With drought decimating livelihoods, agriculture must be at core of humanitarian response

FAO Deputy Director-General, Laurent Thomas, spoke today at a high-level event on responding to the urgent humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa, taking place on the margins of the UN General Assembly High-level Week.

At today’s high-level event on the humanitarian situation in the Horn of Africa, co-hosted by the Governments of Italy, Qatar, United Kingdom, and United States, in cooperation with the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the Governments of Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia, FAO spoke on the importance of supporting agricultural and pastoralist livelihoods as critical time-sensitive efforts to save lives and livelihoods, both today and ahead of a future climate, economic, or conflict-induced shock.

The event helped raise awareness of the worsening humanitarian situation across Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia. It also served as an opportunity for UN Member States to present urgent international pledges and commitments to saving lives today and to safeguarding, rehabilitating, and transforming livelihoods to prevent further catastrophe. 

Calling for the prioritization of agriculture and emergency livelihood support as part of the humanitarian response in the region was Laurent Thomas, FAO Deputy Director-General. 

“Drought is hitting hardest those who rely on agriculture or livestock for their survival,” Thomas said on the wider Horn of Africa situation. Speaking on Somalia in particular, “it is rural communities who are most at risk. Their survival depends first on the health of their herds,” he said. 

A crisis in the making, steadily eroding livelihoods and pushing coping capacities to the brink

The deadly combination of prolonged drought due to multiple failed rainy seasons, in addition to conflict, skyrocketing food, fertilizer, and energy prices, and the still-present impacts of COVID-19, is making for an especially desperate situation.

As we look to having four consecutive failed rainy seasons in some areas, the food insecurity situation has reached a tipping point, with famine expected in parts of Somalia as early as October unless immediate, at-scale food and livelihood assistance reaches those in need today.

This multifaceted nature of the hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa is the focus of the recently launched ‘Hunger Hotspots – FAO-WFP early warnings on acute food insecurity’ report. The report lays out the need for short-term protective measures to be put in place before new humanitarian needs materialize, together with actions to address existing needs, both in this region and in other current or soon-to-be food crisis contexts.

The FAO Deputy Director-General also touched on how the greatest impacts in reducing humanitarian needs in the Horn of Africa and beyond will be seen when these interventions are implemented alongside increased investment in resilience building and disaster risk reduction.

For that to happen, a paradigm shift is necessary, however, one where agriculture and pastoralism is prioritized.

“Agriculture must be at the core of the humanitarian response,” Thomas said, explaining that urgent, time-sensitive agricultural interventions, especially when combined with cash assistance, “have enormous impacts on food availability, nutrition, and displacement [prevention], among others, significantly cutting other humanitarian costs”.

“This is resilience building in action. This is disaster risk reduction in action. This is sound anticipatory action. This is at the heart of the concept of the [humanitarian-development-peace] nexus,” he added.

Somalia: with warnings largely ignored and funding falling short, famine expected in October

The Horn of Africa is facing a staggering hunger crisis, with Somalia in particular a case in point of the most extreme manifestation of this humanitarian catastrophe, that could have been largely prevented. Famine in two areas of the Bay region is expected in October, and the window of opportunity to save hundreds of thousands more from starvation is rapidly closing.

The survival of these predominantly rural, agricultural, and pastoralist populations depends, first and foremost, on the survival of their herds, Thomas stressed. 

“Their children’s nutrition is inextricably linked to the health and productivity of their animals, and those animals have been dying at a shocking rate for the last year,” he added.

The number of people in need of urgent humanitarian assistance in Somalia has increased from 4.1 million at the start of 2022 to 7.1 million people between June and September 2022.

Humanitarians, governments, local communities have been issuing warnings since mid-2021, Thomas said. “We have gone largely unheard," he remarked, pointing now to a likely and unprecedented fifth consecutive poor rainy season on the horizon. 

Resources to these communities, however, are falling short of the enormous need, a reality that is seen in other food crisis response efforts as well, where humanitarian emergency response funding to the agriculture and food security sectors is lagging even as hunger skyrockets and famine risks inch closer. 

Related links

• Watch the recording.
• Revisit the remarks by Under Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator Martin Griffiths.
• Read more about FAO’s work on emergency response and resilience building here.