Keeping hunger at bay and the people safe

by Alejo Carpentier

With the worldwide numbers of displaced people at all-time highs, migration has become the watchword for humanitarian crises. Given the cost in economic, political and moral terms of coping with mass migration – and particular the experience of what has been unfolding this year in Europe – the need for a universal set of rules and principles is increasingly evident. So is the desire to keep people safely in their homes.

But few understand how practically difficult it has proven to fund such development. First, increasing amounts of official aid flows are tagged to humanitarian crises, reducing the funds available for sustainable development plans. Second, much of the promised aid never materializes, for a host of reasons.

Post quake

Take Nepal. Less than half the reconstruction aid pledged in the wake of an April earthquake has been delivered, according to UN officials. Controversies over the Himalayan nation’s new draft constitution are hardly encouraging to donors. The result is that the disaster may translate into a longer-lasting catastrophe than it had to be, ultimately crimping economic opportunity and food security.

Or take Yemen. Saudi Arabia announced a large donation for humanitarian operations there, even though it is engaged in the military conflict that has exacerbated displacement and poverty.

Meanwhile, amid the horror stories of refugee mistreatment in Europe, Tunisia is now building a moat along its border with Libya, demonstrating fears of its own. It’s pretty evident that the combined sums spent on deterring migration and humanitarian aid to refugees makes talk of encouraging growth in the source countries an exercise in pure optimism.

That may be an international diplomatic failure – and many of the returnees say they blame the United Nations for their plight. But it is a practical issue, and that is where the new framework may help.

FAO, for its part, has already begun acting as if the agreement were in place. This summer it partnered with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) to help smallholder agricultural production in Syria by around 500 families who returned. It’s a small step towards keeping development alive amid an overriding humanitarian emergency.

“Supporting agricultural based livelihoods can contribute to both helping people stay on their land when they feel safe to do so and to create the conditions for the return of refugees, migrants and displaced people,” says FAO Director-General, José Graziano da Silva.

To be sure, the framework was devised to deal with protracted crises – places where food insecurity has been reported on a nearly perpetual basis for at least a decade.

There are 21 such places today. But most such crises take place in fragile states, where conflict is rife either as a cause or an effect.

That is perhaps where the new framework may prove most innovative, according to Daniel Maxwell of Tufts University.

In line with the universal bent of the Sustainable Development Goals, it suggests going beyond reliance on state building as the sanctioned channel of intervention and points to consensus that strengthening livelihoods should be the priority.

- IPS