,000 vulnerable households in the southern region who lost up to 40% of their livestock to drought in 2002.

In addition to that work we have been lobbying, both alone and jointly with other agencies, to ensure that the international community makes and meets pledges to provide the required food assistance. We welcome the fact that 50% of the requirement for 2003 has been pledged to date, however, we remain concerned with regard to what happens beyond June 2003. We will, therefore, continue to call for pledges to be made and met so that needs beyond June can be fulfilled. In addition, we are lobbying to have the time-lag between pledges and delivery reduced. For example, we believe the majority of the food needs to be delivered before June when the rains start and potentially limit access to areas most in need.

However, we would like to stress that food aid alone is not sufficient to tackle the food shortage in Ethiopia. The country is in a state of chronic food insecurity. Some 30 million people consistently do not receive enough quality food for a healthy life, even when there is a good harvest. The root cause of this is chronic poverty, which in turn is caused by successive droughts that have forced people to sell their assets, such as land and cattle, so that they have nothing on which to fall back when the rains fail; a lack of employment and other livelihood opportunities, apart from those in agriculture production and livestock rearing; years of conflict that have eroded the Government's ability to invest in rural areas; and debt, where approximately 10% of Ethiopia's earnings still goes on debt repayments.

The failure of the international trade institutions to regulate the world coffee markets has meant that Ethiopia has lost in the region of $167 million in export revenues over the last three years. Coffee is Ethiopia's main export commodity and over 700,000 households are dependent on it. The HIV-AIDS pandemic has not only left three million people even more vulnerable to malnutrition in the current crisis, but also places extra pressure on households as they struggle to care for sick relatives, as well as having a direct impact on the economically active population. Massive land degradation due to poor land management, deforestation and population pressure has reduced the productive land available.

In this context, Christian Aid believes that rain failure and drought need to be seen as contributing factors to, rather than causes of, the current food crisis. Therefore, in addition to supporting partner emergency responses and our ongoing work on food security and lobbying on the food aid issue, Christian Aid is actively pursuing an advocacy position which calls for a re-focusing of Government and donor policy towards improving the livelihoods of the poor and enabling them to build up assets on which they can fall back in lean times; a reduction in policies and practices that lead to environmental damage; an increase in support for long-term development projects to tackle rural poverty; debt cancellation; changes in the terms of international trade to protect vulnerable producers, prevent downward spirals in commodity prices and encourage diversification; and increased support to tackle the problem of HIV-AIDS. Christian Aid believes that these issues must be addressed in a strategic way if Ethiopia is to have any chance of tackling the long-term and linked problems of chronic poverty and food aid dependency.

Chairman

Thank you. You have covered a wide area concisely. I call Mr. Tom Arnold on behalf of Concern.

Mr. Tom Arnold

I also welcome the fact that the committee is devoting its attention to this issue following on its earlier work. I will briefly describe the food situation in Ethiopia and will then explain what Concern is doing. The main harvest in Ethiopia, which was in November and December last year, was reduced by approximately 25% on the previous year and just over 20% on a five year average. That illustrates the scale of the problem that has emerged. This year the country faces a food gap of approximately 2.3 million tonnes, of which approximately 1.4 million tonnes would be expected in food aid. The country has received pledges of a little over half of that food aid. At present it has probably enough food aid to last up to June, but there are complications, in that there is a strategic food reserve from which people can borrow but which must be repaid. Given the timing of the aid, even though theoretically there is enough aid to last until June, there may be a problem in the interim in keeping it flowing from the strategic reserve.

The main harvest occurs in November and December each year but there is a small harvest in certain parts of the country in May and June called the belg harvest. How well it does will be very important for the overall food situation. Some of the indications for it are not good. Although there is a significant international commitment, a significant level of organisation within Ethiopia is required to get the food to the people. If the belg harvest is unsuccessful the problems could deteriorate from the middle of the year.

I have visited Ethiopia twice this year and have some sense of the situation on the ground. We have supplied the committee with a more detailed paper of our assessment. We are working in three areas, two of which are in the north and one in the south. In the northern part we are basically involved in feeding 350,000 people and in the southern part we are working with over 50,000. This is supplementary feeding and in certain cases, for the more severely malnourished children, it is therapeutic feeding. We are also seeking to engage in more experimental work with the community.

I echo the broad analysis that Niamh has presented and I suspect the other NGOs will also. There is a two dimensional approach to the problem. There is the short-term problem of trying to get enough food to feed the people this year. Significant issues arise for the international community in terms of both the level of commitment of food aid and the timing of its arrival.

There is also a huge longer term issue of trying to get to the point where Ethiopia is not, year in year out, faced with a chronic or acute food problem. The only way that can be dealt with is through much more serious investment in rural development and agricultural productivity, the kind of thing that was discussed at the last meeting of the committee which addressed this matter.

Chairman

When you made an earlier presentation, you were hopeful that the harvest period, from the middle of June, would be reasonably successful. Is there any indication if a reasonable harvest will be delivered then?

Mr. Arnold

We need to be clear that this June harvest is only in part of the country. The main harvest is towards the end of the year. The June harvest is a supplement to food production. The indications are not good for some of the areas where the June harvest comes in. In one of the areas in the southern region where we are working there are poor indications for rain. It is worrying.

Chairman

Thank you. I call Fiona Quinn on behalf of GOAL.

Ms Fiona Quinn

I thank members for giving me an opportunity to speak. There is no point repeating what Tom and Niamh said because the facts are as stated. Some 11 million people currently depend on free food relief until the end of the year. The likelihood is if the belg harvest to which Tom referred does not work out as well as people hope there will be an additional three million people in need of food aid by the end of the year. We are looking at a possible worst case scenario of 14 million people.

GOAL has been working in Ethiopia since 1984-85, the time of the last great famine. We currently have a team of seven expatriates and approximately 200 local staff working in both relief and development programmes. Our focus in the emergency response has been with the pastoralist people in low land areas of Ethiopia. Large populations of people move through their traditional migration routes with their animals their main source of livelihood. These people have lost up to 50% of their herds. They have lost their cattle and goats and milk production from the camel herd has reduced. GOAL's focus has been in pastoralist areas in two main regions, Oromia and Afar. Our move into the Afar region was a new venture for GOAL because it was one of the areas highlighted as a major "hotspot" at that time.

In Fentale Woreda, Oromia region, we received a grant from Ireland Aid of €250,000 in July to support a health and nutrition programme. We carried out a supplementary feeding and mass measles campaign for 58,984 young children from the Kereyou tribe. In the Afar region and West Hararghe, Oromia, another programme caters for 73,800 children to be vaccinated against measles and includes supplementary feeding for breast feeding and pregnant women and for young children under five years of age. In Daro Lebu Woreda, West Hararghe, where there were high malnutrition levels, we are also carrying out supplementary feeding and health intervention. While these programmes will continue until May, a new programme commenced on 1 March in West Hararghe which includes setting up a rapid response unit. The rapid response unit will assess needs in various "hotspots" as they emerge. From time to time in Ethiopia different organisations, government bodies or communities themselves may say an area is in much need and there are lots of malnourished children. However, as accurate information is sometimes difficult to get hold of, the GOAL rapid response team goes in to do a proper assessment with standard methodology and shares the findings with the other agencies or government bodies on the ground. That small flexible team is seen as being a useful complement to other agencies' activities. That programme will also continue to carry out targeted supplementary feeding activities in West Hararghe.

Looking past the current emergency at ways of responding to longer term development needs, GOAL has introduced experimental pilot projects in some communities in the Afar region and in West Hararghe to determine what longer term development needs would be appropriate to mitigate against the scale of such a disaster happening again at community level. A new programme will begin on 1 April. The programme will encourage children to continue attending school for the rest of the year and a meal will be provided for 81,000 children in 208 primary schools over four regions in Ethiopia. That programme will be in conjunction with Save the Children Fund US.

GOAL requests that the committee encourages Ireland Aid to continue to help the Irish aid agencies in their response to the emergency, that it continues to be flexible, open to new ideas and responds rapidly when "hotspots" or new situations arise.

Ms Clodagh Heagney

Oxfam Ireland works together with the other 11 international Oxfams to relieve poverty, promote understanding of its cause and campaign for a world free of poverty.

In Ethiopia six Oxfams work closely together to make up the Oxfam Country Group. This is seen as a way to reinforce and co-ordinate emergency response and long-term development work for the greatest possible impact. Oxfam has been active in Ethiopia since 1973 and works in all regions of Ethiopia, including Afar, Amhara, Oromiya, SNNPR, Somali and Tigray regions. We have such good coverage of the country because not only do we have Oxfam programme staff working in the field but we also work through a wide range of local Ethiopian partners, including Relief Society of Tigray, Hope for the Horn, Oromo Self Help Organisation, to name but a few. The Government of Ethiopia launched its appeal of 2003 on 7 December. The appeal document set out a need for ten million people in March, reaching 11.3 million at later months in the year. In addition, 2.9 million are on the margin and they also need assistance in the later months of 2003.

The needs are huge in Ethiopia and the variety of response wide. I will mention several responses in which Oxfam is engaged in some of the zones. In Afar we are carrying out an environmental sanitation and veterinary support programme through local partner, Afar Pastoral Development Association. We are providing food for 6,217 people in East Shewa through SEDA, another local Ethiopian organisation. We are distributing female goats to more than 3,000 affected households in East Shewa through the Gudina Tumsa Foundation. We are carrying out water tankering programmes, food, water, sanitation and malaria control. We are also providing supplementary food for children in South Tigray through REST.

Members will notice that the responses are varied and respond to particular needs in each region, as well as the expertise of the organisation involved. The most important message I would like to get across this morning is that there are still critical gaps in the relief supplies needed for the 11 million people affected by drought in Ethiopia. Approximately half the food required for 2003 still needs to be pledged and delivered to avert crisis. Latest figures from the WFP indicate that there is enough food pledged by the international community to cover up to June, but this is on a reduced ration basis. After June, more than 11 million Ethiopians are faced with an uncertain future. For international purchase it takes three to six months from pledge to delivery to communities and the main rains normally begin in June when access to remote areas will become nigh impossible.

Indications are that the current drought is worse than that of 1984 and 2000. In those droughts farmers had more stocks with two to three months food supply as well as an asset base. The coverage of this drought is also more extensive than previously with well over half the country being touched by it.

I would like to end by briefly referring to structural conditions that have fed into the crisis and exacerbated the effects of it. Coffee prices have declined by 70% in the last four years. Some 60% of Ethiopia's national export revenue comes from coffee. Through this collapse in the coffee price, the Government is losing twice as much as it gained in recent interim debt relief. Oxfam has called for an international coffee rescue plan to restore fair prices and revenue to the Ethiopian national economy. Another element is land pressure. All land is government owned. Results of studies indicate that farmers are not encouraged to invest in or conserve their land due to the insecurity of land tenure. A public and participatory debate on land tenure is required. These structural issues are crucial in responding to the needs of a country which is on the edge, where food aid is a regular yearly event.

Chairman

Mr. McDonagh will now speak for Self Help Development International.

Mr. Noel McDonagh

I thank the committee for this opportunity. Self Help was established in 1984 in response to the Ethiopian famine of that time. It had the specific objective of addressing the causes rather than the results of famine and has a single focus brief of long-term development, the development of sustainable rural communities. We are not a relief agency. Of the five countries in which we operate, Ethiopia is the principal one.

We operate through two types of programmes. The first type is what we call direct action programmes, through conservation based, integrated, rural development programmes based on the felt needs of the beneficiaries as articulated by themselves. We run a second lot of programmes which we call support action. These work in co-operation with federal and regional authorities in promoting capacity building programmes for a wider constituency, based on the experience gained in the area based programmes, specifically in the field of the development of primary and secondary agricultural co-operatives, women's development and youth development.

A typical area based programme in Ethiopia would be about the size of two or three Irish counties. Its population would range between 150,000 to 300,000 people. The duration is normally five years with, perhaps, a two year extension. The direct costs are in the region of €1 - €1.5 million spread over the five years and excluding inputs from the beneficiaries themselves and from local authorities. The operational policies have the single objective of sustainability. To be achieved, sustainability must be underpinned by certain types of robust policies. We believe that the one that matters most in this regard is what we call the bottom up approach where the beneficiaries assume ownership of the project and are the main people taking action. We also believe that it is critical to work with and through the existing authorities in these countries and to avoid the errors of the past in setting up parallel structures. We believe that everything should be done on the basis of the capacity as it exists. Therefore there are no expatriates involved in any way in the field. All our activities must be bolstered by robust entry and exit strategies.

An area based programme is integrated but there are certain elements within it. The first is natural resource management including soil conservation and reafforestation, crop production, livestock improvement, water services, primary health care, including clinics and in one case a 100-bed acute hospital, primary and sometimes secondary education and women's development, with particular emphasis on savings and credit schemes, which are now also being extended to youth. The whole lot is bolstered by extensive training and capacity building programmes.

The economic evolution or progression that we try to achieve is to move groups of people from food deficiency into food self-sufficiency and then into surplus, from surplus into trading, from trading into joint trading and from joint trading into the establishment of primary co-operatives with, eventually, the primary co-operatives coming together within unions. The impact to date in Ethiopia, over our period, is that one million people have been moved from food dependency to the early stages of sustainable development at an overall cost over the years of about €10 million.

At the moment, as far as the famine is concerned, we can honestly say that any objective assessment of the areas in which we are or have been involved shows that they have been considerably less vulnerable to drought conditions. Another interesting thing that has been happening in regard to the upcoming sowing season is that there is a considerable supply of seeds going from our areas into adjoining areas which are experiencing difficulties.

We are operating our third five year country programme in Ethiopia. We are operational in two regions, Oromiya and the southern region. Altogether there are four area based programmes and two capacity building programmes. There are also important links being established at federal level in partnership with the federal commission for the development of co-operatives. We are providing considerable sums and support for programmes at that level. Our level of expenditure in Ethiopia is growing from €1.2 million in 2001 to €2.4 million in 2005, an increase over five years of 114%.

There are also cross-cutting issues which are critical to development. We see natural resource management as being basic to area based programmes, policies and strategies. Gender development in general and gender equality are fundamental to area based programmes but they must also be addressed on a wider basis through nationally promoted capacity building programmes. The issue of HIV-AIDS is another matter critical to development. We are now establishing separate budget heads in all area based programmes and have recently commissioned a consultants' report to give us an indication of the sort of long-term action that can be effective in achieving our overall objectives.

There are two issues in regard to what needs to be done. There is the immediate issue and the long-term issue. We do not feel qualified, in the normal operational sense, to deal with the current problems but they have been well articulated by our other colleagues. There is little doubt in our minds in regard to the longer term issue. There has got to be continuing support for developing sustainable rural communities using models and new approaches that have been shown to work.

We are fortunate to have with us this morning, by coincidence, our director for operations in Ethiopia, Dr. Awole Mela, and the committee should feel free to address any questions to him.

Chairman

I welcome Dr. Awole Mela and perhaps we will hear from him later. Ms Mary Healy will now speak on behalf of Trócaire.

Ms Mary Healy

I welcome this opportunity to talk to the committee and welcome its interest in Ethiopia. I would like to draw the committee's attention to the fact that the current drought and food shortages extend beyond Ethiopia to a number of countries in the surrounding area. Proportionately speaking, Eritrea is more severely affected as almost two thirds of its population are in need of food aid. Although the total population in Eritrea is only 3.4 million we should not forget them or the people of Somalia, Sudan and parts of Kenya.

As some of my colleagues have already mentioned there are almost no pledges of food aid for after June 2003. It is now March and as we are all aware the global focus is on the Middle East. This focus includes not just the military aspect but also the food aid and humanitarian side of things. This presents huge risks not just for Ethiopia but also for southern Africa. There is a huge danger of diversification. Aid may be diverted towards the Middle East. Of course it may be needed there but let us not forget the huge numbers in need of assistance in eastern and southern Africa.

The drought has had a significant effect on people but it is not the only cause of the situation. If we are to have any impact in Ethiopia we must address the underlying causes of the drought. As we all know, if we deal with the symptoms and not the cause the problem will recur again and again. I would like to focus on what Trócaire believes to be the underlying causes of the situation. To exemplify the fact that the drought is not the cause we point out that Australia is currently having its most severe drought in the history of white people in Australia but it is not causing the same loss of life. Why is that not happening in Australia when it is happening in Ethiopia? It is because, in Ethiopia, which is one of the poorest countries in the world and where poverty has risen hugely since the famine in 1984, drought is both a cause and effect of the ongoing food insecurity in the country. The repeated droughts experienced by the people have completely diminished their ability to cope. Year on year, as the drought recurs, their ability to cope with it is diminished. In addition, there has been completely inadequate investment in rural development in a country which is prone to drought and where 80% of the population depends on rain-fed agriculture, working on land which they do not own. As my colleagues have mentioned, the global collapse of coffee prices has had a huge impact, both on the farmers in Ethiopia and on the Ethiopian Government's ability to sell coffee and earn foreign exchange with which to purchase food. Coffee prices have declined by 70% over the last four years and the resulting huge financial losses have amounted to far more than the gain from debt relief in recent times.

The issue of HIV-AIDS is also very important in terms of its impact in Ethiopia, which has the fifth largest number of people in Africa living with HIV-AIDS. That issue has many impacts on the food situation. For a person suffering from HIV-AIDS and food shortage, life expectancy diminishes considerably. It also drives people to risk-taking behaviour, out of desperation because they have nothing to eat. The ability of a household to cope with food shortages is hugely diminished if there is somebody within the family suffering from HIV-AIDS and they do not have the capacity to deal with the increased labour demands placed upon them by the food and water shortages. Households have to spend many extra hours collecting water and there is increased prevalence of disease due to contaminated water.

The Irish Government is in a very strategic position in relation to Ethiopia, given its bilateral programme in that country, and needs to maximise its effort to drive policy change with the Ethiopian Government towards focusing on key structural issues, such as price support, alleviation of land tax, investment in rural infrastructure, marketing, diversification in the agriculture sector, access to credit and, fundamentally, in land reform. Investment has to be made, both by international NGOs and governments, in civil society within Ethiopia. Without that, there will be no future. The Ethiopian NGOs must be supported and empowered to help themselves to prevent, mitigate and respond to the effects of recurrent drought.

I urge the Irish Government to encourage other governments, including the Ethiopian Government, to recognise that the funding of successful Ethiopian NGO projects can create new policy spaces and help to reshape official thinking.

Chairman

Thank you, Ms Healy. Dr. Awole Mela and Ms Hilary McDonagh are also present. We will now have comments and questions from members of the committee. I wish to make a brief comment. The need for cancellation of debt has been strongly emphasised. We have already raised that issue with the World Bank through the parliamentary network and it is being pursued. In that context, we have also said that priority should be given to those countries with high levels of HIV-AIDS. We are listening to the NGOs and working with them. It has been made very clear that, while 11 million people are in danger, it could reach 14 million if the weather and the harvest are not favourable.

Deputy G. Mitchell

I join in welcoming the delegation. As Chairman of the Joint Committee on European Affairs, I can assure the delegation that we have been arguing that this should be a priority for the Irish Presidency of the EU. The Minister and Minister of State are well disposed in that regard. I wish to ask a few questions. I have raised the coffee issue previously in the Dáil and will do so again in the near future. Price control was at the root of the problem. What can be done to re-introduce a regime which will address that issue?

My next question has been on my mind for some time and I hope it will not cause embarrassment. I greatly value the work of Irish NGOs in this area, but I sometimes wonder about the number of NGOs - is there unnecessary duplication or competition? What co-ordination is there to ensure resources are not used up in administration, rather than getting to the source of the problem? I am also concerned by ongoing reference to resources and investment. How much of the European Union's development aid budget was not actually used last year? While I do not have the actual figures, I know the EU is a far greater donor than the United States. What are the views of the delegation as to what we can do with a view to getting the EU to use the budget which is made available? There appears to be a structural problem or inability within the EU in terms of delivering the available resources to the area of need.

Chairman

As there is a vote in the Dáil, we will suspend for 20 minutes.

Sitting suspended at 11.55 a.m. and resumed at 12.50 p.m.

Chairman

I apologise for the interruption. At this stage, we have one or two more contributions to hear.

Dr. Awole Mela

I am privileged to be here to tell the committee about relief and development in Ethiopia. In 1984 there was a great famine and since then pocket areas have been affected by famine. As NGOs operating in Ethiopia, we have put much emphasis on relief and development. At present, as has been said, the situation is severe and difficult. We need relief. However, the future of Ethiopia is in long-term development. Without it, I do not know what is to happen. If we do not give attention to rural development, the problem will continue. As an Irish NGO, we are given great respect by the government in Ethiopia. As long as we have your support, we will do both at the same time but we must give emphasis to rural development which is where the future of Ethiopia lies.

Chairman

We are conscious of the long-term situation, as are the NGOs. Obviously, education, health and capacity building are crucial for the long-term. We will emphasise that. We thank you for your own view. Everybody has views on this issue but you have the benefit of being from Ethiopia and understanding the position locally. It is helpful for the committee to hear your views.

Deputy Noonan

I thank those who have contributed. It was an impressive and full assessment of the situation in Ethiopia. Ethiopia is one of the committee's priority areas and the contributions from our guests have been of great benefit. The written submissions will also be extremely helpful when we are advancing policy. Most of the questions have been answered but I wish to mention three matters. The Bóthar organisation, which was started in Limerick, ran foul of stock renewal policy. It had a policy of renewing the farming stock in African countries but due to the outbreak of CJD in Europe, veterinary considerations came into play. It was no longer possible to send animals to Africa. Is there a similar difficulty in Ethiopia? Two of the organisations mentioned that part of their programmes was to improve stocking by supplying goats or other animals to farmers.

The second issue was mentioned by Deputy Gay Mitchell. I can understand the need for different organisations. There should be a variety of NGOs, even if they are involved in similar work. The whole is greater than the sum of the parts, in terms of the impact that is made. However, what level of co-operation is there on the ground in a place such as Ethiopia, to fill gaps and deal with areas that the organisations are not covering? What level of contact and cross-structural organisation is there with the other international aid agencies which operate in Ethiopia?

The third issue is the possibility of the diverting of aid to post-war Iraq. That will happen. The Chairman led a delegation from this committee to the United Nations in November and it was clear at that stage that the United Nations was well advanced on a humanitarian aid programme for Iraq. Whatever the official position of the UN at the time, the people involved in humanitarian aid had no doubt about the inevitability of war and were making advanced plans. There is always the difficulty that the disaster in the news is the one that gets the resources. Disasters with a longer history do not get the same level of priority. To what degree are you connected into UN thinking? We met the representatives of a number of NGOs, including Oxfam. The NGOs are represented at the UN and there is a flow of information. How strong is the connection with Irish NGOs?

Deputy T. Dempsey

I thank the delegates for their contributions. I am new to politics and I found them most informative. Each organisation brings its own flair and expertise to a situation. However, it must increase administrative costs unnecessarily. Is it possible to have a centralised administrative structure for all the organisations? Would that reduce costs and make more money available for Ethiopia? I did not hear any mention in the contributions of the placement of experts from Ireland, such as horticulturists, teachers and so forth. I am interested to know if the organisations do this.

Chairman

I have to warn our guests about Deputy Dempsey. He comes from County Wexford, which is the model county for agriculture.

Deputy T. Dempsey

And horticulture.

Chairman

Of course.

Deputy T. Dempsey

Deputy Noonan does not agree.

Deputy D. Wallace

I thank the representatives of the organisations for coming before the committee. Their information is most helpful. I concur with Deputy Noonan. During our recent visit to the UN we met the NGOs and the UN personnel who were dealing with overseas development aid. There was concern that from the middle of this year funding is not being provided for assistance.

The presentations to the committee are extremely helpful. At an earlier meeting of the committee we decided that the Horn of Africa would be our priority. We will not only highlight this area but ensure that the resources are continued and improved, not just in Ireland but, when we get the opportunity, further afield. The organisations can be assured of our support. I visited Ethiopia briefly when I was a Minister of State. I met some of the people on the ground but I did not get an opportunity to visit some of the missions. However, I paid tribute to the people for the work they are doing. Most of it is unseen but we know it is happening. We will continue to support the organisations in whatever way we can.

Chairman

Deputy Mitchell asked about the coffee situation and whether the EU moneys have been drawn down. There were also other questions.

Ms Heagney

The question was about price control and the coffee issue. With the massive over-production of coffee we are faced with the question of how to boost the price. Oxfam suggests two possible responses. One is, in the short-term, to destroy the excess stock. There is the issue of the quality of the stock. The cost of destroying the stock would be $100 million while the estimated benefit of this to farmers would be between $700 million and $800 million. There is a clear benefit.

With regard to the unspent EU budget, Oxfam has already called for it to be used to support diversification, such as in crops, processing and other areas. Oxfam produced a briefing paper on the coffee crisis and our policy officer recently requested a meeting with Deputy Mitchell on the price control issue. We would be happy to follow up on that with the committee.

Ms Healy

Ireland has a role to play in terms of World Bank and IMF policies in relation to coffee production and also through the European Union in the sense that the World Bank and the IMF have strongly promoted coffee production in areas where it has not historically been a commodity. Vietnam is a particular case in point where strong investment has been made and where there has been encouragement to produce coffee at the expense of coffee producers in Central America and eastern Africa, in particular. Clodagh Heagney already mentioned price control. Getting rid of the low grade coffee which is blocking up the market would also be a big help. From an Irish Government perspective, increased market access for the least developed countries would be of significant assistance. Finally, I note with regret that the coffee upstairs is not fairly traded.

Mr. McDonagh

I refer to the issue of co-ordination, co-operation and so on between the various NGOs. I came into the development field from a business background 18 years ago. One of the things which struck me early on was the problem which existed as a result of the existence of all these separate organisations. I am not surprised people wonder if there is a problem. I have seen an incredible change take place over the last 18 years. At that time, I felt there was a type of stand-off between the different organisations. There was a tremendous amount of rivalry and so on. The establishment of the umbrella organisation, Dóchas, for the NGO sector has been superb. The work which has taken place even in the last two to three years in the restructuring of Dóchas gives credence to the fact the NGOs are willing to work together, to share and to make sure the sum of the parts, as Deputy Noonan said, is far greater than the whole. The extent of co-ordination and of ensuring overlap and so on is cut to a minimum is much greater now than it was in the past.

In regard to how that may be extended into the field, a number of things strike me. In Ethiopia, there is an organisation called the Christian Relief Development Association which is a co-ordinating body. All these organisations are members of it so that as far as possible, there is co-operation and co-ordination in the field. The rivalry issue has disappeared. We all have a common purpose.

As members listened to the contributions, it must have come across to them that while we share certain things, we all have a unique focus. The other thing to remember is the scale of the problem in the world. If we all joined together, we would still only be scraping at the surface. In my presentation I said we had affected the lives of one million people. In Ethiopia, that is one million people out of 60 million. That is only one country of many countries in Africa which have problems. Many countries outside Africa have problems as well. These issues we face are immense in scope and in scale. Each of us are trying to keep a sharp focus on our own areas. As far as possible within our own operations, we do everything we possibly can to make sure the maximum amount of our moneys are put to use where it matters and where they will bring about change. We all want to see an input, particularly those who are accountable to society for the moneys paid. Impact will be seen mainly through change and that is what we are trying to effect. Each of us are trying to do that in different ways and in different places.

Deputy G. Mitchell

Did we get a reply to the question I asked about unused EU funds while I was in the House?

Ms Heagney

We spoke about this matter earlier on. Again, in relation to coffee, we would like to see the unused EU budget being used on diversification of crops or in processing.

Deputy G. Mitchell

Will the delegation give us an idea why it is unused and the extent of it? I asked this question in the Dáil last week but I did not get a reply.

Mr. Arnold

When we say unused money, it is the difference between money which was committed and money which was spent. The scale of that gap in recent years has been of the order of €20 billion. I understand that gap has been diminishing - it is moving in the right direction. I do not know the precise figure which remains but there has been a reorganisation in Brussels in the last two years. The capacity of countries to absorb money is slow at times. The internal process in Brussels to spend money is less than it should be and that comes back to administrative capacity. It is an issue on which we should focus as we move towards the Presidency.

Chairman

There are probably some very legitimate reasons as well in that the money might not be used for the purpose for which it was intended and there is corruption and so on. It is a huge amount of money - in fact, it may be a bit more than €20 billion.

Mr. Arnold

I think it is moving in the other direction.

Chairman

I accept what you said and it is something on which we should follow up.

Mr. Arnold

The committee will produce a report and it is important it continues to keep that focus. It is important to say the Ireland Aid programme in Ethiopia is a quality one. There is a very good team in Ethiopia representing Ireland. It is important to acknowledge that. Anyone who has been there, such as Deputy Dan Wallace, will have seen that. What we are talking about here is about being supportive of the general direction things are going. Much good work has been done by the NGOs and I concur very much with what Noel McDonagh said that there is good quality contact between NGOs. Somebody said earlier that when nutrition or other surveys are done, they are shared with NGOs and the wider international community. That is very important.

Some of the work Concern did last October-November pinpointed the fact there was a serious problem in a particular area. That information made a difference to Ethiopian Government policy and perhaps to the wider aid policy. I broadly agree with what Noel McDonagh said about co-ordination, which is much better than it was both in Ireland and elsewhere. The basic issue is that the scale of need we face is such that even if we all pooled everything, it would still be only a minor amount.

Deputy Noonan raised the question of Iraq. There is no doubt that this is a major issue. The scale of resources which could end up being used in Iraq is an appalling scandal when one looks at what could be done with them. The cost of all of Ethiopia's food aid needs in 2002 is less than $2 billion but the cost of one week's war in Iraq is at least $10 billion. That is the scale of the problem. It is not only the question of immediate funding. The political and other focus has shifted to that area. There is a real risk that the problem will affect a multiple of the population. However awful the crisis in Iraq, millions more people will be affected in this region, yet they will be forgotten over the next few months.

Chairman

That is why we wish to continue to address this matter. It was suggested that this meeting be cancelled in favour of a holding a debate on Iraq but we decided to proceed.

Dr. Awole Mela

We in Self Help have been engaged in livestock help for almost 15 years. In Ethiopia there is a native livestock and cross breeding has been employed in the past 15 years to improve the quality of the local breed. We have also tried to improve the management, feed and health of animals. At present the results are very impressive. The quality of meat has improved, as have milk yields. Most of the farmers will not be in a position to afford what is involved and because of that we have placed greater emphasis on improving the local breed. We have also engaged in research on livestock, while the use of technology is encouraging work on local breeds rather than importing a breed that is better acclimatised to the Irish situation.

Ms Healy

The placement of expertise is a key issue regarding Ethiopia. Unlike some other developing countries, the local human resource base is very strong. There is a high level of education, qualification and capacity. Sometimes there are needs in terms of additional human resource expertise, but, by and large, that is not a root cause of any of the issues or problems encountered in Ethiopia.

Chairman

I thank Deputies and Senators who have attended the meeting. Some have had to leave to honour other engagements. Parliamentary party meetings are held at this time and we are supposed to be in attendance.

I propose the committee continues to examine this issue in depth with a view to preparing a report which will evaluate the extent of the crisis, identify the areas of particular need where we can be of assistance and make recommendations to the Government on what more Ireland Aid can do to help. In this context I propose to call in the coming weeks additional witnesses, such as the Ethiopian ambassador and the Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs, Deputy Kitt, who has responsibility for development co-operation. In the preparation of the report I propose, with the agreement of the committee, to invite a consultant to help us in our task.

That concludes our meeting. I thank the witnesses for their attendance. They provided us with what we wanted, including a short version of their views. We know we can get their more elaborate views at a later date and we hope to do that as we develop our report.

Deputy G. Mitchell

I often find that when a citizen asks me to keep up the good work I walk a little taller. I raised a question about the effectiveness of the aid organisations, but I would like to give them a word of encouragement and support and to ask them to keep up their good work, which is very important. It is work we are pursuing, at this committee, in the sub-committee on development and in the committee on European affairs.

Chairman

We wish you all well in your work. The professional way in which you are doing it is very impressive and it is important that people understand that. It is worthwhile in terms of short-term and long-term benefits.

I have been advised by the Chairman of the sub-committee on human rights, that the sub-committee would like to send a small delegation to attend a meeting of the Commission on Human Rights, which will take place in Geneva later this month. Is it agreed that, in principle, a delegation should attend? Agreed.

The joint committee adjourned at 1.15 p.m. until 2 p.m. on Tuesday, 1 April 2003.