JOINT COMMITTEE ON FOREIGN AFFAIRS (Sub-Committee on Overseas Development) díospóireacht -
Wednesday, 5 Nov 2008

Fighting Hunger Conference: Discussion with Concern Worldwide.

Chairman

We will have a discussion with Concern Worldwide specifically about its Fighting Hunger Conference and any other matters that may arise. It is a pleasure to welcome Mr. Connell Foley, its director of strategy and learning, who is accompanied by his two colleagues, Ms Lynnda Kiess and Mr. Paul Wagstaff. They are all very welcome. Before we commence, I advise them that whereas Members of the Houses enjoy absolute privilege in respect of utterances made in committee, witnesses do not enjoy the same privilege. Accordingly, caution should be exercised, particularly with regard to references of a personal nature. While I am sure this will not arise, it is a disclaimer I must make.

As Ireland's largest humanitarian agency, Concern Worldwide is central to the delivery of aid from Ireland and the process of influencing and informing the ongoing develoment of aid policy in Ireland and internationally. In recongition of this, its chief exeuctive, Mr. Tom Arnold, was appointed as a member of the hunger task force set up by the Government which launched its seminal report in the United Nations in New York in September. The report clearly positioned tackling hunger and undernutrition as central to development. In response to the report Concern Worldwide held a follow up Fighting Hunger Conference in Dublin on 16 October on the occasion of UN World Food Day 2008 which brought decision makers and experts together to consider more innovative and strategic approaches to tackling widespread hunger and undernutrition in the developing world.

I invite Mr. Foley to address the sub-committee on the outcome of the conference and how Ireland can play a leading role internationally in the fight against hunger.

Mr. Connell Foley

Ms Kiess is our chief nutritional adviser, while Mr. Wagstaff is our agricultural adviser. They will be ready to field technical questions on the issue.

The first question to address is why we held the conference. People may be interested to know the reason. We have been working on the ground for 40 years. We have been tackling hunger since that initial response to famine in Biafra. Like most agencies, we believe we are swimming against the tide with the amount of difficulties in developing countries. However, we are well grounded and recognise that we need political leadership and backup if we are to fight hunger effectively. We have been involved in many strategic relationships, particularly in recent years when we have invested in such realtionships to try to gain wider influence and learn from the work we are doing on the ground. In particular, we have established a new approach to developing severe acute malnutrition community therapeutic care and its newer branch, community management of acute malnutrition. We are also doing considerable work in terms of social protection, cash and food transfer programmes in particularly chronic poverty environments. In Malawi and Kenya we have been using innovations such as mobile phones and smart cards to disburse cash more efficiently. This is some of the feedback on our work on the ground in fighting hunger.

Clearly, during the past 18 months or so there has been a huge increase in food and fuel prices, which has exacerbated the difficulties the poorest people in the world face. It is estimated that 100 million more people face hunger this year, in addition to the 860 million who have been facing it on an ongoing basis. It seemed it was right this year to pull together some of the issues involved. We have been working on the issue of food and fuel prices and trying to get information from our people in the field to develop a two-monthly hunger monitor; we bring together information from our people in the field on the issue of the impact of food prices, in particular.

As alluded to by the Chairman, Mr. Tom Arnold, our chief executive, was a member of the UN hunger task force, one of the millennium task forces, and then a member of the Irish hunger task force which launched its report on 25 September. It seemed a good time, as a follow up to the issuing of the report, to hold a conference. We very much planned it that way. The hunger task force has talked about Ireland's folk memory of the Famine and how it resonates strongly with the Irish public. We considered it was a good time for Concern Worldwide and Ireland to show leadership on the issue of hunger.

The purpose of the conference was threefold: to inform public and political opinion about the continuing scale of hunger in the world and its enormous human and economic costs; to advocate for greater political leadership and policy change in fighting hunger — that was probably its main focus; and to highlight the role innovation in new partnerships could play in ending hunger.

I have the outline of a number of the speeches made at the conference which I will be happy to pass to members. The speeches made by Mr. Arnold and Mr. Kofi Annan are included. They are the only two speeches we printed for members. There is a booklet in the pack which outlines Concern Worldwide's work in tackling poverty, as well as the conference programme. I will briefly refer to each of the sessions, deal with what needs to be done, the follow-up or what emerged from the confernece.

The first session was entitled, Fighting Hunger — the Challenge for Politics. The keynote address was given by Mr. Kofi Annan, the former Secretary General of the United Nations and chairman of AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa. The Minister of State with responsibility for overseas development and human rights, Deputy Power, then spoke and responded to the keynote address. He reconfirmed Ireland's commitment to reach the figure of 0.7% of GNP for overseas development aid and talked about the hunger task force report, Ireland's commitment to it and its launch in New York.

The second session was entitled, Fighting Hunger in an era of High Food Prices, and was much more of a technical intervention by development specialists. Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, a special adviser to the UN Secretary General, Ban Ki-Moon, and Dr. Joachim von Braun, director of the International Food Policy Research Institute both spoke and made suggestions as to what should be done to alleviate hunger in the world.

The third session which was chaired by Mrs. Mary Robinson was entitled, African Leadership in Fighting Hunger. Everybody liked the fact that the two speakers were women. It was a nice gender balance, given that all those who had spoken previously were men. The two speakers were Dr. Agnes Abera Kalibata, the state Minister for Agriculture in Rwanda, and Ms Boitshepo Giyose, senior adviser on food nutrition and security to the African Union's New Partnership for Africa Development. They outlined the work they were doing.

Chairman

Unfortunately, somebody has called a vote in the Dáil so we will have to suspend the meeting.

Mr. Connell Foley

What does that mean?

Chairman

It means members will be back in 15 or 20 minutes. Hopefully, there will not be another vote after that. We will suspend the meeting now and will hear the rest of your presentation when we return.

Sitting suspended at 12.31 p.m. and resumed at 12.47 p.m.

Chairman

We are resuming in public session. I call on Mr. Foley to continue.

Mr. Connell Foley

The third session was on African leadership. The contribution by the Minister of State for agriculture and water was particularly interesting. It concerned the interventions that were tried in the past couple of years, which have made quite a difference in terms of yields and productivity. They have subsidised fertilisers and sought finance for farmers. There have been some interesting experiences in that regard. The Minister is young and dynamic so it was an interesting session.

The final session was on "Innovation in fighting hunger", which was introduced and chaired by Brendan Rogers of Irish Aid. The two speakers there were Dr. Akin Adesina, who is vice president of AGRA, the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, and Ms Sheila Sisulu, who is deputy executive director of the UN World Food Programme. She explained changes in that programme's approach. For example, they are examining more local purchasing of food and a more diverse range of programmes.

All the speakers were practical and offered suggestions about how we should tackle hunger. In many conferences one finds speakers engaging in academic debate, but these speakers made practical suggestions.

When Mary Robinson chaired the third session, she raised some interesting issues concerning AGRA and the use of vertical or global funds. Dr. Akin Adesina from AGRA said they were incredibly important issues which needed to be dealt with, but he did not suggest how they might do so. Nonetheless, his presentation was very strong.

A strong call for action on policy change emerged from the conference. Some key suggestions were made and I have outlined a number of them. The first is that OECD countries should commit and move to an allocation of 0.7% of GNI to development aid. It is not something new and we all know about it. Ireland is clearly one of the countries on the road to achieving that. It was very positive that we could say so.

The second is earmarking of specific allocations to hunger within aid budgets, which is not a matter people spoke much about in the past. The Irish hunger task force report speaks of an allocation of 20%, for example, specifically to fight hunger. That arose out of some of the African suggestions. The Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme, CADAP, for example, which is part of the African Union economic development, suggests that each of the developing African countries should allocate 10% specifically to agriculture in their budgets. Only a small number of countries have done so. The standard in Africa is approximately 5% or 6%.

The third key suggestion is renewed commitment to supporting agricultural development, in particular, small-holder agriculture, in developing countries. I suppose people have perceived that there has been a move towards large-scale productive commercial farming and that we need to revisit small-holder agriculture given the high percentage of poorest people in the world who are small-holder farmers.

Another was support to empower the most marginal farmers, in particular, women. There was a strong recognition that empowering women was very important in terms of tackling hunger, especially with issues such as nutrition, behaviour change, dietary behaviour etc. There was a strong focus on empowering women and women farmers.

Another suggestion was for support to improve nutritional interventions, not just addressing severe malnutrition, of which I spoke earlier, but also the prevention of severe malnutrition. Obviously, that includes various aspects such as food security, nutritional education, behaviour change in terms of diets etc.

There was a call for support for social protection mechanisms in developing countries. We, in Ireland and in the West, are used to a welfare system and in many countries, particularly in Africa, there are very weak social protection programmes. There are quite a number of pilot programmes but not many that have gone to scale.

There was a call from a number of people for a global fund for agriculture and there was even a specific call for Ireland to be its first contributor. The expression used was not as a flag-waving exercise but as the first contributor to a multilateral fund.

The last issue was a need for political leadership to ensure resolution of issues around complicated processes, about getting support for agriculture and nutrition on the ground. There is a kind of ongoing tension between the call for this vertical global fund and the Paris declaration on aid effectiveness, and the need for ownership, harmonisation and alignment, with local governments basically being in charge of their own processes, but also the need to ensure participatory processes for the poorest people. As we know, for example, governance in Africa is weak. Part of the Paris declaration and the move towards good governance is around ensuring that poor farmers and poor people have a voice in the mechanisms that are meant to get support to them. What do farmers have to say about how they can access finance, for example, or how they can access seeds and tools? Are the systems in place working? There was discussion on how to merge that call for a global fund and reducing the bureaucratisation of aid, and ensuring that it fits in with participation and ownership by host governments and host communities.

Those were the key suggestions that came out of the conference. Many of them in many ways are similar to ones that came from the Irish hunger task force. Concern very much supports the practical recommendations in the hunger task force. We very much welcome the major cross-party support for the task force, which is very important.

Chairman

I have a couple of general questions, the first of which relates to the global credit crunch. Will Mr. Foley explain the practical effect the global credit crisis is having on hunger and general aid issues in the countries in which Concern operates and what can be done to help those countries suffering as a result? Mr. Foley mentioned bureaucracy in aid. The ACRA Agenda for Action conference held last September focused on the need to harmonise donor activities and the need to eradicate needless duplication of bureaucracy in aid. Is that having any effect? Are the findings and recommendations that came from that conference filtering down to donor countries and to organisations such as Concern?

Mr. Connell Foley

On the global credit crunch, the people Concern works with directly on the ground are the poorest people. Their access to finance is generally through micro-finance institutions which are like credit unions here or very small rural banks. They have not been hit as much by the global credit crunch partly because the types of micro-finance arrangements are localised. They have been hit sometimes where some of those micro-finance institutes are reliant for their equity on wholesale banking, which is where there has been a little bit of a squeeze. The credit crunch has not filtered down very much but, as I stated, that is partly because of the nature of micro-finance institutions. The global credit crunch probably had much more impact on areas such as agricultural systems or funding for matters such as fertiliser subsidies. I do not know whether Mr. Wagstaff can give examples.

Mr. Paul Wagstaff

Not off the top of my head. I agree that it impacts on access to credit to import fertiliser and such issues.

Mr. Connell Foley

Given the way in which people with whom we work have access to finance, the global credit crunch has not hit them very hard. At the broader level, I probably would need to give the question a good deal more thought to be able to give the committee some practical recommendations. I presume that the credit crunch has hit more private sector companies in the way they can access finance. We would need to think about issues such as how the IMF works and subventions.

It is probably too early to say what are the actions that will result from ACRA. There are quite a number of mechanisms for monitoring the aid effectiveness agenda. Certainly, Concern has been working in Mozambique with a couple of other NGOs to see how that works on the ground. It is probably much too early to know whether the ideas from ACRA have filtered down. That arose only a month or two ago.

Chairman

Is there an issue in that regard? Vietnam and Tanzania were the two examples I heard mentioned, where government officials in the health care sector, in particular in Tanzania, were spending more time dealing with the donors than with the health care system. Does Concern find that to be the case?

Mr. Connell Foley

Yes, mechanisms such as the joint assistance strategies are meant to minimise that level of working with many different donors. Certainly, Concern tries to harmonise with other donors to reduce the amount of administrative burden and time spent by local partners by working with many different donors. That idea of co-ordination of donors, harmonisation and the joint assistant strategy type of arrangement are obviously designed to do it. It would take quite a while for them to kick in and be effective.

Deputy Rory O’Hanlon

I thank Mr. Foley for his presentation. While substantial progress has been made over the years, obviously we are all very disappointed at the level of progress.

I have three brief questions. I ask Mr. Foley to elaborate on co-ordination. There is a multiplicity of agencies, including State agencies, and it is a question of ensuring the people who are hungry get the maximum value for the money spent. What is being done to ensure better co-ordination?

Second, is Concern satisfied with what the World Trade Organisation in its negotiations is doing to give the underdeveloped countries the opportunity to develop, particularly in the sphere of agriculture?

Third, what are the three priorities Mr. Foley would like to see the Government or governments around the world take up to address the issue?

Mr. Connell Foley

There is a multiplicity of agencies and there is no easy solution to co-ordinating them better. Humanitarian reform is about trying to streamline the work of many different agencies such as host governments or the UN properly. That is partly what the aid effectiveness agenda is about. It is a long process and there is no simple answer to it. Mr. Wagstaff might have examples relating to agriculture and health that would bring that point to life.

Mr. Paul Wagstaff

In emergencies, the UN has a system of clusters. Agencies come together in a health cluster or water cluster or agriculture cluster to reduce duplication and to enable funding to go through the cluster and to be distributed to the agencies in each cluster. That works quite well. It is a relatively new system but the initial results are quite good. Long-term development is different and that depends very much on the strength of government, particularly local government. If a good regional or local government is in place and we can work with the government and other agencies, we work according to the priorities of a district. The district could ask Concern to support the education sector and Oxfam to support other sectors where help is needed. Mozambique is a good example. At provincial level, the government is good at ensuring agencies support the priority areas and do not overlap. In other countries where the governments are weaker, we must do this informally through discussions between agencies.

Ms Lynnda Kiess

With the large increase in funding for HIV-AIDS over the past five years, there is a great deal of opportunity for learning about how funding can be better co-ordinated. There is the global fund for HIV, TB and malaria, PEPFAR and the MAPs. They are being analysed carefully to see how they worked at a global level and at national level. We should use that learning as we think forward to how we address hunger or examine aid effectiveness.

Mr. Connell Foley

A number of organisations were set up many years ago such as the International Fund for Agriculture Development, IFAD, and, in many ways, those who call for a global fund for agriculture are seeking to replicate the role of that organisation. We need to examine the effectiveness of organisations that have been set up to ensure we are not duplicating their work.

We are not satisfied with progress at the WTO talks because there has not been much. It is an extremely complex issue. Clearly we want to level the playing field for the poorest people in the poorest countries but we are not satisfied with progress. I do not have specific suggestions on what progress should be made.

It is difficult to outline three priorities for the Government on the spot. The issue of political leadership to analyse the vertical funds versus the horizontal alignment and the duplication of institutions and processes needs to be tackled and if we could improve on that, it would be helpful. The notion of specific allocation to hunger is good. We are part of an alliance of European NGOs and we examined the European commitment to MDG1, for example, and there is none. There is hardly any reference in the European Commission's work to MDG1, which concerns reducing the number of people living on less than $1 a day. It has targets and specifically mentions hunger. There is no mention of MDG1 and hunger in European Union circles, which is worrying. Leadership on that at European level is extremely important.

We are exploring social protection and how we can support African countries in this regard and convince African finance Ministers that social protection is a way of getting people out of poverty. While it has costs, it has huge knock-on benefits and reduces the additional burden on the taxpayer or donor in many cases.

Senator Ann Ormonde

I am delighted to be present, having visited Malawi in the past week. I witnessed the root causes of hunger. I asked whether programmes overlapped when I was there because we met many representatives of Concern and other NGOs. Could more rationalisation be undertaken? Malawi is a young democracy and its leaders are still trying to get their act together. However, it is a great opportunity as the democracy is in its infancy but it is flaky and the question arises as to whether it will be in place in another 12 months. The food security and water management programmes are agricultural initiatives. Mr. Foley mentioned the case for policy change by moving from big farmers to small farmers and how best the quality of nutrition can be improved for those in rural areas. This can help to improve the quality of life.

Empowering women is another way to improve qualify of life. I never realised how much of a role women play in under developed countries. They need to be given every opportunity because they are the core and this could be seen everywhere we went in Malawi. When we needed interpretation facilities and explanations for the work on the ground, women came forward. Women should be empowered as the way forward.

I agree political leadership is needed to establish how best agencies can work with national governments to establish a local or regional infrastructure. Generally, such an infrastructure is not in place and policy change is necessary.

Mr. Foley referred to the global fund for agriculture. How does that work?

Mr. Connell Foley

The idea of the global fund is all the donors put money into it. Developing countries examine their needs and then they apply to the fund. It is a quicker and more efficient way of targeting funds at where they are needed. Otherwise, one must go through bureaucratic processes about how funds are allocated according to proposals and so on. The HIV fund is most well known.

Senator Dominic Hannigan

I also had the opportunity to visit Malawi last week. I met Concern staff and was educated by them. With regard to the number of people going hungry, is the current total of 160 million expected to increase by 100 million because of increases in fertiliser and fuel prices? How is that impacting on Concern's allocation of resources and on its areas of priority?

At last month's conference, Kofi Annan wanted OECD countries to follow the lead of Ireland, the UK and Spain and put a timetable in place to reach the 0.7% commitment. What is Mr. Foley's initial assessment of whether countries are shying away from the commitment as a result of the credit crunch and the financial crisis? Ireland is still very much on course to reach the target. Has he an assessment of whether other countries are managing to retain the same support for overseas development?

Mr. Connell Foley

On the latter, probably not. The experience has been that people are not moving towards that commitment very strongly. We are one of the few countries doing so. Given the economic recession, we are talking about a percentage of our economy. In absolute terms, in Ireland that figure will go down as our economy shrinks. A country's contribution concerns a moral responsibility towards an allocation of the national budget. The general assessment is that very few countries are moving towards that.

Many of the calls that arise from the conference suggest we need to push this. Given that Ireland makes an allocation from its national budget, we need to push leadership, particularly at European level, to do the same. Ireland has an opportunity to play a leadership role at that level and we should push the European countries that are not moving towards a 0.7% contribution to do so. That is within our sphere of influence. If we could achieve that at European level, it would be significant globally.

With regard to the impact of food price on our programmes, our people on the ground monitor the impact of increases in food and fuel prices and adjust our programmes accordingly. We did not make a significant change to the scope and nature of our programmes due to price increases, so our interventions have not changed significantly. Perhaps Mr. Wagstaff might like to comment on this.

Mr. Paul Wagstaff

Our operating costs have increased. These costs relate not just to the people we work with but to the staff we employ. In some countries, our staff are struggling to feed their families. Our operating costs must increase as a result. As Mr. Foley said, we have started doing surveys on a more regular basis to see how people are coping and what strategies they are using to try to cope with price rises and then considering how we can help. It often happens that people eat fewer meals a day, so instead of eating two meals they eat one meal a day. They look for cheaper food, therefore eating less nutritious meals. This is where we come in with assistance in the form of nutrition programmes or supplementary feeding where people miss out on meals.

Mr. Connell Foley

We have been providing a nutrition service in a number of countries.

Ms Lynnda Kiess

We have a kind of ongoing nutrition surveillance service in most of the countries in which we work so we can identify issues. We have found, particularly in Bangladesh — this goes back to what was said about women being usually the first to give up a meal — that the giving up of a meal is a good indicator to identify an issue at household level. If we just measure how many times the household eats, we can easily miss what is happening within the household. We try to capture this kind of information through our data collection. We want to see when women are affected, because they are usually the first to be affected. Children are affected early too because the quality of the diet may not be as good. They may still be eating three times a day, but eating plain rices three times of day instead of a diversified diet.

The situation varies in different countries. Each country must look at how it will respond. In some places, if there are large urban slum areas, there may be more problems in those areas. If the population is more rural, the issues are different. Different groups and parts of the population will be affected in different countries.

We are trying to target the poorest of the poor, but that group is going to get bigger and we will have to make decisions around resources and their allocation. Instead of a target population of several thousand, we expect to have a much larger target. We will have to make decisions based on that increase.

Mr. Connell Foley

In fact, based on nutrition surveys, we have taken on a new programme in the north of Ethiopia. Given the scale of need in each of the countries we work in, we are currently considering the countries in which we work and readjusting our resourcing. We are considering pulling out of a number of countries in order to be able to deepen and improve our programmes in the poorest ones.

Deputy Seán Ardagh

How effective is the system of providing the money? Is it going to the head of a family who can decide on buying food or educating a child? How is the system being developed, could more be done and is it effective?

Mr. Connell Foley

There are many different mechanisms to provide assistance. Voucher systems, for example, have been used. In Rwanda, for example, they use voucher systems to ensure farmers have access to finance, seed and other inputs and that is effective. It works differently in different places. The experience in Malawi in the past year or two, in terms of the use of subsidies and fertilisers, has been positive. There are downsides to these systems in the long term and perhaps Mr. Wagstaff has some specific examples with regard to farmers.

Mr. Paul Wagstaff

The cost is a factor. The question is whether ministries of agriculture can continue to subsidise fertilisers, particularly in view of the fact fertiliser prices are rising around the world. One of the big issues currently is that although food prices are rising, which means farmers with a surplus should be getting more money, the cost of fertilisers is rising at a far greater rate than food prices. This is the case even in Ireland. Therefore, farmers do not have the inputs they need in order to meet market demand and take advantage of the opportunity.

Chairman

How does the committee think we should proceed? Are members happy we have dealt with most of the questions or do they want to come back in 20 minutes after the vote?

Deputy Seán Ardagh

There is no point in coming back.

Chairman

If any issues arise that Concern would like us to examine in the future, please let us know. These meetings are very informative and because the sub-committee visits places like Malawi we need to get feedback from groups like Concern. I thank the delegation for coming in today.

The sub-committee adjourned at 1.20 p.m. sine die.