Ethiopia Famine: 40th Anniversary

Lord Oates Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interest as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger. I was 14 years old when that famous Michael Buerk broadcast led the 6 pm evening news on Tuesday 23 October 1984. It grabbed my attention like no news item ever had before or ever has since. It opened with these powerful words, which have haunted me ever since:

“Dawn, and as the sun breaks through the piercing chill of night on the plain outside Korem, it lights up a biblical famine, now, in the twentieth century. This place, say workers here, is the closest thing to hell on earth. Thousands of … people are coming here for help. Many find only death. They flood in every day from villages hundreds of miles away, dulled by hunger, driven beyond the point of desperation. Fifteen thousand children here now; suffering, confused, lost. Death is all around, a child or an adult dies every twenty minutes. Korem, an insignificant town, has become a place of grief”.


That broadcast shocked a pop star—Bob Geldof—into action, and a world out of its indifference. However naive the response was, it was the waking of a movement which made a huge amount of difference in years to come. It changed my life; it led me to run away from home. I managed to get myself to Ethiopia, feeling somehow that simply by the passion of my desire to do something, I could make a contribution. Noble Lords will not be surprised to learn that, when I arrived, I discovered fairly rapidly that the demand for unskilled 15 year-old English kids was not great and that Ethiopia, at that time under its Marxist military Government, was not a fun place to be. But, luckily, more strategic responses were in hand.

Over the next three decades, as we have heard, huge progress was made in reducing poverty and hunger. As my noble friend Lady Featherstone said, that led to the proportion of people in the world going hungry halving between 1990 and 2015—a huge accomplishment. In Ethiopia, following the defeat of that brutal Marxist-Leninist regime of Colonel Mengistu, remarkable advances were also made. Economic growth took off and a focus by the new Government on pro-poor policies, supported by donor countries, including and in particular the UK, saw rates of extreme poverty and hunger reduced by half.

Today, as we have also heard, much of that progress has been going into reverse around the world, including in Ethiopia. Internal conflict, disruption to food systems as a result of Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and drought and flooding, have led to a deteriorating situation across many regions of Ethiopia. The World Food Programme estimates that 19.7 million people are now facing high levels of food insecurity.

The UK Government have a long-standing commitment to development in Ethiopia and it was heartening that the Minister for Development, Anneliese Dodds, visited Ethiopia just a month after taking office and placed a real focus on the need to resolve conflict and secure peace and security across the country. It is also great to know that the noble Lord the Minister for Africa was also recently in Ethiopia. It is extremely heartening to have a Minister with such a long-standing commitment as a champion in the fight against malnutrition.

It is vital that we maintain our commitment to tackling the causes of malnutrition and hunger, because Ethiopia’s experience is not an outlier but part of a pattern where the achievements of the past three decades are going into reverse. Today, the World Food Programme estimates that 309 million people in 71 countries face acute hunger, and millions more are not getting the nutrients they need.

That matters because it means millions of children dying every year unnecessarily, and millions more who will not have the nutrients they need to develop physically and cognitively. It means lost productivity and economies that will not prosper, jobs that will not be available and societies that will be destabilised. In neighbouring Sudan, almost unnoticed by the world, a catastrophe is playing out that may prove even more devastating than the 1980s famine in Ethiopia. Already, as we heard in a debate we had at the initiative of the Minister a few weeks ago, famine has been declared in regions of Darfur and is likely to become far more widespread, and the displacement of people is having an impact on Ethiopia as well, adding to the pressures that it faces.

Even before the brutal civil war began over a year ago in Sudan, hunger was widespread and contributing to the displacement of people—because that is what happens when people go without food: they move, and when people move, tensions rise, with competition for pastureland and water, and other resources.

As in Ethiopia, so in Sudan—hunger drives instability and conflict, and conflict drives hunger, in a vicious and horrifying circle. Outside actors helping to sustain and fuel the conflict in Sudan have a wide series of motivations, one of which is the desire to secure access to food production. The United Arab Emirates, which denies involvement in the conflict but is widely held to be supporting the Rapid Support Forces, has invested heavily in agricultural land in Sudan as part of its efforts to secure food security for its own population, adding to this complex web of hunger and violence. In Ethiopia, Sudan, Gaza, Yemen and the DRC, conflict and hunger are coming together to cause immense human suffering. As Concern Worldwide (UK) warned in a report published today, climate change is only exacerbating the pressures on food systems, threatening hunger and instability across Africa.

If we are not as morally outraged as we should be about the suffering of millions of people around the world who do not receive the nutrition that they need to survive and thrive, perhaps we should consider the geopolitical consequences of a world that becomes ever hungrier. My hope and prayer are that we rediscover the moral outrage we felt in 1984 and marry it with our self-interest, so that I can look back at the 14 year- old me who sat and watched that BBC news broadcast and say, “In 2024, the world woke again from its indifference and demanded action”.

Sudan

Lord Oates Excerpts

Friday 13th September 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Oates (LD)]

My Lords, I declare my interests as chief executive of United Against Malnutrition and Hunger and a trustee of the Royal African Society. I am pleased to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Cox, with her great knowledge and experience of Sudan. I join others in congratulating the noble Lord, Lord Collins, on his appointment as Minister for Africa. It was a pleasure to work with him in opposition and I welcome the renewed focus and vigour that he is bringing to addressing this crisis in Sudan. I very much welcome his powerful opening statement.

A few years ago, I had the opportunity to visit Khartoum and to meet with many brave people who were standing against military tyranny, and campaigning for peace and a return to civilian rule. Tragically, hopes that such an outcome might be achievable were ultimately betrayed by the self-interest and greed of the leaders of the Sudanese Armed Forces and the Rapid Support Forces. The result, as we have heard from the Minister and other speakers, including my colleague my noble friend Lady Suttie, who has such knowledge of the area, is catastrophe. Tens of thousands of people, perhaps well over 100,000, are already dead. Over 10 million people have been displaced from their homes, with 2 million of them externally displaced, causing tensions and instability in surrounding countries and driving migration further afield.

It is facile to pretend that there are simple solutions to a crisis of this scale and complexity. None the less, there is much more that the world can and should be doing to address the situation in Sudan and, as the penholder on Sudan in the Security Council, the UK obviously has particular responsibilities in this regard. I strongly agree with what the noble Baroness, Lady Amos, said in her powerful speech about how, ultimately, the political track is the most important, because we have to have a political agreement and resolution if we are to bring a sustainable end to the suffering, but I want to focus on three areas of practical action in my remarks today. The first is humanitarian access, the second the funding of the humanitarian need and the third the accountabilities of the parties to the conflict.

Humanitarian agencies tell us that hunger has become the primary cause of suffering for the people of Sudan. The World Food Programme estimates that over 8 million people, as we have heard, face emergency levels of food insecurity and that 755,000 people in 10 Sudanese states are facing starvation and death. Access to provide humanitarian relief to people in the greatest need is severely constrained by the warring parties. Aid deliveries are hampered by lengthy clearance and bureaucratic hurdles imposed by the Sudanese Armed Forces and, in RSF areas, by violence, threats to the security of convoys and attempts to elicit bribes. The World Food Programme told the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sudan and South Sudan—the noble Lord, Lord Alton, referred to its excellent briefing—that 45 separate negotiations are required to get aid from the Adre border crossing point into Darfur. Meanwhile, the trucks that left Port Sudan three weeks ago for Zamzam refugee camp, where famine has been declared, have still not got there.

The situation, of course, is highly complex, but there are things that the UK and the international community could do to improve the supply of aid into these regions. First, international organisations argue that we should specifically delink negotiations for humanitarian access from ceasefire talks, so that if such talks fail, as they currently tragically are, a track to humanitarian access can continue separately. Secondly, we need to be willing to take greater risks and be innovative with our approach to aid if we are to reach the people in the most desperate need. That means being more open to supplying aid through local NGOs on the ground, which have the best chance of reaching the hardest areas. Innovative approaches to get food where it is needed are also required, which the UK could champion.

In addition to direct funding to supply food, emergency therapeutic supplements and medicines, the international community needs to use cash transfers and market mechanisms where they are the most effective means to reach people. Markets continue to function in Sudan and cash transfers can be the most effective methods of providing vulnerable people with the means to access food and other necessities. However, if such transfers are not to drive inflationary spirals, investment is required on both the supply side and on the demand side. Market operators need access to liquidity to meet increased demand, but they also need the assurance the cash transfer model can provide that demand for increased supply will be sustained.

The second area that I want to focus on is funding. The UN appeal for Sudan is only a third funded and the regional refugee response just 8.5% funded. The failure of the international community to come anywhere close to meeting these funding needs is short- sighted in the extreme. The shortfall in the Sudan appeal points to a likely spiralling of the hunger crisis within Sudan, greater displacement of people internally and externally, and further pressures on surrounding countries. Likewise, the almost complete failure to fund the regional refugee response is morally unacceptable, placing as it does huge burdens on neighbouring countries least able to bear them. It is also catastrophically short-sighted, as a failure to address the refugee crisis regionally is only likely to see migrant movements towards our borders and those of our partners. While the UK contribution is welcome, much more is needed to meet the scale of the refugee crisis.

According to data from the Economist magazine, 60% of the refugees in the camps around Calais are already from Sudan. Meanwhile, the UK expends huge amounts of aid funds intended to be used overseas to meet in-country refugee costs. Sudan demonstrates the counterproductive folly of this approach and I hope that the new Government will change it. I hope that, in his response, the Minister can reassure us that the UK will use its role as penholder to urgently convene donor countries to step up to the plate on both the Sudan appeal and the refugee response appeal, and to explain to them the catastrophic consequences of failing to do so.

Lastly on funding, while commitments are welcome, it is disbursement of those commitments that make the difference. Can the Minister look at how the £97 million pledged by the UK Government can be disbursed as rapidly as possible, utilising the approaches proposed by the humanitarian agencies, while being prepared to raise our risk tolerance for humanitarian funding?

On the accountability of warring parties, particularly what seems to be the deliberate use of hunger as a strategy in this conflict, can the Minister tell us what progress there has been towards the UK’s ratification of the amendment of Article 8 of the Rome statute to include starvation as a war crime in the context of conflicts not of an international character, as organisations such as Action Against Hunger have repeatedly urged? Can he also tell us what efforts have been made to reiterate the responsibilities of warring parties to comply with Resolution 2417?

No one who listened to the testimony given to the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Sudan and South Sudan on Wednesday could come away anything other than horrified by the suffering of the Sudanese people that they bore witness to, or by the silence and indifference of the world to that suffering. The leader of the delegation from the Sudanese women’s shuttle diplomacy initiative powerfully conveyed to us the sense of abandonment that the Sudanese people feel: “We have the right also to live as humans, but we are forgotten”, she said. We must ensure that the people are not forgotten, but we must do much more than that. We must use our role as penholder at the Security Council to galvanise international action to resolve this conflict and end the terrible suffering of the Sudanese people. I welcome the Minister’s obvious commitment to this end.