Aid agencies must implement long-term solutions in Horn of Africa to 'banish hunger'

Mar 2 2012

With each of the three droughts in the Horn of Africa over the last decade, "the international community agreed that long-term measures were needed to prevent another tragedy. But each time, when the rains finally came, the world's good intentions melted away," Jose Graziano de Silva, director-general of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) writes in a Project Syndicate opinion piece. "We must ensure that this does not happen again by joining forces now to banish hunger from the region once and for all," he continues.

U.N. agencies and international non-governmental organizations have implemented "cash-for-work and food-voucher schemes" in the region, "stimulat[ing] both local supply and demand" by "allow[ing] families to buy food locally, enabling them to remain near their homes, while also stimulating economic recovery and rehabilitating the local infrastructure needed for agriculture and livestock production," de Silva writes. He notes that FAO has renewed its commitment to a "hunger-free Africa," and concludes that by "[l]inking emergency assistance with long-term measures," the world "can offer a way out of protracted crisis and onto a path of sustainable development" (3/1).