By Finbarr O’Reilly, Reuters

CARE’s report quotes a 9-year-old Ethiopian boy, Mohammed, who says families he knows in the capital Addis Ababa are eating in shifts, the oldest on Monday, the second on Tuesday, the third on Wednesday. “If he’s lucky there is something for the eldest to eat on Wednesday morning or evening again.”

This year, as a food emergency in drought-prone Ethiopia stares donors in the face, many are splashing cash around to save lives. And yet, CARE says that just months earlier some of the same donors turned down its requests for funding to avoid a food crisis in the Horn of Africa.

Overhaul the global relief system now or watch millions more people slide over the edge into destitution, an aid agency says in a report full of warnings to donors, governments and humanitarians alike.

As rocketing food and fuel prices force more people to resort to begging and more children to give up school to work, CARE International says it would be better – and much cheaper – to act now than to try to wade in later with inefficient life-saving aid.

“We’ve got a choice what to do. Wait until people need emergency response – and that’s extremely expensive – or look at new ways of supporting people to feed themselves,” says Vanessa Rubin, who co-wrote CARE’s report.

The global food crisis has tipped 100 million people into destitution in the last two years, CARE says. And the forecast for the near future is dire.

“The price of food and fuel have shot up – that’s not going to change,” Rubin says. “We’re seeing more and more sudden emergencies – and with climate change that’s only going to get worse. And in some of the countries we’re talking about, we’re seeing population growth accelerating at an alarming rate.

“Those three things are going to push more people over the edge to the point where they can’t meet their needs.”

The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation has just calculated that 75 million more people were added to the ranks of the world’s hungry in 2007, taking the global figure to roughly 925 million.

The report recommends a new global fund to deal with the crisis. The fund would involve the United Nations, multilateral organisations, local government, aid agencies, civil society, the private sector and beneficiaries, the agency envisions.

CARE doesn’t say how much the fund would need, but British-based aid agency Oxfam estimated in a June report that it would take $14.5 bn to meet the needs of people affected by the food crisis now.

However Rubin says it’s not just about more aid, but about the kind of aid.

CARE’s report says relief at the moment is too short-term and too focused on responding when an emergency is in full swing instead of protecting the ways people make a living.

In Niger, too, three years after the country’s worst food emergency for decades, CARE says almost 20 percent of the population is again facing hunger as drought and flooding wipe out their dwindling food stocks.

“Instead of just waiting until an emergency reaches its peak, people need long-term, predictable aid so agencies can identify the people who are most vulnerable and help them become more resilient,” Rubin says.

CARE says governments all round the world should be putting safety nets in place to help their populations avoid slipping over the edge, and relief agencies need an urgent shake-up too.

“We need to find clever and different ways to use limited resources to change things,” she says.

CARE calls for aid agencies to turn down monetised food aid from the U.S. government – food aid sold to raise cash for poverty-raising programmes.

CARE made a dramatic turnaround on this issue several years ago when it began arguing that the U.S. system was inefficient, wasted half of every dollar spent on shipping food across the world, and undermined local markets by competing with local farmers’ crops.

Humanitarians also need to get to grips with the reality that many of the people most at risk today are urban poor, and shift their thinking accordingly.

And they should be helping pastoralists to retain their way of life in a changing world. The traditional herding that sustains many people across Africa is viable, CARE says, but many communities could do with a lot more support accessing credit or veterinary expertise or setting up fodder banks to tide them through hard times.

The world’s wealthy countries are already falling far short of their pledges under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGS) – approved in 2000 by U.N. member states and the world’s top development organisations – to boost development aid and slash poverty by 2015.

By then, CARE estimates, nearly $200 billion will have been spent fighting emergencies, if we carry on with the status quo.

A meeting in New York on Sept. 25 to review progress on the MDGS will confirm everyone is failing to meet their targets.

And unless they make headway with the first goal – halving hunger – CARE says it will be impossible to achieve the rest, such as gender equality and education.

“Doing nothing,” Rubin says, “is not an option.”

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia – A workshop to discuss and improve on a Draft Communication and Advocacy Strategy of the African Union, jointly elaborated by the Division of Communication and Information (DCI) of the African Union and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) Representation to the African Union in Addis Ababa, opened today Wednesday 17 September 2008 at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

For two days, participants will brainstorm on a framework to improve communication and advocacy in the African Union.

Speaking while presiding at the opening ceremony, the Head of the DCI, Mrs. Habiba Mejri-Cheikh Habiba, said, the information, communications and advocacy strategy is intended to be a dynamic instrument, isolating key objectives, audiences and themes and associating them with appropriate channels. “It also ensures flexibility to respond to changing circumstances in a changing world”. She underscored the need to involve all the actors in the domain of communication from the African Union regional offices, the Regional Economic Communities (RECs), the AU organs, and the AU partners to share their experiences and good practices with a view to enriching the document that will project a balanced image of Africa worldwide.

The Director of the UNFPA Liaison Office, Ms. Etta Tadesse on her part lauded the Division of Communication and Information for organizing the workshop on communication, which she said is the key to development in Africa. She said, due to the many challenges Africa is facing, there is need to call on every African to contribute in his/her own way to the integration of the continent. “This has to be done by dissemination of information about the African Union by involving the media at all levels while monitoring feedback to be able to respond to the demands of the population including the stakeholders”, she said.

According to the Commissioner for Rural Economy and Agriculture of the African Union,

Mrs. Rhoda Peace TUMUSIIME, the workshop to validate a strategy for Communication and Information for the African Union is timely as the Union needs more visibility and advocacy to showcase its present and future activities given that the global community needs to know more about Africa. ” It is important for the different Departments of the AU to interact and galvanise their various communication activities to ensure fruitful management of the AU”, she explained.

Participants at the workshop listened to a presentation on the « Framework for Information, Communication and Advocacy » by Dr. George Ngwa, Communication Expert, UNFPA; the presentation of the the DCI Work Plan 2008-2011, outlining in a pragmatic and operational manner the implementation of the communication and sensitisation process adopted by the African Union for the next four years, was done by Mrs. Habiba MEJRI-CHEIKH, DCI Head; a presentation of the Current AU communication and Advocacy practices in the DCI by Mrs. Wynne MUSABAYANA, Communication Expert and a presentation of the AU website by Mrs. Christiane Yanrou, Senior Web-Administrator at the African Union Commission.

Representatives from the following AU Organs presented the state of communication in their respective structures. They are: the Pan-African Parliament (PAP), the Inter-Governmental Authority on Development (IGAD), the Department of Peace and Security of the AU, the AU Mission in New York, USA, the African Mission in Somalia (AMISOM), Nairobi branch, and the Semi-Arid Food Grain Research and Development the (SAFGRAD).

Other participants at the workshop include: Communication Officials from the Southern African Development Community (SADC), “Communauté économique des Etats de l’Afrique centrale” (CEEAC), East African Community (EAC), African Development Bank (ADB), Economic Commission for Africa (ECA), United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF),

African Child Policy Forum, AU Mission in Geneva, AU Mission in Brussels, AU Office Lilongwe, and Departments of the African Union Commission.

The Workshop for the validation of the African Union Framework for Information, Communication and Advocacy ends tomorrow Thursday 18 September 2008.

SOURCE : African Union Commission (AUC)

By UN Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN)

“The knowledge [that FGM is harmful] is increasing,” said Abate Gudunfa, head of the Ethiopian National Committee on Traditional Practices (commonly referred to as EGLDAM – its name in Amharic]. “Children born more recently are safer.”

Still, FGM is carried out on girls as young as 80 days old, particularly in the predominately Christian highlands, and up to 14 years of age in the lowland Muslim regions. A network of 40 NGOs, including EGLDAM, the government and international organisations, are involved in anti-FGM campaigns in Ethiopia. Policies have also been reviewed to ensure participants are punished.

“Prevalence, especially among newly born children is decreasing – meaning that more families have sufficient awareness and do not support this practice anymore,” Abate added.

A 2007 survey conducted by EGLDAM found that prevalence across the country had dropped from 61 percent in 1997 to 46 percent.

Nine regions including Tigray, the Southern and Oromiya as well as two city administrations namely the capital Addis Ababa and Dire Dawa, showed the highest improvement. Other regions recorded minimal change. “There is almost no decrease in Afar and Somali [regions] – the strongholds of infibulation,” the survey noted.

EGLDAM found a decrease in almost all ethnic groups. Some 29 groups reflected a 20 percent decline, of which 18 were located in the Southern Region.

“Those ethnic groups …should be considered real success areas and given due attention as possible learning sites,” EGLDAM said. “Six ethnic groups show about or less than 10 percent decrease and should be considered as groups of probable major resistance to change.”

These included the Harari, Shinasha, Alaba and Hadia ethnic groups.

Globally, an estimated two million girls are still at risk of undergoing FGM each year. Activists say FGM is deeply entrenched in society despite various efforts to stop it.

According to the Inter-African Committee, the practice is a serious health issue affecting women, helping to spread HIV/AIDS and responsible for high female mortality rates in Africa.