Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Thursday, 26 Mar 1992

Vol. 417 No. 7

Adjournment Debate. - Drought and Famine in Africa.

Mrs. Owen

I welcome the Minister of State and congratulate him on his responsibility for development.

When it comes to speaking about Africa and the underdevelopment and diffificulties of the people living in vast areas of that country very often we run out of superlatives to describe the hardships. The worst drought in 50 years is currently threatening 23 million people with starvation and death in the Horn of Africa in countries such as Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Somalia. What makes the current situation even worse than before is that countries that up to now have begun to be able to cope with their own food requirements, such as Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Nambia and South Africa, are all being affected by this drought. South Africa was usually a country that could supply food to its neighbours but now they too will have to import food for the coming season. Very little food is available for their own use, let alone left over for neighbouring stricken countries.

We do not need the harrowing reminders of television pictures and newspaper articles to highlight for us in the developed world the horrors and the magnitude of the catastrophe which can occur when these numbers of people are threatened with starvation and death. The world community has a moral obligation to respond immediately to this crisis and very substantial food aid supplies must be made available in Africa if many hundreds of thousands of people are not to die of starvation. Crops have failed all over and the need for food aid will continue until the rains come and the new harvest grows.

Ireland, in its own right, must respond to this disastrous situation. I know the Minister has already received at least one application for £100,000 worth of aid from Trócaire and I am sure he has received other applications for assistance. Trócaire tell me that they are inundated with requests from countries like Malawi, Ethiopia and Somalia and they cannot meet all the requests.

Despite the general disappointment expressed in this House and outside the bilateral aid budget for 1992 has been cut, there is £1 million available in that budget for disaster relief. I am asking the Minister to release that money immediately.

The situation is so grave that I am urging the Minister to propose at the next Council of Development Ministers, the setting up of a special programme for Africa similar to that set up in 1991. This programme must make a commitment, as it did in 1991, of an extra 400,000 tonnes of food aid. A number of countries, such as South Africa and Zimbabwe, will have to import millions of tonnes of food to feed their people, thus using very badly needed hard currency. Zambia will have to import 800,000 tonnes of food costing, according to one newspaper, £171 million. These countries do not have that kind of money. It is reckoned in Namibia that they have lost 80 per cent of their commercial maize crop. Botswana, Lesotho and Swaziland have all announced that they will need to import food.

This is a crisis which is perhaps beyond any that has as yet had to be faced on the continent of Africa. The responsibility rests on the Minister and his colleagues at the Council of Development Ministers to answer these calls from the threatened 23 million people. I hope the Minister will be able to make his mark as being the one who proposed and guided through the EC this special programme.

The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Deputy Andrews, has already spoken of wanting to see Ireland play its part towards alleviating poverty, famine and disease in the Third World. I hope these words will be put into action.

Minister of State at the Department of Foreign Affairs (Mr. Daly)

I thank Deputy Owen for her good wishes on my appointment. We are fully aware of her deep commitment and the concern she has shown on the issue in question and on many other issues over a number of years. I value her views on this and on many other matters related to overseas aid, to which she has paid special attention. The Government are very concerned about the serious situation in the Horn of Africa, where an estimated 23 million people have been affected, directly or indirectly, by drought, food shortages and conflict.

While there has been some improvement since last year in the case of Ethiopia, this cannot, unfortunately, be said of the other Horn of Africa countries of Sudan, Somalia, Djibouti and Kenya. Particularly in Sudan the situation gives little reason for optimism.

Ireland is doing what it can to confront this problem both bilaterally and through multilateral organisations, in particular the EC, which is a major donor in the area. It contributes both long term and emergency food aid through the Lomé Convention. Apart from this, in 1991 the EC Commission and EC member states combined provided over £80 million worth of food aid to the Horn of Africa, in which, of course, Ireland participated. Ireland also provided generous bilateral emergency aid. The Horn of Africa has, in fact, been the biggest single beneficiary of Irish Government relief aid which, since January 1990, amounts to nearly £2 million. This includes £250,000 which was a special allocation to the World Food Programme for food aid to the Sudan in 1991.

However, the problems of this area remain vast. The World Food Programme has estimated the total food requirements in the area for 1992 to be over two million metric tonnes. The need is not just one of food aid. In Ethiopia, despite the achievement of a peace settlement in 1991, there are an estimated four and a half million people affected by drought. The 30-year civil war has left a legacy of a crippled economy, an infrastructure which has been destroyed and a massive number of refugees and internally displaced persons. Food shortages and the resulting weakened condition of large numbers of people have rendered them highly vulnerable to infectious diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and measles.

In Sudan, which is still experiencing drought and civil war, the World Food Programme has estimated that although there has been an increase in food production, seven or eight million people will require food aid in 1992 necessitating food assistance of over one million tonnes. Sudan too, suffers from a major refugee population and internal displacement on a massive scale. A further problem is that of the displaced population in Khartoum, which totals at least one million.

In the last year, the Government have been trying to force the people out of Khartoum in large numbers to completely inadequate sites, some distance from the city where they will be without basic facilities or means of livelihood. The Irish Government, along with their EC partners and UN representatives in Khartoum, have expressed concern to the Sudanese authorities and stated that any movement of these people should be on a voluntary basis and under proper conditions. I will continue to actively pursue this matter.

The other countries in the Horn of Africa region are also undergoing major difficulties. Three years of civil war have left Somalia in ruins and without the basic essentials and there is ongoing instability and violence. Over two million people, out of a total population of seven million, have fled from urban to rural areas in search of relief assistance.

The problems in the Horn of Africa are on such a large scale that only a major international relief effort can hope to avert a crisis. The Secretary General of the United Nations, in 1991, issued the first phase of its Consolidated InterAgency Appeal for its Special Emergency Programme for the Horn of Africa and this was renewed in February of this year. The 1991 appeal called for $400 million and raised $260 million. The second phase is seeking $600 million, most of which is for food aid. This leaves a serious shortfall. Part of the Irish bilateral emergency contribution to the Horn of Africa was made through this channel and a further allocation is being actively considered. A generous response by the international community is crucial if a total crisis and a famine on the scale of 1984 and 1985 is to be avoided.

A new Special EC Aid Plan for Africa, on the lines of the 1991 plan, has been called for and the Government will, of course, positively examine this proposal.

It is vitally important to draw public attention to the very serious crisis developing in this area and the urgent need to deal with it effectively.