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2002
THE DEVELOPING FOOD SECURITY CRISIS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
HEARING
BEFORE THE
COMMITTEE ON
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED SEVENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
JUNE 13, 2002
Serial No. 107–91
Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations
Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations
COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
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HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois, Chairman
BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York
JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa
DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska
CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey
DAN BURTON, Indiana
ELTON GALLEGLY, California
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida
CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina
DANA ROHRABACHER, California
EDWARD R. ROYCE, California
PETER T. KING, New York
STEVE CHABOT, Ohio
AMO HOUGHTON, New York
JOHN M. McHUGH, New York
JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana
THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado
RON PAUL, Texas
NICK SMITH, Michigan
JOSEPH R. PITTS, Pennsylvania
DARRELL E. ISSA, California
ERIC CANTOR, Virginia
JEFF FLAKE, Arizona
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BRIAN D. KERNS, Indiana
JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia
MARK GREEN, Wisconsin
TOM LANTOS, California
HOWARD L. BERMAN, California
GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York
ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa
DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey
ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey
SHERROD BROWN, Ohio
CYNTHIA A. McKINNEY, Georgia
EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama
BRAD SHERMAN, California
ROBERT WEXLER, Florida
JIM DAVIS, Florida
ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York
WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts
GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York
BARBARA LEE, California
JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York
JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania
EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon
SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada
GRACE NAPOLITANO, California
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ADAM B. SCHIFF, California
DIANE E. WATSON, California
THOMAS E. MOONEY, SR., Staff Director/General Counsel
ROBERT R. KING, Democratic Staff Director
PETER D.R. SMITH, Professional Staff Member
LIBERTY DUNN, Staff Associate
C O N T E N T S
WITNESSES
The Honorable Andrew Natsios, Administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development
James T. Morris, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme
Bruce Wilkinson, Senior Vice President for International Programs, World Vision United States
LETTERS, STATEMENTS, ETC., SUBMITTED FOR THE HEARING
The Honorable Henry J. Hyde, a Representative in Congress from the State of Illinois, and Chairman, Committee on International Relations: Prepared statement
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The Honorable Andrew Natsios: Prepared statement
James T. Morris: Prepared statement
WFP–FAO Crop Assessments
Bruce Wilkinson: Prepared statement
THE DEVELOPING FOOD SECURITY CRISIS IN SOUTHERN AFRICA
THURSDAY, JUNE 13, 2002
House of Representatives,
Committee on International Relations,
Washington, DC.
The Committee met, pursuant to call, at 11:30 a.m., in Room 2172, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Henry J. Hyde (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.
Chairman HYDE. The Committee will come to order.
Thanks for joining us today at this meeting of the Committee on International Relations. The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the developing food security crisis in the countries of southern Africa, and also to hear from the Administration and the United Nations regarding their respective plans and strategies for assisting those facing hunger in the months ahead.
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Specifically, I would like the Committee to hear from our distinguished witnesses: The current field situation and the food security outlook for southern Africa; the level of preparedness of international donors, the United Nations, and the non-governmental community in assisting the people and governments of the region to cope with the developing food insecurity crisis; the intentions and willingness of other donors besides the U.S. to assist the people of southern Africa in this time of crisis; and the state of preparedness and planning on the part of the United States Government, given increased food insecurity in the region.
I would also be interested to hear from our witnesses regarding what specific governmental policies or other human-caused factors are responsible for this current crisis, especially in the case of Zimbabwe and Malawi.
According to the United Nations, up to 6 million people in southern Africa will need emergency food assistance during 2002. Last week, the World Food Programme, the WFP, revised upward its estimate of the number affected by this crisis to a new figure of 12.8 million people. Under Mr. Morris' leadership, WFP has recently been alerting the international community to the developing crisis. Donors have already begun to assist those in need—the United States has announced food donations worth $52 million and totaling 93,000 tons. But the region may need more than a million tons in emergency aid to make it through the year.
Food shortages are caused by several factors, both natural and human-caused. Self-destructive economic and agricultural policies have resulted in reduced plantings and production in Zimbabwe, adverse weather in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia has led to reduced cereal harvests, and is also to blame for other food shortages in the region. Meteorologists are also warning that the El Nino climatic phenomenon could adversely affect the 2002–2003 harvest. And the effects of this crisis will be terribly destructive. Prolonged food shortages in southern Africa will cause an already weakened population to succumb to a variety of illnesses and disease, particularly those living with HIV/AIDS.
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As I am sure we will hear from our witnesses today, several years ago Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of sub-Saharan Africa. It produced more than enough food for its needs and exported high quality maize to its neighbors. But, today, a self-inflicted food crisis grips that country. The illegitimate Mugabe regime is squarely to blame. Rarely has promise and production so quickly turned to stagnation and uncertainty. Government-sponsored instability, self-destructive economic policies and the land invasion and confiscation campaign of the Mugabe regime are the chief causes of food shortages, not only for Zimbabwe, but for the region as well. Zimbabwe's declining economy and continued political uncertainty have led to inflation, higher unemployment, and a rise in prices of staple foods. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, FAO, Zimbabwe's 2001 maize crop was estimated at 1.5 million tons, 28 percent less than in 2000 and well-below average in general. A recent WFP/FAO report indicates that the decrease in production was mainly due to
''a reduction of 54 percent in the area planted on the large-scale commercial farms, as a result of disruption by land acquisition activities.''
I look forward to hearing from our three witnesses today—Administrator Natsios, Mr. Morris and Mr. Wilkinson—on the challenges ahead.
I now turn to the distinguished Ranking Member of the Committee, Mr. Lantos.
[The prepared statement of Chairman Hyde follows:]
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PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HENRY J. HYDE, A REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, AND CHAIRMAN, COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Thank you for joining me at today's meeting of the Committee on International Relations.
The purpose of today's hearing is to examine the developing food security crisis in the countries of Southern Africa, and also to hear from the Administration and from the United Nations regarding their respective plans and strategies for assisting those facing hunger in the months ahead.
Specifically, today I would like the Committee to hear from our distinguished witnesses:
the current field situation and the food security outlook for southern Africa;
the level of preparedness of international donors, the United Nations, and the non-governmental community in assisting the people and governments of the region to cope with the developing food security crisis;
the intentions and willingness of other donors, besides the United States, to assist the people of southern Africa in this time of crisis; and
the state of preparedness and planning on the part of the United States Government given increased food insecurity in the region.
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I would also be interested to hear from our witnesses what specific governmental policies or other human-caused factors are responsible for this current crisis, especially in the case of Zimbabwe and Malawi.
According to the United Nations, up to six million people in southern Africa will need emergency food assistance during 2002. Last week, the World Food Programme (WFP) revised upward its estimate of the number affected by this crisis to a new figure of 12.8 million people. Under Mr. Morris' leadership, WFP has recently been alerting the international community to the developing crisis. Donors have already begun to assist those in need—the United States has announced food donations worth 52 million dollars and totaling 93,000 tons. But the region may need more than a million tons in emergency aid to make it through the year.
Food shortages are caused by several factors, both natural and human-caused. In addition to self-destructive economic and agricultural policies that have resulted in reduced plantings and production in Zimbabwe, adverse weather in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia has led to reduced cereal harvests and is also to blame for other food shortages in the region. Meteorologists are also warning that the El Nino climatic phenomenon could adversely affect the 2002–2003 harvest. And the effects of this crisis will be terribly destructive. Prolonged food shortages in southern Africa will cause an already weakened population to succumb to a variety of illnesses and disease, particularly those living with HIV/AIDS.
As I'm sure we will hear from our witnesses today, several years ago, Zimbabwe was the breadbasket of sub-Saharan Africa. It produced more than enough food for its needs and exported high quality maize to its neighbors. But, today, a self-inflicted food crisis grips that country. The illegitimate Mugabe regime is squarely to blame. Rarely has promise and production so quickly turned to stagnation and uncertainty. Government-sponsored instability, self-destructive economic policies, and the land invasion and confiscation campaign of the Mugabe regime are the chief causes of food shortages, not only for Zimbabwe, but for the region as well. Zimbabwe's declining economy and continued political uncertainty have led to inflation, higher unemployment, and a rise in prices of staple foods. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Zimbabwe's 2001 maize crop was estimated at 1.5 million tons, 28 percent less than in 2000 and well-below average in general. A recent WFP/FAO report indicates that the decrease in production was mainly due to ''a reduction of 54 percent in the area planted on the large-scale commercial farms, as a result of disruption by land acquisition activities.''
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In Zambia, FAO estimates that the 2001 maize harvest decreased by 24 percent from the 2000 harvest, due to excessive rain and localized floods in many areas combined with prolonged dry weather in the south. In southern Zambia, severe drought has caused total crop failure, even devastating the usually drought-resistant sorghum. Many Zambians are experiencing their second year of crop failure and have little or no food stocks on which to rely. The situation has been further exacerbated by developments in Zimbabwe causing an increased regional demand for maize, which has pushed the price of Zambia's staple food beyond the reach of large numbers of people.
The United States has traditionally played an essential and central role in alleviating hunger in Africa. In 2000, large-scale famine was averted in Ethiopia and Eritrea due to outstanding donor support provided by the United States and the strong leadership of then-executive Director of the World Food Programme, Catherine Bertini. In 1998, the United States led the way in reducing the effects of the Bahr el-Ghazal famine that was exacerbated by the Government of Sudan and its limitations on access by humanitarian workers. No doubt, 2002 is becoming another year of food crisis, and the United States will do its part to alleviate shortages caused by natural phenomenons of floods or droughts. It is my hope, however, that the Committee will understand when the failed policies of governments—or worse, malfeasance and corruption—are responsible for such widespread suffering.
I look forward to hearing from our two witnesses today—Administrator Andrew Natsios and Executive Director James Morris—on the challenges ahead. Mr. Natsios is a frequent guest at this Committee, but this is Mr. Morris' first time as a witness for this Committee since taking the helm of the United Nations World Food Programme in April.
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I now turn to the distinguished Ranking Member of the Committee, Mr. Lantos.
Mr. LANTOS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and at the outset I want to thank Dr. Pearl Alice Marsh seated behind me who is the specialist on Africa on the democratic side for her outstanding work in preparing this hearing.
Thank you, Pearl Alice.
Mr. Chairman, I commend you for convening today's hearing on a matter of extreme urgency. As the world focuses its attention on the Middle East and South Asia, a devastating humanitarian crisis rages in southern Africa. Nearly 13 million men, women and children will go hungry as the worst food crisis in 10 years ravages the region; and millions of people are doomed to die of starvation unless the international community takes immediate and forceful action.
We cannot wait, Mr. Chairman, until a CNN moment to take action, when television images of mass graves brimming with corpses expose our policy failures and rouse our human conscience. We must mobilize the resources of the developed world and work with our regional partners and nongovernmental organizations to begin feeding the almost 13 million Africans at risk before it is too late.
Mr. Chairman, while a 2-year drought and floods are major factors, the current food crisis afflicting southern Africa is largely a man-made phenomenon. Misguided policies, short-sighted politics and chronic poverty are contributing factors in this crisis, and the catastrophic HIV/AIDS pandemic has only compounded this emergency.
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Most people in the region live on less than $1 per day and nearly 15 percent of all children die before the age of 5. The unsustainable debt of some of the world's poorest countries has been exacerbated by harsh economic liberalization policies, deteriorating terms of trade, endemic corruption and chronically weak economic performance.
To take but one example, Zimbabwe's President Mugabe triggered his nation's food shortage by perverting legitimate land reform issues for short-term political gain and the ruthless consolidation of personal power. During the last food emergency, Zimbabwe provided needed food to the region. Today, the country's commercial farming sector is in total disarray and grain production has plummeted to unprecedented lows. Instead of being the region's breadbasket, Zimbabwe is becoming the region's basket case.
Across the continent in Angola, a nation blessed with much fertile cropland, civilians are starving to death after a protracted civil war that served no other purpose than to feed the political egotism of Jonas Savimbi, the late UNITA rebel leader, and to justify the rigidly centralized government of the ruling MPLA regime, which itself is fraught with corruption.
Superimposed over this crisis is the HIV/AIDS epidemic which has decimated women and men who otherwise would be able-bodied farmers. In some countries, the average life span is below 40 years and falling. Under these conditions, agricultural development simply cannot take root.
Mr. Chairman, the long-term solution for southern Africa's food security lies in sound and sustainable development policies and programs that include biodiversity, land reform, the end of corruption and the effective use of natural resources. The promotion of fair agricultural trade within the region and, specifically, with developed countries will also boost national economies and help ensure governments that they meet the basic needs of all their citizens.
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The defeat of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is integral to a international food security effort.
The United States, in my judgment, Mr. Chairman, can and must play a leading role in this campaign to end the food crisis in southern Africa. Today's hearing offers an important opportunity to understand the problem. Let us seize this moment to define solutions and then move ahead with effective action.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Royce, Chairman of the Africa Subcommittee.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for calling this very important hearing.
As you have noted, the situation in several southern African countries is very grim. Famine is looming, and I think the United States and other countries must act. But in considering the country's impact, Zimbabwe should be placed in a category alone.
This Committee has spent considerable time attempting to promote democracy and the rule of law in what should be a prosperous Zimbabwe. I won't go into the details of the growing oppression that Robert Mugabe's illegitimate government is bringing to bear against brave Zimbabweans daring to exercise their right to vote; I won't go into what happened this week. But let me just say that Chairman Hyde and Ranking Member Lantos explained well the situation there, and I will say that Mugabe's regime, having stolen an election in March, is barring no means to maintain its power and its perquisites.
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Now, my fear is that in a few months we will be seeing television footage of starving Zimbabweans, as we have seen in the past elsewhere in Africa, particularly in the Horn of Africa; and it is important that the American people and people throughout the world understand the true nature of the problem in Zimbabwe.
We need to be clear. This isn't primarily a problem of drought, as the Mugabe regime would have the world believe. Not unlike in North Korea, we are confronting in Zimbabwe a regime that is willingly starving its political opposition.
It is difficult for good-hearted Americans to comprehend that a government would use food as a lethal weapon. It is imperative that our government and, hopefully, others comprehend this tragic reality in order to save lives. Our food relief efforts are facing a determined enemy in the Mugabe regime, which ominously still shelters the former Ethiopian dictator Mengistu who, frankly, developed this into a fine art in terms of using starvation as a political weapon. He is a houseguest there. He engineered the Ethiopian famines of the 1980s.
If we are to be successful, we need to be as determined as the Machiavellian Mugabe regime officials who seek to manipulate our goodwill to what can be described only as evil ends—feeding their supporters, starving their enemies. Otherwise, Zimbabweans will die in large numbers, and we will have unwittingly bolstered this vile regime.
Winning this battle is a tall task. I appreciate that AID Administrator Natsios has had tough words for Mugabe. He bluntly made the point that this is Mugabe's famine, and I know that the Administrator has had considerable experience in this area and has faced similar perverse circumstances in Sudan.
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So today I am looking forward to hearing the Administration's disaster relief plan for a civil society.
And again, Mr. Chairman, I thank you for holding this hearing.
Chairman HYDE. The Ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Africa, Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief, but let me commend you for holding this very important meeting at this critical time. As has been indicated very clearly, southern Africa is certainly facing a food security crisis that requires, certainly, immediate attention and immediate assistance.
Each new assessment shows that the famine is worsening, with some 8 million people, 5 million of whom are children, needing emergency food assistance. By the end of this year, the figure will rise to in excess of 13 million people of the six worst affected countries in the region—Lesotho, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Malawi. Malawi is certainly the hardest hit, with hundreds of people dying every day.
We know that there are a number of problems that are creating the situation. We have to look at overall assistance, because food is simply the tip of the iceberg of the overall problem of development in Africa: the whole question of the continent being marginalized by not having adequate investment to keep its potential afloat.
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And so, although we are specifically dealing today with the food problem, at other times we deal with the HIV/AIDS problem and at another time we talk about the erosion problem. I think that we have to start taking a look at Africa and what can we do in a coordinated, worldwide effort to provide what is needed to let this continent have the opportunity to progress in this new millennium.
And so I hope that this is just a beginning. As we look toward the request of the world that all developed countries should have 0.7 as a goal for assistance, our current assistance is less than 0.1 percent of our GDP. And unless we are willing to step up to the plate and get in line with what is being requested by world leaders, we will continually see these droughts cyclically coming, and it will be health one day, food another day, erosion another day, lack of civil strife the next day.
And so, with that, Mr. Chairman, I appreciate your holding this very important hearing. I look forward to listening to the witnesses.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you. The Chairman Emeritus, Mr. Gilman, of New York.
Mr. GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I want to commend you, Mr. Chairman, for taking the time and effort to bring this serious issue to our Nation and to the world.
Southern Africa is facing an unprecedented famine. The reports are arriving with greater frequency and are chilling. As many as 20 million people in the region of southern Africa are suffering from hunger and food insecurity. Nearly 6 million people in southern Africa are in desperate need of food.
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Officials of the Government of Malawi have said that thousands are at risk of dying of hunger-related diseases if food doesn't reach them in time. Reports of babies dying in their mother's arms as they await aid have become all too commonplace. Already, in Malawi, by many estimates, more than a hundred people a day are dying from hunger and are weakened by hunger of easily preventable diseases. Zimbabwe and Zambia are also seriously impacted.
Although the flooding that destroyed much of last year's harvest and the dry weather are the primary causes of the food crisis, politics has also played an important role. The fact that Malawi's grain reserve was recently sold off without any clear explanation raises some very serious questions as to the ability and the willingness of the regional governments to act decisively on this issue and to come to the aid of their own people.
Mr. Chairman, I want to thank the witnesses for taking the time to be with us today to share their knowledge and experience. Hopefully, this hearing will provide an insight into what actions the Administration and the Congress can take to help alleviate the suffering of those suffering from hunger in southern Africa.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you, Mr. Gilman.
Mr. Hilliard of Alabama.
Mr. HILLIARD. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, let me congratulate you, first of all, for having this hearing at this particular time.
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I am very anxious to hear from the Administration, but I want to be sure, Mr. Chairman, that we do not try to surrogate hungry kids and families based on the politics of the government of the country. I think that if we are going to have a humanitarian effort to solve the hunger crisis, then we should not deal with the politics of the situation, but the urgency and the need and the humanitarian effort necessary to resolve it.
And with that said, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much.
Chairman HYDE. Thank you.
Mr. Chris Smith of New Jersey.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, I ask that my full statement be made part of the record in the interest of time.
Just in response to the previous speaker, just to say that to leave out the political equation here when we have a man-made famine, when we have a man by the name of Mugabe who is committing wholesale crimes against humanity—killing, raping, letting his so-called war veterans run rampant over either white farms or going after, as he is doing now, thousands of people who are in opposition, who are black Africans—is an outrage. We need to speak out, as Mr. Natsios and others have done so forcibly, against this man-made famine and these ongoing crimes that are being committed as we deal with delivering humanitarian aid to those who are at risk of starvation and death.
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To leave that out—I mean, there is a cause. It is not because it is not raining, although certainly droughts contribute. But just as Mr. Royce pointed out so well, the Mengistu famines were man-made. He used food as a weapon, and food is being used as a weapon again today. And we need to step up to the plate and be honest about that, especially with regard to the Mugabe regime.
Despite our country's misgivings, and I have misgivings about the International Criminal Court, there is a Hague meeting in a few weeks. If ever there was a case to be brought against someone for crimes against his own people, it is that individual. There needs to be reform there, and then we will see people eating.
As was pointed out by Mr. Hyde so well, and Mr. Lantos and others, Zimbabwe used to be a breadbasket. It used to produce food that could then be exported, high-quality food, so that people could be nourished. That changed because of a corrupt and a blood-thirsty regime.
So to leave out the political equation would do an ill service to the people who are being malaffected.
Chairman HYDE. Mr. Meeks.
Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Again, I commend you on having this hearing. And indeed this hearing today is very timely, but the timeliness of the debate is not whether or not a famine is happening in southern Africa and not for us to debate whether or not the international donor community has or has not responded to the warnings and the crises which was eminent.
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No, the hearing today is timely because here we are in the 21st century, living in a world that has become increasingly interconnected, interdependent, and possessing technologies we could only have dreamed about a few years ago. Yet, we also live in a world where hundreds of thousands of African people can and do die from hunger. While I know we still have hunger here in America, which is the richest nation in the world, what explains the seemingly common conditions which can lead to the occurrence of famines in Africa which affect 10 to 50 percent of an entire society?
Mr. Chairman, if we explore this issue from the point of departure that Article 11 of the United Nations International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights states, that it is the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, then how should we think about this issue if we truly want to help and deal with it? Do African peoples have the right to be free from hunger, to live with the dignity of knowing that the ability of a man or woman to eat or to feed their child should not be conditioned upon the willingness of someone else to feed them?
Mr. Chairman, contrary to those who would attempt to simplify the causes of famine in Africa to something which is natural to Africa, that chronic hunger is the norm in Africa and are all simply the products of bad policy and corruption by African governments. We must be honest when we talk about why people are dying right now in southern Africa. The widespread of loss of life from famines are caused by a myriad of complex variables, both causal and relative.
As with all famines, the causes fall into two categories: Trigger factors—livelihood, shocks and responses to failures; and, underlying causes—factors that make communities in a society vulnerable to livelihood shocks in the first place.
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Given these facts, I am appalled that some would pursue a political agenda by blaming an individual for causing a famine in a region. Not only does this kind of thinking prevent us from learning lessons to address the root causes of famines, but it truly devalues the people that have paid with their lives. I am convinced that in order to fully address the issue of famine, then we cannot limit our discussions to one of what has or has not been the reaction to a crisis. Nor can we limit the discussion to issues of corruption of individuals.
Mr. Chairman, I should hope, you know, as in all nations in the world, we are part of an era of globalization, and contrary to some myths, Africa is not being left out of globalization. Globalization reaches the remote villages and affects the smallest farmers. Yet it seems that globalization is not helping small producers and African women, which form the backbone of African agriculture for the provisions of food.
Some could say—and I hope we don't—that there is enough blame to go around for everyone. But even here, the most powerful economy in the world, the second largest agricultural subsidizer in the world—we would be negligent if we did not take some responsibility for the fact that our domestic policy actions, particularly in agriculture, impact the lives of millions of hard-working, small farmers around the world. And we all, America included, could be the cause and could also be both part of the problem and the solution, so that we can deal with the root problem of hunger in southern Africa.
Chairman HYDE. The gentlelady from Virginia, Mrs. Davis.
Mrs. DAVIS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I don't have any opening statement.
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Chairman HYDE. The Chair thanks Mrs. Davis.
The gentlelady from California, Ms. Lee.
Ms. LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman; and I want also to thank you and our Ranking Member for holding today's hearing.
This food security crisis, this famine in southern Africa has become a matter of life and death for millions of Africans. Over the past several months news reports from across the globe have illustrated the devastating impact of the food security crisis in southern Africa.
The food crisis can be attributed to a variety of circumstances, including years of poor harvest and droughts and also of neglect. The United States and the international community cannot stand back and watch as millions of people endure famine and may die of starvation, and are dying of starvation. But I would like to be clear today and hope that we can ensure that our debate does not unravel into a debate about the need to ensure political stability in southern Africa before a serious and meaningful response can be asserted.
As the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, I believe we must respond immediately, and we should hear from our panel what our specific actions should be.
We all know that there are many factors which are contributing to the famine in South Africa—in southern Africa. The food crisis is most severe in Malawi, where hundreds of people have died in recent months, and officials in the region have indicated that 70 percent of Malawi's 10 million people are at risk of starvation. In Mozambique, years of drought, which have been followed by severe flooding, have compounded this problem. Food shortages in that country may have—or have had disastrous impact and are now leading to starvation for many, many people.
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The crisis also acts upon the people of Lesotho, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
As we consider the United States' response to the food crisis in southern Africa, I believe this discussion must also include issues of development and land reform for the entire region and the impact of United States policy on trade with African countries. Specifically, we must ensure that those African countries which are forced to make decisions to alleviate hunger are not adversely affected or are precluded from engaging in trade opportunities with the United States and the international community.
Finally, we must also remember that the famine is compounded now by the HIV/AIDS crisis, TB and the malaria pandemics. These horrific diseases alone require a multitiered strategy.
And so, in the strongest sense, I urge that we look at our overall U.S. commitment to Africa—to development, to food assistance, to education, to enhancing our health care and HIV/AIDS efforts—because otherwise this famine is only going to exacerbate the AIDS crisis and millions more will die as a result.
So I just want to once again thank our Chairman and our Ranking Member for conducting these hearings, and just say, finally, that I believe it is the moral responsibility of the United States and the international community to come to the aid of the continent of Africa and come to its assistance immediately.
Chairman HYDE. I thank the gentlelady.
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We have a special guest who is a Member of the Judiciary Committee, but whose interest in this subject is deep. She has asked to make a statement and participate in the questioning if she desires. And so, without objection, the Chair recognizes Ms. Maxine Waters of California.
Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I would like to commend you and Congressman Tom Lantos for organizing this important hearing on the desperate food crisis in southern Africa.
I appreciate the attention and concern that is developing around this humanitarian crisis, and I am particularly thankful to you for allowing me to participate here today. I don't know if members of the audience understand that it is a prerogative of the Chair to decide whether or not to allow Members who are not on the Committee to participate. So I am very grateful for your generosity.
I am here, and I decided to forgo a markup that is going on right now in Judiciary, Mr. Chairman and Members, because I am very frightened and I am feeling somewhat desperate.
I am very frightened and I feel somewhat desperate because I have lived long enough to have witnessed several catastrophes on the continent of Africa, even while I was a Member of Congress, and I did not move to do anything about it. I did not lend my voice. I did not fight and struggle at the time that there was a famine going on; and, of course, at a time when we saw genocide in another part of Africa, Rwanda.
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So I vowed that I would never be silent again, that I would do everything that I could to try and save lives, give assistance and help with the development of the entire continent.
Over the last several years, I have been working to address the needs of sub-Saharan African countries for debt relief, and assistance responding to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. In 1999, I worked with my colleagues on the Banking Committee to pass H.R. 1095, the Debt Relief for Poverty Reduction Act.
On July 13 of the following year, I offered a floor amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001 to increase funding for debt relief by $156 million. The passage of my amendment ensured full funding of the debt relief program.
I also worked with my colleagues on the Banking Committee to pass H.R. 3519, which led to the establishment of the Global Fund to Fight HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
However, I am now more than concerned that the current food crisis will undermine the progress that we have made in addressing the needs of impoverished people in several African countries.
Southern Africa is now facing its worst food crisis in nearly 60 years. Almost 13 million people in southern Africa are in danger of starvation. In Zambia, people are turning to desperate measures, such as eating potentially poisonous wild foods, stealing crops, and prostitution even, in order to obtain enough food for their families to eat.
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The crisis also affects the people of Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Zimbabwe.
The effects of the food crisis have been exacerbated by the HIV/AIDS pandemic in sub-Saharan Africa. The AIDS pandemic has created many orphaned children and left many African families with fewer productive family members to produce food or generate income with which to purchase food. Furthermore, high rates of HIV infection have caused large numbers of Africans to have increased vulnerability to the effects of malnutrition and related diseases such as cholera and malaria.
The United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization and the World Food Programme (WFP) estimate that nearly 4 million metric tons of food will be needed to—will need to be imported into the region over the next 12 months to meet the minimum food consumption requirements of these six countries. At least 1.2 million metric tons are needed immediately.
It is my understanding that the United States Government has provided almost $52.7 million in emergency humanitarian assistance to the six aforementioned southern African countries in response to this crisis. Most of that assistance, I am told, has been in the form of donations of commodity foods. However, as of June 7, 2002, the WFP had only received a total of 73,950 metric tons of commodities from the United States and 119,785 metric tons from all donors combined. Clearly, more needs to be done; and I believe that the United States must be a leader and must be very aggressive in confronting this food crisis. We must not allow babies, children and families to die from starvation.
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I am circulating a letter to the conferees on H.R. 4775, the Supplemental Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2002, asking them to provide an emergency supplemental appropriation of $200 million to respond to the food crisis in southern Africa. An emergency appropriation, I believe, is essential to enable the United States Government to provide desperately needed assistance to millions of starving people.
Of course, I am looking forward to hearing the testimony of Andrew Natsios, the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, on the progress of U.S. relief efforts; and I am especially interested in his assessment of the need for additional assistance. Together, I think we can ensure that the United States Government and the international community have sufficient resources to address this unprecedented humanitarian crisis.
Mr. Chairman and Members, I did not intend to say much about Zimbabwe, but I noticed that it seems to be the focus of attention here as you address this crisis——
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. [presiding.] If the gentlelady could keep it very brief because your time has expired.
Ms. WATERS. I am hopeful that we will not allow babies and children to die, because we are concerned, disagree with—and oppose even—the policies of Mugabe and Zimbabwe. I am hopeful that the supplemental appropriations, where we have funding for Afghanistan and other areas even though we disagree with some of the policies in some of the countries that are being funded—that we will do the same for Zimbabwe despite the fact we have got work to do there.
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I thank the Chairman for his generosity, and I yield back the balance of my time.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. I thank the gentlelady for raising that issue, because I do think a strawman is being established here, suggesting that somehow we are going to wait until the political situation has been remedied before this food aid and other kinds of aid goes—nothing could be further from the truth.
The Bush Administration, Mr. Natsios as Administrator of AID, working in tandem with the NGOs—everyone is working to make sure that the suffering people have their needs met, notwithstanding what is one of the primary reasons for their suffering, and that is Mr. Mugabe in Zimbabwe. So I think that strawman should be laid to rest.
No one is saying we should wait ''until,'' but if we want to remedy the problem, we have got to realize that there are tangible policies, cruel policies that are exacerbating, in many cases creating, the very problems that are trying to be ameliorated by AID and others—World Food Programme and other very, very good humanitarian organizations.
I would like to welcome our very distinguished panel and begin with Andrew Natsios, the Administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Natsios's distinguished career includes service as Director of USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance from 1989 to 1991.
Later, during the Administration of George Bush, Mr. Natsios served as the Assistant Administrator of USAID, responsible for food and humanitarian assistance.
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Before assuming his current position, Mr. Natsios was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority and Secretary for Administration and Finance for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. He also served as Vice President of World Vision.
We are honored to have you here today, Mr. Natsios, and I say this to all three of our distinguished panelists: I know normally we impose a 5-minute rule, but this testimony is so important, I would encourage you to take whatever time you deem necessary to present your testimony.
We will also welcome Mr. James Morris, the new Executive Director of the U.N. World Food Programme. Mr. Morris' career began in Indianapolis, Indiana, where he served as Chief of Staff to Mayor Richard Lugar. In 1973, Mr. Morris became Director of the charity, the Lilly Endowment, Inc., where he served in various capacities before taking over as President.
Prior to joining the World Food Programme, Mr. Morris was Chairman and CEO of IWC Resources Corporation and Indianapolis Water Company. He also served as Treasurer and Chairman of the Audit and Ethics Committee of the U.S. Olympic Committee.
Currently, Mr. Morris is Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Indiana University and a member of the Board of Governors of the American Red Cross. And, Mr. Morris, we welcome you to the Committee as well.
Finally, we will hear from Mr. Bruce Wilkinson, Senior Vice President of World Vision in the United States, the largest privately funded Christian relief and development organization in the world. In his current role as Senior Vice President for International Programs, Mr. Wilkinson is responsible for allocating $400 million per year from private donors, U.S. Government grants and corporate gifts in kind. Mr. Wilkinson also oversees the World Vision's Office of Public Policy and Advocacy.
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Mr. Wilkinson has 15 years of work experience in West Africa in relief and development efforts and has spent most of his career abroad in both Africa and Europe. Most recently, he has served 7 years as World Vision's Regional Director for West Africa, based in Senegal, where he oversaw relief and development efforts in that country. Prior to joining World Vision, Mr. Wilkinson also served with the Peace Corps.
And like our other distinguished panelists, welcome.
Mr. Natsios, if you could begin.
STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ANDREW NATSIOS, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I would first like to submit written testimony for the record that is much longer than what I am presenting here now.
Mr. Chairman, I was responsible for running the humanitarian relief effort in the southern Africa drought of 1991 and 1992 in the first Bush Administration. It was the worst drought in Africa in the 20th century; 24 million people were at risk, twice the number as in this famine, and we required 3 million tons of relief food—once again, twice what we require in this famine.
No one ever talks about the southern Africa famine of 1991 to 1992, because we caught the famine at the incipient stage, before there was a large-scale loss of life, and succeeded in preventing a food emergency from mutating into a famine. We intend to do exactly the same thing we did 10 years ago in this drought. I want to make that commitment to you today.
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That is an instruction from President Bush and from Colin Powell. We are not going to let this turn into a famine.
I have watched them up close. They are horrific events comparable only to a genocide in the horror they engender. I have watched the mass burial of bodies during the North Korean famine. I was in China on the border with North Korea, and I actually watched the bodies being put in mass graves during that famine that killed 2.5 million people.
I want to emphasize that the President has given us instructions not to politicize food aid anywhere in the world, and I want to just indicate the evidence of that: We announced last Friday with no fanfare another 100,000 tons of food for a very severe food and nutritional problem that is ongoing in North Korea. There are lots of issues around that, and we announced additional food aid.
North Korea is not our best friend. We are certainly not doing that for the North Korean Government. We are doing that to avoid serious nutritional problems in that country and across the world.
We have led the relief effort in Afghanistan; 75 percent of the food that went into Afghanistan last fall and this spring came from the United States through the World Food Programme (WFP).
Once again, in this drought, Mr. Chairman, 75 percent of the food that has been pledged to WFP as of this date comes from the United States Government, from the USAID and the United States Department of Agriculture.
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Now, let me talk a little bit about what evidence we have that there is a food emergency, other than news headlines, which you always have to be careful of because half the time the media are late telling us that there is a problem. Other times, they exaggerate it. Other times, they understate it. We need to get reports based on technical assessments on the ground.
We began sending teams out to confirm the reports from the USAID missions last December. Some African countries were facing an incipient food emergency. We began sending teams out in April and May of this year with WFP and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. We put people from USAID on all of those teams in all of the countries in the region to get an on-the-ground assessment of how severe the crisis was.
We now have evidence; there are 8 of 14 prefamine indicators present in Zimbabwe and 6 of 14 prefamine indicators present in Malawi. Those are the two most severely affected countries right now.
Are there food insecurities in other countries? Yes. But Mozambique, Lesotho, Swaziland and, at this point, Zambia are not facing famine. They are facing a food emergency, but not a famine. The other two are further along in the food emergency, because the level of nutritional stress is more severe.
Prefamine indicators are evidence that people are running out of their coping mechanisms to deal with food stress, and we look for those in any famine or prefamine condition to determine whether or not we are facing a food crisis, because if you see hungry children on TV or starving children, you see mass graves. It is too late to intervene, because it takes between 2 and 3 months to order food in Washington, then purchase the food in the Midwest grain markets, and ship it. It takes a month to get the food to Africa, off-load it, and then move it sometimes through rough terrain in remote areas.
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So the time to act is before, not after we begin seeing these prefamine indicators accelerating.
So we are not at a famine yet. We are at what we call a ''prefamine stage.'' There is a food emergency taking place, and if we do not act, we will see by late this fall a famine on our hands and widespread deaths.
Now, let me talk about what the United States Government has done since last fall. Last December, we began our first ordering of food. To date, we have ordered, purchased and shipped 136,000 tons of food from the Midwest grain markets that is in various stages of processing.
By July, next month, or a month from now, 100,000 tons of that food will have arrived. It began arriving in April. Tonnage arrived this month—in May; it is arriving in June as we speak. It is being off-loaded at four ports on the coast of West Africa, and another 200,000 tons of food has been committed as of May from the Emerson Trust.
And I want to thank this Committee, and I want to thank the Congress—I wasn't in office when it happened; it happened in the 1990s—for the creation of the Emerson Trust, named after Bill Emerson from Missouri, a good friend of mine, because that trust has allowed us the flexibility we need to order the food up front.
So that decision was taken in May to take 275,000 tons of wheat that is earmarked, and then we are going to convert that, switch it, or transfer it into corn—that is the principal staple people eat in southern Africa—and into vegetable oil, and beans for protein. We need beans for protein and the fats from the vegetable oil; and the caloric intake is really from the corn.
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If you do not have a balanced diet, you can have people survive, but have serious nutritional disorders like protein deficiencies and other deficiencies that you can see in a famine where the diet is not balanced. Of course, oil is more expensive than corn and beans are more expensive than corn, and that is why we have to balance what we call the ''food basket'' for people receiving assistance.
So the total U.S. commitment to date is about 335,000 tons of food toward this emergency.
That is not the end of our commitments; that is what has been done to date. We have a meeting twice a week, on Tuesday and Thursday, an interagency meeting, organizing and planning the response to this relief effort; and decisions are taken on a rolling basis, week by week, depending on the reports from the WFP and the NGOs as to what other donors are doing.
We cannot do all of this alone. I just have to say, we need the help of the Canadians, who are a huge food producer, the Japanese who contribute a lot of money toward food emergencies around the world, and particularly our European donors, allies and friends on this issue. So we will be the principal donor, as we are now. We will continue to be out in front, but we cannot do this alone.
Let me just say that we have been working also through the USAID missions. There are USAID missions of course in Zimbabwe, in Zambia, in Malawi, and in Mozambique that are working with the NGO community and the WFP to coordinate the planning for this.
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It is not simply a function in these emergencies of ordering the food. The port facilities, WFP informs us, are probably all right to handle the intake of the 1.2 million tons of corn we need to bring into the region. However, the logistics systems have deteriorated in the last 10 years. Some of the storage facilities in some countries, some roads and some train systems in some countries, are not in the same condition they were in 10 years ago, when we had the major drought of 1991–1992.
So Jim Morris and I have been talking. He and I were in Rome together at the World Food Summit, and we have discussed a logistics system. The big problem we are going to have is in-country, at what we call the tertiary and secondary distribution once the food gets to the capital cities. Then it is going to become a problem just in terms of volume, because this drought and food emergency is so severe.
Let me mention now the risks that we are facing in terms of the conditions on the ground. In no famine is relief food ever the whole answer to everything. The total need in the region for food is 3 million tons of food; 2 million tons of that has to come through commercial means. Half the population of Zimbabwe, the most severely affected, is at risk right now, but half the population are either middle class or upper class, and they have enough money to purchase food if only there were enough food in the markets at a reasonable price.
One of the things that happens in famines—it is a phenomenon of 90 percent of famines—is, people's incomes collapse as there is a dramatic rise in food prices, and we are seeing a 300 to 400 percent rise in food prices, particularly right now in Malawi and Zimbabwe, which is a great alarm to me, because when you see those rises, it means an increasing number of middle-class people with money cannot buy food because the price is too high.
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So one of the strategies beyond food assistance that Jim and I have talked about is a commercial strategy to strengthen the commercial markets, to get more commercial food in at a normal price so that middle-class people who have resources can buy food. We should not be using money to buy food for the middle class when they have money if only the prices were at a reasonable level. So that is a major market-oriented intervention that we will consider.
We did this in Somalia 10 years ago. We did it in Afghanistan, and now we do realize that this cannot just be humanitarian assistance.
We have two reports in Zimbabwe of politicized feeding, which is to say—one report is from the Danish Physicians for Human Rights; another report is from WFP—that people have been chosen for feeding based on political loyalties. In one case we had eyewitness accounts of children being taken out of feeding lines in a school for supplemental feeding, whose parents were supporters of the democratic opposition to President Mugabe in the last presidential election. That is unacceptable.
President Bush has said we will not politicize aid by our standards, but we are not going to let other people politicize aid that we give them. Food will be distributed by our standards and by WFP and NGO standards, an accepted standard, neutrally based on need. We need to make very clear markers now that in no country is it acceptable that food be distributed based on political loyalties.
One Catholic organization suspended food in one area of Zimbabwe because, once again, they were being prohibited from feeding opposition committee members—opposition movement members.
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The food system of Zimbabwe is the most fragile, essentially for two reasons. One is, the government has decided that food must be, in order to be imported commercially into the country, purchased by the state grain board rather than privately on the private markets; and because the grain board is using a differential price that is not competitive, they are unable to bring the volume of food in for the commercial markets. So in a number of areas of the country, the commercial food markets have completely collapsed.
There is no food even for upper-class people to buy in those markets. Food has disappeared. That is a very dangerous sign, and we have urged the Zimbabwean Government to reverse its policy on this, because it will affect our ability to deal with the volume of the famine that is facing us.
The third problem we face is the shutdown of the commercial farms, and I am not going to go through here—since it is in my testimony—the consequence of that, but let me just tell you why that is important. The commercial farms, before the confiscation of this land by the Mugabe government, provided about 40 to 50 percent of the corn or maize requirements of the country; and generally, Zimbabwe was an exporter of maize prior to this change of policy.
The problem with it is this: There is a drought. It is affecting production. But the commercial farms are irrigated, and the dams are full of water. There is more than enough water in the dams for irrigated agriculture, but the farmers are not growing food either because their farms have been taken over and no one is farming them, or they are not planting because the government has a policy of only paying $40 per ton when the world price for corn is $200.
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So you can see there is a huge disincentive for anybody to plant when they are, in fact, going to be losing huge amounts of money since they won't be able to make even a portion of their costs. We need to urge the government to reverse its policies in terms of pricing, because it will affect the production of food in the country from the commercial farms that are irrigated, that can use the dams that are full of water resources right now. And the sooner that is done, the better off we are all going to be, and the better off the people will be in the country.
The political crisis in the country is also distracting policymakers in neighboring countries, because it is acting upon food markets in other countries. That is the thing that is disturbing us a little bit on this, the turmoil in Zimbabwe that is taking place, over the last year in particular.
And the problems in the election—and I think it was probably one of the most abusive elections in the Third World that we have seen in recent memory—are affecting the ability of regional governments to deal with this emergency in a cooperative and corroborative way. We have never had a famine in recorded history in a democratic government, and we do not want one now. We do not want a famine in these countries, given the progress that countries like Mozambique have made.
Mozambique has made more progress. They have a 12 percent growth rate in their economy. They are one of the stellar performers in the developing world. Their food emergency is not as severe. In fact, they will be selling food from northern Mozambique to Malawi and Zimbabwe—that is going on right now—because they actually have food surpluses in northern Mozambique. If you look up there, you will see where the major circle is of red, right to the right of that, in Mozambique, there was no drought, there was a large surplus produced, and that will be shipped in commercially if we can get the pricing system right.
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Let me just finish by saying we are commited to stopping this horrendous event from occurring. I think we have caught it in time. We started working last December, and we will continue to redouble our efforts to ensure that this drought does not turn into a famine.
Thank you very much.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Thank you for your tremendous testimony and the extraordinary work you and the agency do.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Natsios follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE ANDREW NATSIOS, ADMINISTRATOR, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for giving me the opportunity to come here today and address the complex food security crisis that is developing in southern Africa.
INTRODUCTION
Southern Africa is currently facing a complex food security crisis due to adverse climate conditions, mismanagement of grain reserves, and questionable government policies, primarily in Zimbabwe.
Just as in the drought of 1991–92, the size of the problem is likely to overwhelm the coping capacities of the most affected countries within the region and become a regional emergency. I was responsible for managing the U.S. Government's humanitarian response to the southern African drought of 1991–92, a drought we successfully prevented from becoming a famine.
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United States missions in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho have all assessed the problem to varying degrees. The food security situation is increasingly alarming, especially due to emerging concerns about regional cereal availability, the ability of regional governments to close any cereal gap and the affordability of food to the majority.
USAID has been closely monitoring the situation in southern Africa over the past year and, during that period, has taken a number of actions that could, I believe, position the international community to PREVENT a famine, not RESPOND to one. However, the outstanding issues I will outline for you today still must be addressed if we are to succeed in that effort.
Today, Zimbabwe is already on the verge of a serious food crisis, with as many as 6.0 million people at risk. The potential for large-scale humanitarian crises also exists in Malawi and Zambia. Poor and vulnerable households in Mozambique, Swaziland, and Lesotho will also require humanitarian assistance. The governments of several countries in Southern Africa have already declared national disasters due to the food security crisis, namely Malawi (February 27), Lesotho (April 22), Zimbabwe (April 30), and Zambia (May 29).
According to the recent United Nations assessment, over the next nine months, nearly 3.2 million tons of food will need to be imported—commercially and through humanitarian assistance—to meet the minimum food needs of the sub-region's population. The World Food Program (WFP) estimates that over 1.2 million metric tons of corn will need to be provided by the international donor community in emergency food aid to meet the requirements of some 12.8 million of the region's most vulnerable people between now and March 2003.
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PRE-FAMINE INDICATORS
As a result of political actions taken by the Government, the people of Zimbabwe are witnessing a total collapse of their food system. This has been greatly exacerbated by flooding in 2000 and 2001 and by drought this year. These two factors—political and climatic—created conditions where food is simply not available in markets, and where attempts to control food prices and to prohibit the commercial importation and movement of grain have resulted in highly inflated prices. Further complicating matters is the loss of employment and income earning opportunities, combined with the many costs borne by HIV/AIDS-affected households and orphans. Thus, the price of the maize is now beyond the reach of even many middle-class Zimbabweans and has forced them to cope in desperate ways, including the sale of productive assets. Now, more than ever before, children are vulnerable to prostitution (and therefore potentially contracting HIV/AIDS) simply in order to eat. It is clear that unless the Government of Zimbabwe enables the commercial and international donor community to respond appropriately, the slide towards famine will continue rapidly.
The threat of famine in Malawi is also very real, although the Famine Early Warning System's analysis of pre-famine indicators suggests that the threat is less than in Zimbabwe. Prolonged exposure to natural disasters, flooding in recent years, and reduced rainfall this past year, have combined with poverty, extremely small family farms, and HIV/AIDS to lead prices well beyond the reach of the majority of the population.
And while serious chronic and acute food security indicators for Zambia, Mozambique, Lesotho, and Swaziland also exist, the threat of famine in these countries is far less serious at the present time.
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HOW DID THIS CRISIS DEVELOP?
The regional food security crisis southern Africa is currently facing developed as a result of a series of episodic shocks. Floods at the end of last year and the unusually dry conditions that extended across much of the region during the past growing season have caused families to exhaust their coping mechanisms to the point of being hungry during harvest. Over the last year, Zimbabwe has lost its position as a net exporter of both grain and family remittances due to its economic and political crises. Government mismanagement of strategic grain reserves, which normally fill gaps in drought years for Malawi, has left the country without a safety net.
While serious droughts have taken their toll on the southern Africa region periodically in the past, the crisis emerging today is not the result of just adverse weather conditions. For example, even if the weather had been good in the past agricultural season in Zimbabwe, it still would have produced only half of its own food consumption needs. However, under political and economic conditions of previous years, the country would have been able to commercially import the balance.
In Zimbabwe, several economic missteps have contributed to the regional crisis. First, the government of Zimbabwe implemented price controls for staples, such as corn, which inhibit production and trade. Second, it has backtracked on the liberalization of grain marketing, bringing corn back under the control of the grain marketing parastatal and creating a monopoly that prohibits open commercial trade. Third, the government's irresponsible expropriation of land from commercial farmers has decimated the most productive part of Zimbabwe's agricultural sector. The Government of Zimbabwe also has serious foreign exchange restrictions, prohibiting its ability to import sufficient grain and making ancillary farming inputs (fuel for tractors, fertilizer, etc.) either unavailable or exorbitantly expensive. Fourth, the Zimbabwean Government's regressive policies have collapsed the national economy, sharply reducing family income.
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All of these economic policies have tied the hands of the private sector, and when coupled with the drought have meant that even families with money can't find food, and that an increasing number of people are becoming vulnerable and unable to purchase food.
In addition, we are deeply concerned about serious allegations that the Government of Zimbabwe has manipulated the current food security situation for political purposes since food shortages began in December of last year. It has been credibly reported that opposition party members have been prevented from buying corn from the Grain Marketing Board, and that jobs in public works programs have been reserved for government supporters. In addition, the children of opposition party members have been driven away from school supplementary feeding programs in rural areas. It is important to note that these alleged political uses of food have not involved food aid received from donors, but food distributed and sold under government control. USAID is working exclusively through international and private voluntary organizations in Zimbabwe, which have in place systems to minimize the potential for politicization of food aid distribution.
In Malawi, the primary cause of the current food security crisis is low production during the 2001/2002 growing season, which followed a mediocre 2000/2001 harvest. Another important cause of the crisis is poor government management. Between August 2000 and 2001, the government disposed of 167,000 tons of corn reserves. There are legitimate questions as to how this corn was sold, who benefited and if proper procedures were used. Moreover, the government of Malawi's privatization of agricultural parastatals is only half completed. Currently, more than 70% of the people cannot afford to buy corn since price controls have been eliminated. The government has responded by subsidizing prices for the poor rather than encouraging the private sector to play a more active role in the importation of corn.
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The high rates of HIV/AIDS has also exacerbated the effects of the drought by both reducing family income, and by increasing the costs to the household. HIV/AIDS should be recognized as one of the greatest threats to the Southern Africa region. With the highest HIV prevalence rates in the world, Southern Africa has 28.1 million people living with the disease. The economic impact is massive as investments are depleted and human resources are lost. HIV/AIDS is causing the collapse of social safety nets and faith communities, leaving people even more vulnerable. As people become increasingly desperate for food and other resources, they may engage in high-risk behavior such as prostitution or migration that leaves them vulnerable to infections. It is thus important to ensure that districts and communities affected by food shortages and high HIV prevalence have food available in the local economy.
USAID'S EARLY WARNING SYSTEM AND PROACTIVE RESPONSE
Beginning in the fall of 2001, USAID has been working closely with its field Missions and Embassies in the region, and has taken the following actions to address the impending crisis:
USAID notified inter-agency committees of the USG of the developing food security crisis in southern Africa—in particular in Zimbabwe.
USAID notified the World Food Program (WFP) of the developing situation in southern Africa and asked that it immediately expand its presence and its response capacity in the region—which it did.
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USAID began working with NGOs in Zimbabwe to establish an emergency food aid program in Matebeleland South—an area particularly hard-hit by the drought.
USAID's Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) monitored the development of the food security crisis through regular USAID field assessments and participation in wider assessments conducted by the international humanitarian community.
So far this year, the U.S. Government has approved 132,710 metric tons (MT) of food aid, valued at approximately $68.4 million, to address food insecurity in southern Africa. We are currently supplying about 75 percent of the total resources for WFP's existing operations in the region, making us by far the largest contributor. Even with that, however, WFP still faces a 56 percent shortfall in its current operations, and will be launching a regional appeal in about a week requesting 1.2 million MT of maize to feed 12.8 million people over the next nine months. Other donors need to step in and take action, and while in Rome earlier this week I encouraged many of my counterparts in Europe and other donor countries to do so.
The 132, 710 MT is allocated as follows:
USAID approved 106,210 MT, valued at approximately $55.1 million.
USDA approved 26,500 MT, valued at approximately $13.3 million.
Of the approved commodities, 82,000 MTs have been allocated to WFP, 14,000 MT has been allocated to World Vision, and 36, 450 is currently in the process of being allocated.
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The first 8,470 MTs of corn meal arrived in Zimbabwe in March. The bulk of the remaining commodities was shipped in April for arrival in the region between May and early August.
This assistance has been provided to our implementing partners in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
USAID MANAGEMENT STRUCTURE FOR CRISIS RESPONSE
On April 11, 2002, a United States Government (USG) Inter-Agency Policy Coordination Committee Sub-Group (PCC Sub-Group), co-chaired by USAID's Bureau of Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance (DCHA) and the Department of State Bureau for Population, Refugees and Migration (DOS/PRM), agreed that a working group of USAID, DOS, National Security Council (NSC), Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Department of Defense (DOD) should be established to develop a USG policy framework to respond to the emerging southern Africa complex food security crisis. This USG inter agency working group has been established and is chaired by USAID's Director of the DCHA Office of Food for Peace (DCHA/FFP). The first working group meeting was held on April 27, 2002.
USAID also established a Southern Africa Action Team (SAAT) in Washington. SAAT is serving as the principal USAID humanitarian point of contact for this region with all outside and interagency stakeholders.
USAID emergency response field staff have been mobilized from throughout Africa to conducted assessments in the following countries:
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Swaziland—April 21–24
Lesotho—April 30–May 4
Zimbabwe—May 5–11
Malawi—May 5–11
Zambia—May 12–20
Mozambique—May 20–24
USAID staff also participated as observers in the WFP/FAO Crop and Food Supply Assessment Missions conducted in Malawi, Mozambique, Zambia, and Zimbabwe (not those in Lesotho and Swaziland).
CALL TO ACTION
1) USG Response Mechanisms
Based on initial field assessments, the Food Assistance Policy Council agreed that food aid requirements in the region would exceed the level of USG food aid funding available in Fiscal Year 2002 and approved a drawdown of 275,000 metric tons of wheat from the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust (Emerson Trust). This wheat will be converted (swapped) by USDA into a total of approximately 190,000 metric tons of corn, beans, and vegetable oil. While the Trust is held in wheat, the 1998 Africa Seeds of Hope Act allows the Secretary of Agriculture to swap wheat for commodities of equal value. This she has agreed to do.
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Under the guidelines of the Emerson Trust, the Secretary of Agriculture is authorized to release up to 500,000 metric tons for urgent humanitarian relief in disasters, in the case of unanticipated need, and to provide an additional 500,000 metric tons of eligible commodities that could have been released but were not in previous years. The Secretary of Agriculture is also authorized to release eligible commodities from the reserve when U.S. domestic supplies are so limited that eligible commodities cannot be made available for programming under PL 480.
U.S. missions and embassies in the region have been encouraged to engage other donor government representatives in the affected countries regarding the probable magnitude of the upcoming food-deficit, USG resource limitations, and the need for other donor assistance in the region.
2) Policy Reform
In Zimbabwe, commercial mechanisms are currently hampered from functioning to close the cereal deficit, so adequate quantities of food are not available and affordable to the majority of people. Thus, a critical focus must be on policies that allow the private sector in Zimbabwe to close this deficit. This will help to moderate prices and ensure food access to the greatest number of people.
Policy advice coming from the Western world, however, no matter how expert and correct, is not likely to achieve any policy changes within a Mugabe government, given its current mood. However, if an influential African (e.g. Kofi Annan) were to become involved, recommendations might be more easily accepted.
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In Malawi, management of the strategic grain reserve must be modified to create a transparent and reliable system, and privatization of food markets must be completed.
If policy change does take place to allow the commercial sector to react to close the cereal gap, then USAID needs to send a clear signal to the commercial sector that any emergency food aid provided will be done only to protect those without usual market access. This is important so that commercial importers understand that emergency food aid will not depress market prices, since projected selling prices are the basis upon which importers have an incentive to import.
3) Regional Leadership
USAID will continue to support the SADC Drought and Flood Post Rainy Season Forum to address regional trade problems in relationship to the cereal deficit. We will attempt to re-initiate discussion with SADC about market-based regional grain security enhancing mechanisms (e.g. use of catastrophe bonds) that would provide greater food security for the region, should drought continue (possibly El Nino affected) next year.
4) Regional Transportation Coordination
Southern Africa's transport system has, by all accounts, less capacity than it did during the crisis in the early 1990's. In order to maximize the capacity of the regional transportation infrastructure, all countries in the region will have to coordinate the movement of both commercial and humanitarian shipments. At this time, WFP will is working with the Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) to establish a regional logistics center to facilitate and coordinate the transport of food aid in the region. USAID has requested that US Missions keep it informed of any issues relating to port and transport activities that could delay the delivery of humanitarian food and non-food assistance.
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5) Waiver Of Requirement For Non-Genetically Modified Commodities
During past humanitarian interventions in southern Africa, the USG provided significant quantities of bulk corn, as it is the staple grain in the region and it can be delivered more quickly and cost-effectively than other USG commodities. Today, the Government of Zimbabwe (GOZ) restricts the import of U.S whole kernel yellow corn, because it contains corn produced through biotechnology. DCHA believes that unless the GOZ will waive its restrictions on the import of U.S corn, it will be difficult, if not impossible, for the USG to respond to the extensive food requirements that have been identified.
USAID is working with USDA and the USAID Mission in Zimbabwe on actions that can be undertaken to remove import restrictions related to the importation of U.S. whole kernel corn—perhaps via a humanitarian waiver.
USAID is also evaluating the availability of U.S. sorghum as an alternative grain. It is highly unlikely, however, that a sufficient quantity of sorghum will be available this year. Thus, USAID has informed the US Missions in the region that the USG is prepared to provide both whole grain corn and U.S. processed corn products for use in food aid activities in the region. However, neither USDA nor USAID will pay any special handling, processing or labeling costs associated with recipient country restrictions on the import of U.S. transgenic commodities.
TARGETING OF ASSISTANCE
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To help prevent increases in malnutrition in Southern Africa, the USG is supporting a general food aid targeting approach to help meet the needs of specific categories of vulnerable groups. These categories include:
those with specialized needs, such as children under five, orphans, households affected by HIV/AIDs, and the elderly.
those with needs within the worst drought-affected areas, particularly rural households whose livelihoods have been most affected by drought and/or policy-induced shocks.
those individuals in rural and urban households, including those affected by HIV/AIDS, whose extremely low incomes place them at the highest risk of severe under-consumption because of inadequate purchasing power.
In bringing food and non-food aid to the region, USAID will address the qualitative aspects of its partners' operations, such as: 1) sensitivity to the needs of vulnerable groups, especially women; 2) health and nutritional services; and 3) long-term food-security activities. In the interests of post-emergency recovery, USAID will use food aid, not only to ensure the nutritional objective of providing affected people food to eat in the short term, but also to support economic activities to encourage long term food-security, self-sufficiency and protect, or build, productive and market assets.
Using local democratic structures for the targeting and distribution of USG food will create a nucleus for strengthening community responsibilities for future development activities. Supplementary and Therapeutic feeding programs will be established to address serious mal-nourishment situations. And, ultimately, market intervention activities will be implemented in those countries and locations where groups have access to income, but where the market is unable to use normal commercial channels to obtain food resources.
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CONCLUSION
In southern Africa, we face an extremely difficult situation—one of the worst in the last ten years—but it is not yet a famine. There are, however, clear indications that the specter is on the horizon. We have taken stock of the current needs and have already taken action to prevent famine before it occurs. However, the primary responsibility for the food security of these people rests, of course, with the governments of the countries concerned. Our role will be to complement government efforts and to ensure loss of lives and livelihoods is minimized.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Mr. Morris.
STATEMENT OF JAMES T. MORRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
Mr. MORRIS. I thank you, Mr. Chairman. I, too, have a prepared statement, along with the WFP–FAO crop assessment in the six countries that I would like to submit for the record.
Mr. SMITH OF NEW JERSEY. Without objection, your testimony and that of Mr. Natsios, any written submissions, will be made a part of the record.
Mr. MORRIS. Thank you, sir. It seems to me that in both the opening statements of you and your colleagues and what Andrew had to say, the magnitude of the issue has been more than adequately and accurately described and covered.
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May I say that the World Food Programme is the largest humanitarian agency in the world, the largest activity of the United Nations, and our job is to feed the hungry poor who are severely at risk wherever they may be around the world, essentially without political considerations. We are a humanitarian agency, and I should say that the best partner we have is the United States of America.
Ten years ago working with USAID, the Congress, the people that administered 416(b), the Department of Agriculture, we averted a famine in Africa, and I am here, sir, to assure you and your colleagues that we are as committed to the statement that Andrew made, that we will avoid this terrible famine-like situation. We are committed to seeing that food is provided, generated in support of the needs of the people in the six countries affected.
Essentially, the magnitude of the problem has been accurately stated. There are nearly 13 million people at risk in six countries—half the people in Zimbabwe, a fourth of the people in Malawi. The next largest country affected is Zambia, and Andrew correctly assessed the situation in Mozambique, Swaziland and Lesotho.
The World Food Programme convened a meeting last Thursday and Friday in Johannesburg of about 100 people from all of the relevant U.N. agencies, from the donor countries, from the six countries affected, and from our NGO partners. And the World Food Programme has a relationship with about 1,100 NGOs around the world, and we have an extraordinary relationship and partnership and could not do our work without them.
In essence, this session in Johannesburg concluded that the World Food Programme, working with OCHA, which is the humanitarian coordinating agency of the U.N., should be the lead agency to coordinate the world's response to this crisis. As a result of that, we have set up an office to coordinate the efforts in Johannesburg that we are moving our logistical staff around the world as well as our regional staff from the—normally headquartered in Kampala to Johannesburg to coordinate this effort.
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It is our view that we will need to raise from the donor community something more than 1,500,000 metric tons of food, nearly all of that cereals, and we will be looking at this sort of in a 9-month horizon from the end of this crop until the next crop. We will know more about it come late March. WFP has committed $5.5 million from our reserves to set the operation up and to get it going.
I mentioned our partnership with the NGOs. We anticipate a major pipeline that will flow in from our donors to serve the region. We are comfortable with the notion of pipelines being put in place to support the work of the NGOs. We believe that that ought to be coordinated, and that we ought to have a single effort sort of focusing on the negotiations with the ports, the transport operations, the fees, et cetera, so we don't find ourselves in competition with one another.
The rationale for why this is occurring has been accurately stated. Clearly Zimbabwe has had the worst drought in 20 years; weather, natural circumstances are a major factor.
WFP will do its work without political considerations. We will not tolerate for a second any foolishness on behalf of the governments we do business with, and if we are—if we have cause to believe that—we are told that we have to prefer one group over another or we can't go somewhere, we will simply sit down and work it out, and otherwise we would pull away. We will not allow the World Food Programme, this precious, incredibly strong asset of the world, to be politicized. It just will not happen.
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I have had—I am probably the only person in the room that has had two face-to-face conversations with Mr. Mugabe this week, and I made it very clear to him that we, one, needed his cooperation to make it easy for us to do business in the country both for the World Food Programme and our NGO partners. I made it very clear to him that we will tolerate no political interference as to where we would do our work; that we would have access to the entire country, and we would determine where the needs are. One of the things the World Food Programme really does well is the vulnerability assessment of the problems in the country, and we would do our work accordingly. And, third, I made it very clear to him that in, our judgment, there was no chance to solve the problem unless he was willing to let free market grain traders come in and provide part of the resources needed.
Those conversations went well, and I will keep you informed.
I should mention briefly the issue of genetically modified food. There have been some conversation on this issue. I should tell you that the United States has now committed 332,000 metric tons of support for the six countries. There was a shipload of 33,000 tons headed to Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia a few days ago. The people in Zimbabwe simply did not get their paperwork done in time to get this shipment adequately unloaded and delivered; they did not reject a genetically modified shipment.
Our policy on this matter is to ask the donor government to certify that what they are providing for our recipient countries meets the health and safety standards of their own country and meets the health and safety standards of the Codex Alimentarius, which is the code of the WHO and FAO certifying food safety. Once that is done, we then transmit that information to the recipient country, and they have the option of saying, yes, we want that; no, we don't want that. And virtually, every situation—we work in 85 countries around the world—it is never rejected. And I am optimistic that we will have, over the next few days, satisfactorily worked through these issues in Zimbabwe.
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This crisis is heightened by the AIDS situation. Forty million people in Africa are affected; 20 million people have lost their lives. Huge impact on children. Just a huge impact on children. AIDS orphans are rampant, and the economic effect of this whole added issue to the dilemma exacerbates clearly the food situation.
The good news is that we have had good conversations, obviously, with Andrew, and, as an American, I have to tell you, as I look through the work we do, and every conversation I have relates to a very troubled situation somewhere around the world, and, as Americans, we should be very proud of the role our government, our country—we are incredibly generous. In every place we do business, the U.S. leads the way.
I have had a good conversation this week with Commissioner Paul Nielsen of the European Community, and have been as sured of their generous support. They have some of the same political misgivings that have been expressed this morning, but focused on the humanitarian crisis, we will have them as a good partner. I have had strong support from the UK. They have committed right up front $45 million in cash to our efforts. I am going to meet with Claire Short in London on Monday to continue this conversation.
The challenge is for us to be about the business of—we know how to do this logistically. We have worked in the Horn of Africa, we have worked in Southern Africa before. What the World Food Programme did, once again, in partnership with USAID and so many more in Afghanistan was a remarkable accomplishment. We know how, working with incredibly strong and good-hearted NGO partners, how to do our work. Our challenge is in generating donor resources. And when you look at the magnitude of what faces us in Korea, in Afghanistan, in West Africa, in Angola, in Palestine, and Central America, and then to put a challenge to generate this kind of support on top of that at a time when, generally, food resources for these kinds of things have been decreasing around the country, the challenge to us is enormous.
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But please know that we take this seriously. We understand completely what is at risk, and we are going to work as hard as we could possibly work to generate the resources and deliver the food in such a way that we avert this terrible catastrophe on the horizon.
So I would be happy to, in a few minutes, answer your questions. But what has been said is accurate. The demands on us with our partners have been stated accurately, and the impact on all of our work at a time when we are also focused on feeding 300 million children in the world who are not well fed, who are poorly nourished, half don't go to school, half have serious health problems. We have a very full plate right now, and to say the least, we will desperately, desperately need your continued good support and goodwill. Thank you.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Morris.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Morris follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF JAMES T. MORRIS, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME
Chairman Hyde, members of the Committee: Thank you for the opportunity to discuss the alarming and complicated food crisis now unfolding in southern Africa.
A FAMINE AVERTED
It was almost exactly a decade ago that the House Select Committee on Hunger held a hearing on impending famine in southern Africa. The memory of a million lives lost in Ethiopia in the mid 1980s was still fresh then. In 1992, all the danger signs were there again in southern Africa—food prices were spiking, livestock was being sold or dying, people were migrating out of the countryside. At least twenty million people were at risk. But in the end there was no famine.
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Not long after that hearing, the United Nations launched its most ambitious relief operation to date. What made it a success was the very early attention of this Congress, USAID, and the World Food Program. Americans did not turn on the televisions to see horrible footage of dying children, there were no editorials condemning the failings of the aid agencies, no follow-up hearings to pinpoint just went wrong. It was a famine averted.
From a food perspective, what really saved the day was the availability of large amounts of Section 416b surplus commodities from USDA, otherwise USAID and WFP would have been overwhelmed. Were there headlines in the Washington Post and the New York Times announcing ''Major Famine Averted''? No. The media sadly misses successes of this kind. Only the Christian Science monitor ran a laudatory history of the operation.
There were two other things that were unique about the food crisis in 1992 in southern Africa. First, it marked the first official cooperation by the apartheid regime in South Africa with its neighbors. And second, it was the beginning of a string of devastating natural disasters that have gripped the developing world over the last decade.
If you permit me, I would like to develop this thought a bit because it explains how we have reached a point that the major donors have little food aid or cash to spare today. The rising number of natural disasters led donors to divert food aid normally allocated to helping chronically hungry people to these emergencies. At the same time, there were major political crises that also required emergency food aid—Kosovo, East Timor, Afghanistan.
Partly because of this emergency demand, we have barely made a dent in the number of hungry people globally, which only declined from 822 million in 1992 to 777 million today. The food aid that might have gone to the chronically hungry was quickly absorbed by all these emergencies. As we meet. USAID has already programmed its entire Title II budget and we are not yet half way through the year.
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THE DIMENSIONS OF A FOOD CRISIS
There has been progress since the 1992 drought in southern Africa on several fronts. We are—thanks to work by USAID, FAO and WFP—better able to pinpoint where and when there will be trouble. Our early warning systems are far more sophisticated than a decade ago. Joint FAO/WFP assessment teams have already delineated the areas with the greatest need, and our preliminary estimates are that roughly 13 million people are in trouble at least until the harvest next spring (March-April 2003). The regional shortfall for cereals will be roughly 3.5 million mts. These are poor countries with limited cash for imports. So we expect food aid needs just for cereals alone to amount to over 1.2 million metric tons.
Southern Africa, in particular the Republic of South Africa, is normally a surplus producer and WFP often buys food there to help out in other parts of the continent, but the drought has been persistent and most farming in the region is still rainfed. While this is not as bad as the regional crisis in 1992, it is still severe. The worst hit areas are Malawi, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, but there are also pockets of hunger in Lesotho, Mozambique and Swaziland. Food prices have risen sharply and there are shortages of corn in many markets so even people with cash cannot obtain enough food. Desperate families have sold off livestock and other assets and eaten green corn, tree roots and other pre-famine foods, which has caused an increase in disease.
COUNTRY SPECIFIC HIGHLIGHTS
We have provided to you estimates of food needs for all the countries involved from the FAO/WFP Crop and Food Supply Assessment Missions. (See Appendix 1.) Permit me to summarize the situation for each:
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Zimbabwe:
From June, more than 5 million people will need food aid in Zimbabwe, increasing to 6.1 million from December—4.4 million people in communal and resettled rural areas, 850,000 urban residents plus 825,000 farm workers.
The extremely poor main growing season has been caused by a combination of severe drought between January and April in many parts of the country and the near collapse of large-scale commercial production due to the Government's land redistribution activities. Abnormally high rainfall preceded the drought.
We estimate cereal production at 670,000 MT, a drastic 57% drop from last year's already poor harvest and only two thirds of the 1999/2000 harvest.
With expected corn imports of 300,000 MT, and current food aid pledges of 60,000 MT, a huge cereal gap of about 1.5 million MT remains. Some 852,000 MT of food needs could be covered by the private sector, but this would require a change in the Government of Zimbabwe's policy regarding grain importation.
If neither the Government nor the private sector is able to provide large quantities of food to the markets, and if food aid does not arrive in the quantities needed at the right time, the food crisis could evolve into a famine.
Zambia:
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More than one person in five, about 2.3 million people, will need some 174,000 MT of food aid until the next harvest.
Overall, there has been a substantial decline in corn production this season in Southern Province, and parts of Central, Eastern and Western Province. This was partly due to acutely irregular rainfall as well as more chronic problems of loss of cattle/draught power from Corridor disease, untimely provision of fertilizer and quality seeds, recycling of hybrid seeds and heavy reliance on a single crop for income and consumption. Several of the most affected areas also experienced drastically reduced yields last season as well.
There is likely to be a problem of drinking water for animals this year in the plateau and hilly areas, due to the poor rainfall. This has already had a negative impact on the quality of pasture for livestock and some farmers are forced to travel greater distances with their animals to locate adequate food and water sources.
Malawi:
About 3.2 million people will need emergency food, mainly corn. The number will increase from the present 545,000 to 2.1 million in September and to 3.1 million from December to March.
Corn production has been estimated at 1.5 million MT, 10% less than last year's poor harvest. But we expect the actual harvest to be lower because many people are so hungry they are already eating green corn.
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The cereal supply is about 1.7 million MT against a national requirement of 2.2 million MT, leaving an import requirement of 485,000 MT. Commercial cereal imports are forecast at 225,000 MT and, in addition, there is a good supply of tubers. That leaves food aid needs of roughly 208,000 MT, which the Government and external assistance will need to cover.
Mozambique:
About 515,000 people in poor households in 43 districts of the Southern and Central regions of Mozambique are facing severe food insecurity. Of these, 355,000 require immediate food assistance of about 53,000 MT from June 2002 through March 2003, while a second group of 160,000 people will require 16,800 MT starting from September 2002, when their current-year harvest will be exhausted.
Severe dry weather during the 2001/02 cropping season sharply reduced crop yields in southern and parts of central Mozambique. In the main cereal growing areas of the northern region and remaining parts of the central region, abundant and well-distributed rains led to increased production of cereals.
Overall, the 2002 cereal output will be about 1.77 million MT, 5 percent above last year, and corn output at 1.24 million MT, an increase of 8 percent. We expect an exportable corn surplus in northern and central areas of 100,000 Mt. However, high internal transport costs make it uncompetitive to move this corn from the north to the deficit areas of the south, and it is instead exported to Malawi and other neighboring countries.
Lesotho:
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We believe 444,800 people will require emergency food aid at the peak of the crisis.
Lesotho has faced severe and variable weather for the second year in a row—heavy rainfall, frost, hailstorms and tornadoes. This affected crops at both planting and critical development stages.
We estimate cereal production at 53,800 MT, which is a third lower than the already-reduced harvest last year.
The domestic cereal supply will be about 74,000 MT, against national consumption of 412,000 MT. The gap of 338,000 MT will need to be covered by about 191,000 MT of commercial imports and food aid amounting to 147,000 MT for the 2002/03 marketing year, of which the humanitarian community will be asked to cover some 50,000 MT. In particular, food aid needs will be most acute from November until March of 2003.
Swaziland:
We estimate that 144,000 people in Lowveld, Middleveld and Lubombo Plateau need food assistance for 6 months, with 87,000 more needing it for the last 3 pre-harvest months.
Erratic weather for a third consecutive year, including a prolonged dry spell, severely affected crops during flowering stage.
Production is 18% below last year's poor harvest and 37% below the average output in the last 5 years.
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We estimate domestic cereal supply in 2002/2003 at 77,000 MT against national consumption requirements of 188,000 MT. After deducting likely commercial imports of 96,000 MT, Swaziland will need 15,000 MT of food aid.
AN EARLY RESPONSE
We have taken the following actions to help these countries cope with the developing crisis——
1. WFP has already expanded existing emergency activities in the six affected countries as bridging operations while we put together a regional operation we will manage out of Johannesburg. In the last few weeks, our caseload has doubled from 2.3 million to 4.6 million. The sharpest expansion is in Malawi, from just 260,000 beneficiaries up to 2.1 million.
2. All the detailed food assessment reports were reviewed at an interagency meeting in Johannesburg on 6 and 7 June, which set the outlines for a regional operation and a Consolidated Appeal (CAP) from all the UN and private voluntary agencies that will be working on the operation. We are now preparing the regional emergency operation, which will start 1 July for a duration of 9 months. Our goal is to reach some 12.8 million people with around 1.6 million MT of food over the full course of the operation. It's important to note that the population in need will increase dramatically in the months to come, when the meager yield of this year's harvest is consumed. The current numbers are 7.7 million people in need in July-August. This will increase to 11.2 million in September to November, and peak at 12.8 million for the period December to March.
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3. I have already approved a Special Operation (SO) to ensure adequate managerial support and enhanced logistics coordination for the regional EMOP. WFP has already committed $5.2 million from its emergency funds to jump-start this regional operation, which will be up and running at the beginning of July and will gradually absorb the other emergency operations we just expanded. A Management Coordination Unit has been established in Johannesburg, this unit will also handle the logistics coordination. At the Johannesburg meeting, WFP was asked to continue overall coordination of the crisis, under the leadership of Ms. Judith Lewis, Regional Director of East and Southern Africa. Ms. Lewis helped lead our recent and successful drive to prevent a similar food crisis in the Horn of Africa two years ago.
4. We have long established ties with many NGO partners in the region such as World Vision, CARE, Save the Children, Africare and Catholic Relief Services. Without their involvement in local food distribution we will not succeed. Coordinating all this will be a massive challenge and while each organization may prefer its own food pipeline, we believe that is an invitation to duplication, higher logistics costs and trouble.
5. We are keeping up the pressure on our donors. Fortunately, we have had Andrew Natsios and his team on our side and we are getting initial support from the United Kingdom and EU as well. USAID has already committed 105,000 MT to the effort. We are hoping for a very significant amount of additional commodities from the Emerson Trust. We have some breathing room as the region's harvests—generally very poor harvests—are in and buying us some time. We expect peak need at the end of the year.
If we have any break at all in the food pipeline the situation could be disastrous. And we need other donors beyond the United States to jump in on a larger scale soon. It is a dangerous business to rely just on a single donor.
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LOGISTICS
The movement of humanitarian cargo in Southern Africa will rely heavily on the Mozambique ports, railways and road infrastructure. Since the South African transport system has been extensively utilized for regional imports and exports, it will be difficult to find spare capacity for additional large movements of food aid. The Mozambican routes have been carrying less regular commercial traffic and have the advantage of geographical proximity and unused capacity.
Therefore, to complement the traffic that will continue to be routed via the South African ports, WFP will concentrate its logistics efforts on maximizing the capacity of the Mozambican corridors, namely Beira, Nacala and Maputo. But we will also utilize the port of Dar es Salaam, mainly for deliveries eastern Zambia and the north of Malawi.
Logistics capacity assessments of other ports in the region, such as Walvis Bay in Namibia, will be carried out within the next two weeks.
A COMPLEX EMERGENCY
There are lessons to be learned in any humanitarian crisis and this one has more than its share. Like most major food crises in recent years, the causes are partly environmental—there have been severe weather disturbances, including drought, flooding, erratic rainfall and hail in some areas. But there are also issues of economic decline and disruption and political mismanagement. This is very clearly and uniquely a food crisis, though if it is not contained it may soon become political, especially in Zimbabwe.
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There is a complex interplay of politics, economics and trade at work here. There are a whole range of factors beyond the obvious problem of weather anomalies—economic mismanagement in Zimbabwe, problems in implementing policy advice from the World Bank and IMF in Malawi, and the debilitating effect that AIDS is having on the agricultural output of all these countries. There are definitely governance and corruption issues as well. We are even confronting controversies over GM foods and agricultural trade.
GOVERNANCE
Like so many other natural disasters, the damage caused by erratic weather has been amplified by very human failings.
One of the development themes my colleagues at USAID and in the United Nations keeping hammering on is the need for good governance. WFP is not a political agency, but a humanitarian one, so I will leave a detailed analysis to them—but there have been clear failures in governance in this crisis.
In Malawi, national grain stocks were liquidated and no one has been able to trace the funds. Some people are blaming this on the World Bank and IMF policy advice, but they are, of course, not responsible for the fact the funds were misappropriated. On a positive note, the Government of Malawi does appear to be making good faith efforts to trace these funds.
In Zimbabwe, the land redistribution scheme promoted by President Mugabe has caused economic turmoil and a collapse in food production due to the lack of professional management of the appropriated lands.
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FAILED ECONOMIC POLICY
Finally, the government in Zimbabwe maintains too much control over food marketing and the donors are pressing them to liberalize the market so there can be broader commercial imports. That would help somewhat, but the amount of food available in the region, however, is very limited since South Africa has also been affected by dry spells. The forecast of further depletion in commercial food stocks is a looming problem that may well affect political stability. Unless the market is opened up, the likelihood of the food gap being filled is remote.
THE ISSUE OF GM FOOD
At the same time, Zimbabwe has been reluctant to take donations of US or Canadian corn as about a third of it is genetically modified, though they are permitting entry now for aid provided the corn is milled immediately. They want to export livestock to the EU and are concerned some GM corn may be fed to livestock. In fact, the EU has publicly stated they are not concerned about this but rather with the prevalence of foot and mouth disease in Zimbabwe.
WFP's position is to be neither pro nor anti GM foods. If a contribution of food meets a donor's food safety standards and a recipient's, we provide it. Obviously, foods containing commercially produced GM corn have been safely consumed on billions of occasions. So, from my personal perspective, it is hard to justify withholding food from people on the basis that it is GM. There are also no UN food safety guidelines that would call for that under the FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius. There is a great deal of misunderstanding on this issue we need to overcome, but that is more properly left to FAO and WHO. Some African scientists are actually quite keen on GM, seeing it as presenting the possibilities for a second Green Revolution.
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A CRISIS WITHIN A CRISIS
This is the first major food crisis in history in which we clearly see that AIDS is playing a major role. The countries most affected by the drought are also at the epicenter of the global AIDS pandemic. AIDS has raged like a wildfire across sub-Saharan Africa, infecting up to 41 million people, which is more than 75 percent of the world's cases, and already killing more than 20 million.
There are actually three emergencies raging in southern Africa as we sit here today. In addition to the unabated weather disturbances and the AIDS pandemic, we should add the exponentially growing number of orphans. We are witnessing the demise of an entire generation of parents—parents who are leaving behind youngsters who lack the cultural, social and familial ties, including basic farming know-how, that typically pass from generation to generation.
The US Census Bureau estimates that as many as 15.6 million children were orphaned by 2000 in the 23 hardest hit countries in sub-Saharan Africa. What we in the US refer to optimistically as ''the future generation'' is, in this case, a generation of children with the bleakest of outlooks. In Zambia, just last month, a WFP team met with a family headed by an elderly woman and her blind husband. They have survived all nine of their children, and find themselves thrust into the role of guardians for eight of their grandchildren and several great-grandchildren. These are some of the individuals who are most at risk of starvation today.
Poor families in the drought-affected region have already sold off their assets and spent their paltry savings on what food and medicine was available even before the food crisis became apparent. Children have already been withdrawn from school to replace their parents in the fields, beg on the street, look after their younger siblings or provide home-care for a sick family member. Agricultural production was already depressed because so many adults are too sick to work. And, young women, even girls as young as 10 and 12 years old, are exchanging sex for food, basic goods, or the money to buy them. In their desperation, they risk contracting HIV and then giving birth either to infected babies or the orphans of the future.
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In the African context, the role of good nutrition in slowing the progression of disease from HIV to AIDS cannot be understated. People living with HIV require more energy and more protein, along with the necessary micronutrients, than do healthy people. Existing therapies require sound nutrition. Adequate food is essential for prolonging the lives of parents and enabling them to have a few more precious weeks, months or maybe even years to be productive work and spend time with their families. Perhaps we cannot give them hope, but we can give them time.
CONCLUSION
Mr. Chairman, we must move quickly in southern Africa. Working with Andrew Natsios and our partners at USAID and in the NGO community, I know we can beat prevent a famine as we did a decade ago. We were very pleased to see that Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman recently approved a drawdown of wheat from the Emerson Trust for 275,000 MT that will be exchanged for corn and vegetable oil. That should be a great help. To be candid, we expect that given the severe demands for food aid worldwide, it may be necessary for her to draw on the Emerson Trust again to avert more crises in the near future. President Bush has made a commitment that there will be no famine on his watch. It is up to all of us to help him meet that commitment.
Andrew and I just returned from the World Food Summit plus 5 meeting in Rome. Five years ago, the United States and other nations made a pledge to try to cut hunger in half by 2015. And, as I noted earlier, we are falling far short of that goal. Building real food security for people as we have here in the US is no simple task. I think USAID is to be commended for investing 38 percent more money in food and agriculture projects in the poorest countries. We must make more progress on hunger. Hungry people simply cannot produce, cannot compete and cannot be good neighbors.
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Food aid needs a strong boost too. The 300 million children all over the world who are hungry today cannot wait for development to catch up with them. Hunger is devastating their bodies and their minds now—192 million of them are already stunted because their families could not feed them properly. But we are helping not more, but less. In 1999, global food aid was 15 million MT. Last year it had dropped to 11 million MT—a loss of 25 percent, despite all the food crises that now challenge us.
WFP is severely pressed for resources. We recently had to cut a million beneficiaries in North Korea and were only able to restore them after a new US contribution. We have also delayed food for school feeding and food for work projects in Afghanistan. Those two countries are not only humanitarian priorities for the United States; they are politically sensitive as well. While other donors are critical too, the US has always taken the lead on food aid, especially in emergencies. I am deeply proud of that fact. I hope this Congress will reach out to the hungry who have always seen the United States as a symbol of hope for the future.
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you for the extraordinary job you do and the World Food Programme does. The Committee certainly, in a bipartisan way, applauds your efforts and looks forward to working with you and doing whatever we can do to be of assistance.
Mr. MORRIS. I appreciate you very much, and I should tell you that I am a very lucky man to be there doing what I am doing.
Mr. SMITH. I can see you have risen to the challenge.
Mr. Wilkinson.
STATEMENT OF BRUCE WILKINSON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS, WORLD VISION UNITED STATES
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Mr. WILKINSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I think we are very fortunate to be doing the work that we are able to do here, and thank you for this opportunity to testify before the Committee on International Relations regarding the food security crisis in Southern Africa where we believe 13 million people are at immediate risk.
World Vision estimates that by the end of August or September, which is really the end of the winter for the Southern Africa region, the amount of food available locally as well as donor food will be far from sufficient to meet the minimum needs in the region. So we are advocating for a minimum of 1.2 million metric tons to be provided immediately.
Mr. Chairman, I have described the causes of the food crisis in Southern African in my written testimony, and I humbly submit that to the Committee. For the remainder of the time allotted me, I would like to offer four recommendations on how this Administration and the American private voluntary organizations can work together to effectively ease the suffering of the most vulnerable populations, women, children, the elderly, and especially those impacted by HIV/AIDS.
So, Mr. Chairman, the first recommendation is this Administration must make additional emergency food available to respond to the crisis in Southern Africa. The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust should be used and the Commodity Credit Corporation Charter Act Authority should replenish the Trust. We recommend that Title II PL 480 development funding must not be used.
World Vision commends the Agency for International Development for its responsiveness by sending food and aid to the region in May and for prepositioning food for quicker access and transport. World Vision also thanks the World Food Programme for its continued partnership, particularly in response to this crisis.
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World Vision and the Coalition for Food Aid, a consortium of 13 professional Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs), is also pleased that the Administration decided to use 275,000 metric tons of the commodities in the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust; however, this response is far short of the 1.2 million metric tons that are need immediately. We urge the Administration to use the full amount allotted under the law.
The purpose of food aid in emergencies is to shine light and eliminate the need for people to resort to the selling of needed assets for their survival and their recovery. Early provision of assistance also prevents the movement of people in search of food and creation of displaced persons camps where disease such as HIV can rapidly spread. Resettlement and recovery become more difficult and are very expensive.
It is necessary to ensure that the Trust will be repaid without depleting funds for other food aid programs. In particular, this crisis should not reduce existing or future PL 480 funds. It appears that already it is decided that 50 percent of the title II food aid will be used for emergency programs. This will be devastating to programming worldwide where malnutrition rates are high and agricultural productivity is low. For example, programs in countries such as Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and Angola could be cut. And I understand you will be having further work on Angola this afternoon.
When famine occurs in one part of the world, it is easy to forget other parts of the world until a crisis unfolds there, too. At that point we are too late, and we will be here again.
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To fix this standby reserve repayment, repayment should not be required for commodities used in any fiscal year for urgent needs. This will require an amendment to law. However, we suggest that when the commodity prices are low and supplies are abundant, the CCC Charter Act Authority should be used to buy commodities, which would then be transferred to the Trust. This would not require an amendment to the law, but would require a change to the Administration's policy.
Recommendation number 2, Mr. Chairman: U.S. Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs) must have emergency food aid pipelines in the region to effectively respond to the crisis. World Vision currently is the only U.S. PVO with an emergency food pipeline from USAID into the Southern Africa region, using about 14,000 metric tons of food for Zimbabwe. However, we would ask if USAID would provide more pipeline to U.S. PVOs to address this ongoing emergency in the region.
Aside from the one program, USAID apparently intends to channel most food through the World Food Programme, and, as we heard today, the PVOs can carry additional responsibility in this. And so we ask that that be considered, and thank you for what I have heard in previous testimony, that that will be considered, Mr. Chairman.
It is more effective to employ multiple pipelines going into the region so that if one pipeline has a capacity of breaking down, that other pipelines are actually able to supply the needs for the people. So it is important to note that PVO programs will complement the ongoing distribution of the United Nations World Food Programme. We work in collaboration, and we will complement their activities.
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World Vision and other experienced PVOs have submitted a variety of food aid programs and proposals to USAID to respond to this crisis. We have yet to have full response to those proposals, so we encourage that those proposals be responded to. For example, a consortium of three major PVOs—CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and World Vision—have proposed to USAID's Office of Food for Peace a plan to distribute a minimum tonnage level of 298,000 metric tons over a 10-month period to meet the needs of nearly 2.5 million people in all the six affected countries. We estimate that this amount represents about 20 percent of the total number of people who would require food aid.
Mr. Chairman, I believe it is extremely important that American PVOs that have experience, capacity, and program skills also enter into agreements directly with USAID to deliver emergency food and to hasten the transition of suffering communities in the recovery phase. Emergency food assistance to southern Africa that is purchased with American taxpayer dollars should be distributed by American organizations that are supported by American citizens. Such action reinforces the message that American people care about people in distress around the world. The message needs to be heard now more than ever.
Mr. Chairman, recommendation number 3: This Administration must respond quickly and adequately to save lives. At the same time, emergency food aid must be integrated into programs that address the root causes of famine and ensure that people are on the road to recovery. We recognize that when famine occurs, it is easy to lose sight of a country's long-term development goals, and this, of course, we believe would be a mistake.
World Vision's experience in Zambia demonstrates the need, even in times of famine, for intervention to assist small holder farmers who are deeply entrenched in poverty. To help address this, World Vision, with USAID's support, initiated an agriforestry project. Now there is proof that 14,000 farmers in the program have doubled their yields, and even in the face of this severe drought. In other words, these farmers don't need food assistance in this current crisis; they are actually selling food because of the initial work that we worked on with USAID in agriforestry.
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The key to managing the current crisis requires an integrated livelihood/food security approach be used. Food aid alone is not adequate, and the populations in the region need more than just calories over the next few months. Assuring there is a pipeline for recovery activities is an essential part of an emergency response.
And, Mr. Chairman, our fourth and final recommendation: HIV/AIDS exacerbates the effects of food shortages. We encourage the Administration to address the food crisis in the southern African region in a comprehensive manner. Not only are the people of southern Africa facing a devastating famine, but incredibly high rates of HIV and AIDS, ranging from 15 to 25 percent infection rates. This will result in a greater loss of life and more orphaned children.
Mr. Chairman, I believe this is the first time that relief workers have been confronted with famine at the same time as a high prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS. So, it is absolutely essential that we get high nutrition into these families so that these people can endure to help their children transition in life, because we know that loss of life is very quick when people don't have adequate nutrition with HIV/AIDS. Large numbers of breadwinners have been lost, and there is significant increase in aged grandparents and child-headed households. Generations of children are growing up with no knowledge of what it is like to have a parent. Programs must reflect these needs and adequately respond.
As World Vision, other PVOs, and the private sector do their part to respond to the AIDS pandemic. Congress must do its part by appropriating the $2.5 million for fiscal year 2003 for bilateral and HIV programs.
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Mr. Chairman, I would like to end my testimony with the story of Rosalina. As you know, we are very practical in the NGO and PVO world, and Rosalina is a Malawian grandmother, and she has three children for whom she cares, and she told her story to our World Vision employee. This is Rosalina speaking:
''He gave his food to the children. I saw him get weak. Then he got even weaker, and died,''
Rosalina said. She is recounting the death 2 months ago of her husband. Just before that, one of her granddaughters also died of hunger. Rosalina's daughter Aness has left the village to find food or work to help her children survive. Rosalina says of the crisis:
''This is the first time I have seen this. We have heard of hunger, but we have never experienced it like this before. There have been food shortages before, but this year is different. The difference is that they took place before, but they were isolated in some families, but now it is widespread. The maize was scorched. The rains came for a month, but then it stopped. We planted, but we got very little.''
Rosalina is hopeful for some assistance, but acknowledges that the future that she is envisioning for her grandchildren right now is very bleak.
So, Mr. Chairman, it is only by God's grace that you and I are not sitting on the straw mat where Rosalina told her story to World Vision's colleagues last month. We want to help the thousands like her. We can do it, we should do it, we can do it in partnership. We must do it. We urge the Administration to partner with American PVOs and the World Food Programme so that together we can effectively respond to this humanitarian crisis.
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Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Thank you very much, Mr. Wilkinson. And thank you on behalf of all of us for the great work that World Vision does. I've been a Member of Congress for 22 years, and we all know that World Vision has made the difference in the lives of so many in averting hunger and other problems.
[The prepared statement of Mr. Wilkinson follows:]
PREPARED STATEMENT OF BRUCE WILKINSON, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS, WORLD VISION UNITED STATES
I am Bruce Wilkinson, the Senior Vice-President of International Programs for World Vision. I worked in Africa for 17 years, with part of my time spent managing food aid programs, responding to drought and famine. World Vision, founded in 1950, is the largest privately funded humanitarian aid organization in the United States. We are a Christian relief and development agency serving the world's poorest children and families in nearly 100 countries, with over 14,000 staff worldwide.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify before the House International Relations Committee regarding the crisis in the southern Africa Region (''the Region'') that is placing 13 million people in six countries in jeopardy. World Vision operates in all of the affected countries implementing programs that help vulnerable populations improve their food security and livelihoods. We are well-positioned to respond to the famine by enhancing our ongoing development efforts with emergency food aid and by supporting agricultural production to improve prospects for rapid recovery.
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It is essential that emergency food aid be in addition to regularly programmed PL 480 Title II food aid in order to avoid displacing vital developmental programming that mitigates against emergencies around the world and allows people to improve their health, living conditions, and incomes. Moreover, rather than just relying on the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) to deliver commodities to the Region, it is important that Private Voluntary Organizations (PVOs) that have experience, capacity, and programs in the Region also enter into agreements directly with the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to bring in food aid for emergency response and to hasten the transition to the recovery phase. Some of the United States food assistance provided by the American people should be distributed by American organizations that are supported by American citizens. This reinforces the message that the United States cares about the needs of other countries.
Today, I will summarize the genesis and nature of the crisis in the southern Africa Region, efforts to date to address the crisis, and how USAID and PVOs operating in the Region can most effectively integrate emergency aid with developmental aid in order to assure a more complete recovery and the most effective use of resources.
PROBLEM IN REGION
A complex humanitarian crisis is occurring in southern Africa, with nearly 13 million people in need of immediate food assistance. It is estimated that the six affected countries—Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique—need approximately 1.2 million Metric Tons from now until March 2003. We also cannot forget the country of Angola that needs ongoing assistance. Unfortunately, as is the case with most humanitarian crises, it is the most vulnerable populations—the women, children, the elderly, and especially those affected by HIV/AIDS—who are at the greatest risk. It is the poorest populations such as subsistence farmers, who even in the best of times suffer the most.
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The factors that have led to the food security crisis in the Region are numerous and complex, and are both man-made and natural. They include floods, drought, crop failures, chronic problems such as poor health care and sanitary conditions, politics, poor policy decisions, the lack of foreign exchange to import food, and last but certainly not least, alarming and growing prevalence rates of HIV/AIDS that are now approaching over 30% in some of the affected countries.
By August and September, the end of winter in southern Africa, it is clear that the total amount of food available locally, as well as that given by donors, will be far from sufficient to ensure that all hungry people throughout the Region receive food. 1.2 million MT is needed immediately. We are prepared to assist and we are assisting.
The most severely affected countries are Malawi, Zimbabwe, and Zambia.
It is already well-known that Malawi is facing its worst hunger crisis in 50 years, affecting almost three-quarters of its 11 million population. World Vision in Malawi estimates that the food deficit of grain for the 2002/2003 consumption year will be 485,000 MT (FAO/WFP, May 2002). 545,000 persons will need emergency food aid between June and August and that number will rise to about 2.1 million between September and November 2002 (WFP/FAO, 2002). Making matters worse, the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate in Malawi is 16%
In Zimbabwe, disruptions in the farming cycle due to politically motivated land invasions coupled with an inflation rate of around 120% have compounded the situation, as does the fact that one out of every four adults in Zimbabwe is infected with HIV/AIDS. World Vision estimates that 6 million people are in need of food aid, including approximately 705,000 MT of cereals.
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In Zambia, where the HIV/AIDS prevalence rate is 20%, World Vision estimates that approximately 174,000 MT are needed.
However, food aid alone is not the answer to the Region's problems. A failure of governance has exacerbated the problems in the Region and domestic policy adjustments by all countries affected need to be made to correct these systemic problems. Indeed, World Vision deals with these issues regularly as we conduct our programs in the Region. For example, last year World Vision stepped in to purchase and to assure the distribution of seed when the parastatal organization responsible for food security in Zimbabwe failed to function. However, today World Vision is here to share with the Committee the types of assistance the Region needs, rather than to discuss the political situation and governmental institutions.
The vulnerable populations in the Region need more than just calories over the next few months. Integrated with the provision of emergency food aid must be developmental and emergency assistance to assure that families have the necessary agricultural inputs to sow the next harvest in order to avoid the continuance of the agricultural disaster. World Vision and other PVOs are already engaged in helping subsistence farmers under regular development assistance programs and these can be adjusted to meet the special and critical needs during this famine. HIV/AIDS is steadily reducing the number of individuals to carry out agricultural tasks, which makes it important to increase access to agricultural technologies that are both cost and labor saving.
We recognized that this crisis was coming last year and actually started to adjust our plans at that time.
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Equally important is to continue and to increase efforts during this crisis to assure households access to health care, training on proper nutrition and hygiene, and access to clean water. A recent Nutrition Survey conducted by World Vision in Zimbabwe revealed that one out of four children is chronically malnourished with implications for learning ability and future development. Also, children are seriously at-risk for preventable infections.
We recognize that when famine occurs, it is easy to lose sight of developmental goals for a country. This is a mistake. World Vision's experience in Zambia demonstrates the need, even in times of famine, for interventions to assist smallholder farmers who are deeply entrenched in poverty and where HIV/AIDS continues to reduce the number of individuals to undertake agricultural tasks. ''The African continent south of the Sahara is dominated by agriculture. 50 million families derive their livelihood from farming. The vast majority of these farms cover an area of less than 5 ha and are hand-tilled.''(see footnote 1) In Zambia, many farmers are unable to purchase fertilizers and lack markets for their produce. This in turn causes agricultural productivity to decline and farmer incomes to remain low. To help address this, World Vision (supported by USAID) entered into partnership with ICRAF (The International Center for Research in Agroforestry) and the Ministry of Agriculture in 1999 to improve soil fertility. The strategy applied was the dissemination of short-term agroforestry options (which are in harmony with the environment) to farmers, targeting approximately 12,000 resource poor farm households in five districts of eastern Zambia over a five year period.
As of April 2002, three years into the project, 15,000 smallholder farmers had taken up at least one improved fallow technology and the number of fields with an improved fallow crop was 20,000 indicating some farmers had adopted more than one technology. Now, when many farmers in Zambia are facing a serious food deficit, there is general affirmation that the farmers who took on agroforestry have produced enough food, even in the face of a severe drought. There have been significant yield increases of approximately 3.47 ton/ha as opposed to 1.3 tons/ha for farmers who neither applied agroforestry or inorganic fertilizer.(see footnote 2)
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Fortunately, these development programs were being supported by USAID, which helped to mitigate against and prevent the worst impacts of famine on highly vulnerable populations. This is just one of the important opportunities provided by ongoing programming for development. As we face this crisis, we must think of similar development strategies to avoid perpetuation of the emergency, to restore families to levels of production and incomes that can support their families, and to make more effective use of food aid resources than just short-term donations to relieve immediate need.
DONOR RESPONSE TO DATE
The purpose of food aid in emergencies is to sustain life and to eliminate the need for people to resort to selling assets needed for survival and recovery. Early provision of assistance also prevents the movement of people in search of food and the development of displaced persons camps, where there is an increase in economic and social instability and also where disease can readily spread, and resettlement and recovery become more difficult and more expensive.
Thus, it is important to be prepared to respond quickly to avoid the worst impacts and to save lives.
World Vision would like to commend USAID for its responsiveness in sending 33,230 MT of maize, beans, and oil to the Region in May and for prepositioning food for quicker access and transport. We understand that in total, USAID has either shipped or prepositioned 132,000 MT, and that the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust has been activated with a commitment of 275,000 MT. While this response is positive, it is far short of the 1.2 million MT that are needed immediately. Also, USAID's Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance needs to support the emergency response with appropriate financial resources. World Vision would also like to thank WFP for its continued partnership, particularly in response to this crisis.
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WORLD VISION RESPONSE
As with many other international aid organizations, World Vision is responding to the crisis, and is providing emergency relief as well as ongoing development support. We believe that it is critical for PVOs working in the areas to have emergency food aid agreements so we can most economically and effectively reach populations that are very vulnerable, including many people who live in regions where we currently work. PVOs have long-term relationships with communities, networks, and governments. PVOs also have distribution systems that can add emergency food aid to ongoing development efforts, as well as continue development efforts that are essential for recovery.
In southern Africa World Vision works in all six of the affected countries implementing multi-sectoral programming focused on transformational development. World Vision uses Area Development Programs (ADPs) as a part of our worldwide strategy for child-focused, multi-sectoral programming, addressing the needs of targeted communities over a period of 10–15 years. Programs are funded by multiple donors including private child sponsors, bi-lateral government donors such as USAID, AUSAID, or CIDA, multi-lateral donors, private special donors, and foundations. In all six countries, World Vision has been distributing food assistance, but the food resources and the cash necessary to cover transportation/distribution costs in order to effectively manage and monitor the food aid is limited.
Importantly as early as June of last year, World Vision conducted food security assessments in Zimbabwe and was already gearing up for a humanitarian crisis. World Vision assisted the Government of Zimbabwe's seed parastatal in an attempt to ensure that seeds would be available for small-scale farmers. Also, an emergency food proposal was submitted to USAID in August of 2001, and approval was received from USAID in March 2002.
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World Vision is the only American PVO with an emergency food pipeline from USAID into the Region. We are approved to assist approximately 100,000 people with 14,310 MT of soy fortified cornmeal, kidney and pinto beans, and vegetable oil. Our first shipment with approximately 7,000 has arrived in Durban, South Africa. While there have been problems with importation requirements, particularly regarding the importation of genetically modified commodities due to concerns expressed by the Government of Zimbabwe, World Vision to date has been able to work with the Government of Zimbabwe's requirements. We are working to ensure that proper testing of the commodities occurs so that it is clear that the commodity transported into the country is of high quality and does not pose any harm to the people it is intended to assist. World Vision is also distributing WFP food aid in four districts to assist 156,000 people.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Despite the good efforts of the United States Government in the emergency response, there are critical issues that still need to be addressed. We make the following recommendations to the Committee for your consideration:
1. This Administration must make additional emergency food aid available to respond to the crisis in southern Africa. The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust should be used and the CCC Charter Act Authority should be used to replenish the Trust. Title II PL 480 development funding must not be used.
World Vision is pleased that the Administration has decided to use 275,000 MT of the commodities in the Trust, an emergency reserve that currently holds 2.5 MMT of commodities to respond to the famine. The Coalition for Food Aid(see footnote 3) of which World Vision is a member, also agrees that the Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust be used. However, much more will be needed over the next few months and we urge the Administration to use the full amount allowed under the law. Also, it is necessary to assure that the Trust will be replenished without depleting funds for other food aid programs. In particular, this crisis should not reduce existing or future PL 480 funds. It appears that USAID has already decided that about 50% of Title II will be used for emergency programs. (Under PL 480, there is a 75% nonemergency requirement for Title II programs.) This will be devastating to programming worldwide where malnutrition rates are high and agricultural production low. For example, programs in countries such as Guatemala, Sierra Leone, and Angola could be cut. When famine occurs in one part of the world it is easy to forget other parts of the world until a crisis unfolds there, too. At that point, we are too late.
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The Bill Emerson Humanitarian Trust may hold up to 4 million metric tons of wheat, rice, corn or sorghum, or any combination of these commodities. Rather than waiving the 75% non-emergency requirement under PL 480 Title II, up to 500,000 MT tons of wheat or the equivalent value of another commodity, including processed products, can be provided from the Trust for emergency assistance in any fiscal year. If all or part of the 500,000 metric tons is not used in a fiscal year, the remaining amount can be added to the 500,000 metric tons for the next fiscal year. This reserve has rarely been used for emergencies since its inception in 1980 as a wheat reserve.
There are problems with repayment and replenishment of the Trust. If food is withdrawn, the Trust has to be repaid for commodities used. The Administration will encumber future PL 480 funds for repayment, cutting back on the amount of food aid that can be provided through PL 480 in later years. Further, the law only allows $20 million received as repayment in any fiscal year to be held by the Trust to replenish the commodities, which can only buy about 140,000 metric tons of wheat. This is insufficient to refill the Trust. Although commodities can also be transferred from CCC inventories to replenish the Trust, the Administration has no plans to replenish the Trust through CCC-obtained commodities.
To fix this standby reserve, repayment should be not be required for commodities used in any fiscal year for urgent needs. This would require an amendment to the law. When commodity prices are low and supplies are abundant, CCC Charter Act authority should be used to buy commodities, which could then be transferred to the Trust. This would not require an amendment, but it would require a change in the Administration's policy.
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2. US Private Voluntary Organizations must have emergency food aid pipelines into the Region in order to effectively respond to the crisis. PVOs already work in the countries at the local levels and have effective mechanisms to provide the food aid, along with integrating the assistance into recovery efforts. Providing only for a WFP pipeline overlooks the local capabilities of operational PVOs and is not an adequate mechanism for reaching vulnerable populations.
Currently the only PVO with a USAID-funded emergency pipeline into the Region is World Vision with a program in Zimbabwe totaling 14,310 MT over 12 months. Similar to many of the Title II Cooperating Sponsors, World Vision is active in the Region, working in all of the affected countries. PVOs know the communities and we have long-term relationships with local governments enabling PVOs to more effectively navigate the local bureaucracies. We have ongoing agreements in place with various Ministries within the governments. In many cases, we can leverage resources from a variety of donors thereby multiplying the impact of United States Government funding. While PVOs have many very positive working relationships with WFP in a number of countries throughout the world, including in southern Africa, World Vision and other aid agencies have learned that multiple pipelines are not only more effective in emergency situations, they are essential. Given the variety of logistical issues that must be navigated in order to move food aid commodities from the ports of discharge to the final delivery points, having the experiences, networks, and lessons from more than one agency involved with transportation, reduces the risk that all pipelines into the country would break.
American PVOs, including World Vision have proposed a variety of large-scale responses to USAID to respond to the crisis. To date, none of these proposals has been accepted. Currently, a Consortium of three PVOs—CARE, Catholic Relief Services, and World Vision—have proposed to USAID's Office of Food for Peace a plan to distribute a minimum tonnage level of 298,800 MT over a 10 month period to meet the needs of nearly 2.5 million people in Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Swaziland, Lesotho, and Mozambique. The Consortium estimates that this represents approximately 20% of the total number of people who require immediate food aid. It is the intent of this Consortium to be viewed as a pilot project for future emergency response programs that require the transport and distribution of large quantities of food aid in efficient, cost-effective ways. Importantly, this effort will complement the ongoing activities of WFP. All of the Consortium PVOs are currently active with WFP in the Region and plan to continue our partnerships. However, we do not believe that WFP can or should single-handedly manage millions of Metric Tons, primarily because it is a risky proposition to presume that WFP alone can respond effectively to a crisis of this magnitude.
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3. This Administration must respond to the immediate needs and save lives, but simultaneously must integrate emergency food aid into a food security/livelihood approach to programming to address the root causes of famine, to prevent its continued destruction, and to ensure that people are on the road to recovery. Since the most affected populations live in abject poverty, and PVOs are working with many of these populations, development work with these poor communities must continue.
As noted previously, the key to managing the current crisis requires that an integrated livelihood security approach be used. Food aid alone is not adequate and thus, the challenge for food aid programs is to integrate the response to short-term crises with long-term development efforts and activities to mitigate against shocks. Vulnerable populations and regions need programs to help improve their ability to prevent the worst impacts of floods and droughts, such as flood control systems, post-harvest and storage technology, improved seeds and land use methods, improved health care for women and children, and nonagricultural sources of incomes in rural areas. Approved food aid programs in vulnerable countries should be elastic, allowing PVOs to adapt to observed changes in food supply during the life of the agreement.
4. This Administration must recognize that HIV/AIDs further exacerbates the problems and the Administration should approach the crisis strategically with interventions that address this issue. Because of high HIV/AIDS prevalence rates, undernourished people are more susceptible to disease and death.
World Vision has launched a worldwide campaign, the HOPE Initiative, to address the problems of HIV/AIDs throughout the world. The six countries in southern Africa that require immediate food assistance are all experiencing a mature HIV/AIDS epidemic (>10% prevalence).
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Countries at this stage of the epidemic are experiencing a significant increase in deaths as a result of HIV/AIDS. Increased numbers of children are being orphaned, and the community is totally overwhelmed by the impact of the disease. The general prevalence rates are greater than 10% and there is a significantly high mortality and orphan rates.
The thrust of programming for countries in this category should be the provision of care and support for orphans and vulnerable children. A number of families have become affected by the epidemic, numerous breadwinners have been lost and the situation is now one in which there is an increase in aged grandparents and child-headed households. Generations of children are growing up with no knowledge of what is like to have a parent and programs need to reflect these needs and adequately respond to the challenges. At the same time there is still a great need for AIDS awareness and prevention activities particularly among the ''window of hope'' age group (5–15 year olds) in which the infection rate is still relatively low. All the other activities in prior stages of the epidemic will still need to be ongoing at the same time in spite of this increased demand for resources to provide for the sick and dying, and the affected children, households and communities.
Unless these issues are addressed simultaneously in the crisis response, the aid will be insufficient. Additional resources, special aid food rations, and special care programs are required. Also, food aid should be used as a focal point for drawing people and communities toward HIV/AIDS awareness. As World Vision and other parts of the private sector are doing their share, Congress needs to do its part by providing $2.5 billion for the next Fiscal Year for bilateral and global HIV/AIDS programs.
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In closing, I ask that you consider the story of Rosalina, the Malawian grandmother of 6 year old Tamara. She told her story to a World Vision employee:
''He gave food to the children. I saw him get weak. Then he got even weaker, and died,'' she said recounting the death two months ago of her husband. Just before that, one of her grand-daughters, Pempherania also died of hunger. 56 year old Rosalina cares for her 3 grandchildren, Tamara (6), Gertrude (3), and Pilirani (1 month old), as their mother Aness, Rosalina's daughter has left to find food or work to help her children. Rosalina says of the crisis: ''This is the first time I have seen this. We have heard of hunger but never have we experienced it. There have been food shortages before, but this year is different. The difference is that when they took place before, they were isolated to some families. But now it's widespread. The maize was scorched. The rains came for a month, but then it stopped. We planted, but we got very little.'' The family has not had meat for two months, since their grandfather was alive. Normally, they would eat meat weekly. Tamara, her 6 year-old granddaughter, is malnourished and is suffering from intestinal worms as a result of eating contaminated food. Rosalina would like to take Tamara to the hospital, a day's walk from the village, but she is weak herself and she doesn't think Tamara would survive the journey. Rosalina is hopeful for some assistance, but acknowledges that the future at this stage is bleak.
It is only by God's grace that you and I are not sitting on the straw mat where Rosalina told her story to World Vision last month. We want to help her and thousands like her. We can do it. We should do it. We must do it. We need your help.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
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Mr. SMITH. I do have a few questions, and then I will yield to my good friend Mr. Payne for any questions he might have.
Mr. Natsios, in the words of the main opposition leader of Zimbabwe's ruling government, the movement for democratic change, he stated: The Mugabe who talks about the need for international aid to help tackle the food crisis is the same Mugabe who is blatantly denying food to hundreds of thousands of people suspected of voting for the MDC in recent Presidential elections, close quote.
Is it possible for the international community to circumvent those foods?
Mr. Morris, you were very emphatic that politics will not play a role, but I am reminded, and we have had hearings here, and many of us have raised these questions, about Operation Lifeline Sudan, where Khartoum had a virtual veto as to which flights might occur to starving people, and as a result, most of those or—most of those flights that were denied would have provided food to people that were in the opposition. How can that be overcome now? I know that proactively you are trying to make sure, and you did say you had two face-to-face meetings with Mr. Mugabe. What was his response when you raised these questions? Mr. Natsios and Mr. Morris.
Mr. NATSIOS. Let me first say our policy is, where we do not believe the government can be trusted to distribute the food in a neutral fashion, we don't go through governments to distribute food, but we work with governments in some countries if the government is democratic and well-managed. Mozambique, for example, is a good example of the latter case.
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In the case of Zimbabwe, we have seen too much abuse, too much corruption, so we have chosen in Zimbabwe to go through the NGOs alone, working with WFP. None of the food that has been misused for political purposes was U.S. Government food. And the USAID policy in Zimbabwe is not to go through the Zimbabwean Government, because we have seen several instances, confirmed now, of politicization of food. It is not acceptable to us.
We have urged WFP—and Jim has taken the leadership on this—to make clear what the requirements are in terms of the standards that we use for distribution. We will continue to insist on those standards. We are not having trouble in any of the other countries. They are all being very cooperative. I, in fact, had a lunch meeting which Congressman Tony Hall came to, and the Congresswoman from North Carolina Eva Clayton came to it. They were at the World Food Summit with us, with the Ministers of Agriculture from all of the countries. We invited the Minister of Agriculture from Zimbabwe. He chose not to come, and they sent a more junior person from the Foreign Ministry. So they were all there. We had lunch in Rome to discuss how we were going to handle this. They each told us what the severity of the problem was, and we had a good discussion about how we practically can ensure that this works at an optimum level of efficiency.
Perhaps the warning that Jim Morris gave will work. If it doesn't, I am going to elevate the level of rhetoric and the comments, and I may go to the region and make them publicly if it continues.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Morris.
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Mr. MORRIS. I met with him twice this week, on Monday with Kofi Annan, and we made the very clear statement that the food provided by the World Food Programme on behalf of the United Nations and our donors was not to be politicized; that we wouldn't tolerate it being directed or us being told we couldn't go somewhere. We have had a couple of minor squabbles over this in the last couple of months, and we told them that we would back away, we would leave the country if this was a problem. We were able to satisfactorily resolve both issues.
And I met with him again on Tuesday with his Minister of Agriculture and my Deputy Director Mr. Grace, and we made the point again. He assured us that we would have no problems and I told him we are trying to do something that is very difficult to do. We are coming to you, we are coming to the European Community, we are coming to other donors around the world who all have these questions, and we are asking them to be very generous in helping feed half your population, and you have to help us. You have to alleviate, to cure in their minds the fact that what they do to help you will be misused. As I left him, I said, we have an understanding that this is the way it is going to be, and if we have problems, then you and I will have to sit down man to man again and talk it through.
So all I can tell you about are the conversations that I had, both of them. And, as I said, one was with Kofi Annan, who was as strong on this subject as either Andrew or I would be, and we cannot afford to put at risk the humanitarian reputation of the World Food Programme to be perceived as a political agency, because people support us from all over the world. And that is a very good thing, for the world to come together and address multilaterally this issue the way we do.
So we will keep you posted, and we will do our best. He invited me to come back, and I said, I will be there shortly. I am going to work hard at building a relationship with him and his Minister of Agriculture, as my colleagues also will. We have a lot of people there. And we will keep you posted.
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Mr. SMITH. Thank you, Mr. Morris.
In the 1980s, I met with the Ambassador to the United Nations from Ethiopia and, like others, made an impassioned plea to allow humanitarian corridors to get food aid when it gets to us using food as a weapon.
Mr. Natsios, is Mr. Mugabe using food as a weapon?
Mr. NATSIOS. We have two instances that have been confirmed. Morgan Tsvangirai and I had dinner when he was in the United States, so I know him. I know members of the Zimbabwe Cabinet whom I met with 10 years ago. Some of them are still there who we worked with in the famine, in the drought, 10 years ago. And he has made some very serious charges. We have sent people out to confirm this, and we haven't got the reports back yet, but two instances we now have confirmed, and there is sufficient evidence now to conclude that it has happened. Whether or not it was dictated by the central government at a senior level, or whether it was party workers from his party or local officials doing it on their own, we can't tell. No one is giving us a paper trail to tell us how these orders were carried out. All we know is it has happened, it is unacceptable, and we are going to insist that in the future it not be allowed.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Morris.
Mr. MORRIS. If I could say that we, the World Food Programme, do not distribute our food through their government. We distribute through NGO partners or on our own directly. So there is food in the country that he would have responsibility for or would control and that he might be distributing in one way, which we have said to him also that needs to be pure and properly done. But Mr. Mugabe's government will not have control over the food we distribute that is provided by the United States Government or our donors in general.
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Mr. SMITH. Let me just—Mr. Wilkinson asked earlier about the replenishment of the Emerson Trust Fund. Mr. Natsios, is that something that is contemplated so that other contingencies elsewhere could be met?
Mr. NATSIOS. It has to be. It will be refunded. The question is how. We are in discussions with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), right now. In fact, we are putting an options paper together as to how that will happen.
Mr. SMITH. And finally——
Mr. NATSIOS. I might also add that we have made a request for an increase—it is in the budget before Congress for fiscal year 2003—for a $335 million increase in the title II budget. Now, one of the reasons for that increase is we need relief food. That is the largest increase we have had in about 20 years in the regular title II account. Some of that is for development purposes, as Bruce just mentioned, but some of it is for relief. So we have asked for this large increase in the President's budget, and we urge the Congress to approve it, because if we don't have that extra money, we will be in trouble.
Mr. SMITH. I appreciate that. And that is 403.
The relief workers, the relative safety as they deploy, what is your sense looking at this, Mr. Morris, or any of you who might want to touch on that?
Mr. MORRIS. People who do this work for a career are saints. They are greatly at risk. WFP has had 58 people killed in the line of duty in the last 10 years. We lost two last year, one in the Congo and one in Afghanistan. We are very preoccupied with the safety of our team, with our colleagues. The U.N. is doing a better job of looking at security of its field force. But clearly we will not put our people at risk, and if we sense there is any danger at all, we would pull them out quickly.
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Mr. WILKINSON. Being an NGO on the ground, we take security very seriously at World Vision. And I have to say that in the Southern African region, we don't find at this point that those who are contributing and delivering food in that region are putting themselves at risk. There are many, many mine fields to wade through and we really rely on our national colleagues to be able to walk through those mine fields in a figurative sense so that they can actually be effective in food aid distribution.
I also want to just make a comment. Our current food distributions in Zimbabwe, which I am sure could be testified here with some of your staff help—our food distributions in Zimbabwe are going on unimpeded. They are definitely difficult. These are some of the more difficult negotiated distributions, but we are actually seeing that we can distribute to the targeted and beneficiary populations that need the food. So our experience to this point is that it is working.
We have heard also that there are other areas which are being negatively impacted.
Mr. NATSIOS. Could I just add? Virtually all the famines in the last 15 years in Africa took place during war, so there is a distinct connection between drought and war and famine in Africa and other areas of the world. We almost had a famine in Afghanistan because of a war and security between the Northern Alliance and Taliban that predated by 6 months the September 11th events.
We don't have a war in any of these countries. We have political instability. We have serious problems with one government. The rest of the governments are all democratically elected—maybe with the exception of Swaziland—but the rest of the governments are democratically elected. They are being very responsive. They are very worried. They are buying commercially some food as well. So we are not facing the kinds of situations we faced in Afghanistan where there was chaos or in Sudan where you have an oppressive government that is standing in the way of deliveries on a systematic basis over a long period of time. It is not the same. So our people are not physically at risk.
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Mr. SMITH. Mr. Payne.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you very much. I appreciate the testimony of all three of you.
Just a question regarding the replenishment of the Emerson Trust. If, in fact, Mr. Natsios, the request for additional funding is not approved, would the funds to replace the Trust then come from some other USAID or humanitarian-type program? In other words, would it take from Peter to try to help Paul?
Mr. NATSIOS. I don't think we can use any USAID funds legally. In fact, I am fairly certain. We cannot use any appropriated funds from USAID to replenish the Trust. The options would be around U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) mechanisms, and that is the discussion that we are having now. But I would hope that Congress would approve the $335 million increase in title II, because then we will have sufficient food for what we need to do in other areas of the world.
Bruce is right. There is always a balancing act that you take to satisfy the requirements in other areas. I met with the Finance Minister—I am sorry, the Agriculture Minister in Angola on Saturday. We sent staff in, and they arrived last Saturday, a large team from DCHA, the Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance Bureau of USAID. Roger Winter here is the Assistant Administrator who sent the teams in because we do not want this peace to deteriorate in Angola. It did 10 years ago. We are not going to let it happen again because of mismanagement of the demobilization of soldiers. We have got a team in there working. We are going to provide food assistance there, particularly to the demobilization effort, to make sure there is political stability after this absolutely horrific civil war is finally over.
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But we are looking at the other requirements. So, once again, the increase in title II is very important to the stability of our programming around the world.
Mr. PAYNE. Thank you.
Here is another question I have regarding supplies. I know that Kenya has had a good crop in grain, either in maize or corn, for the last 2 crop years; and the Government of Kenya has a policy of purchasing the grain from the farmers and storing it—I suppose to keep the price from fluctuating. There was some suggestion that two problems could be solved, one, the problem of the Kenyan Government being strapped for cash and having had purchased and stored the grain. If the World Food Programme or USAID, or whatever agency, could purchase grain or is in the process of purchasing grain, have there been any discussions about being able then to get perhaps lower-cost commodities right from Kenya and, therefore, actually being in the assistance of a government that has a legitimate problem?
Mr. MORRIS. Thank you for the question. I met with President Moi of Kenya on Tuesday of this week. We talked about this very issue, and we prefer to buy locally or regionally when we have the cash resources to do that. It helps the local economy. It obviously lowers our expenses. So we are going to pursue that as aggressively as we can.
It also gave me a good opportunity to ask Kenya to be a donor country in response to this particular issue, and he responded positively. Kenya has been a donor to the World Food Programme, especially with our work in Kenya itself, and they contributed $8 million value to our work last year.
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But I have had that very conversation directly with the President this week and his Minister of Agriculture, and we will keep you posted.
Mr. PAYNE. Great. I know it was definitely a problem. The attempt to keep prices from dropping I say is a policy that they have had, and I know they get oversupplied.
On that same line, the food program, I know it is more or less about getting commodities into a place, but do you have or does USAID have a department of planning where—Congresswoman Eva Clayton, who comes from a rural community in North Carolina, has a very strong interest in farming in general, but also in trying to have the whole agricultural program get more assistance because at the present time, as a matter of fact, she had a farmer-to-farmer program where she was looking at historically black colleges or black farmers in the South to be a part of a sort of exchange program to deal with agriculture—have your World Food Organization or USAID done anything in regard to this whole question of agriculture and farming training?
Mr. NATSIOS. Thank you, Congressman. Agriculture is one of our four priorities for Africa; it is my personal first priority worldwide. Three-quarters of the poor people in the world live in rural areas, and they are farmers or herders.
You cannot deal with the problem of poverty in the Third World without dealing with agriculture. We have cut our agricultural funding from the time Peter McPherson—one of the great USAID Administrators for 6 years under the Reagan Administration—was the head of USAID. He was with me in Michigan State. He is the President of Michigan State now, and has been for the last decade. He was with me in Rome.
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We had a press conference with President Museveni of Uganda, President Kufuor of Ghana, and President Chissano of Mozambique, three of the most able heads of state in Africa, on a new initiative to end hunger in Africa through agriculture. We have got a $30 million increase in our agricultural funding this year. We have asked for a $70 million increase next year, for a total of $100 million. It is a new initiative.
The budget for agriculture in USAID in 1986 was $1.3 billion. It was cut during the 1990s by $1 billion. It was down to $245 million when I arrived, and I have to say, I was appalled by it. And we had 248 agricultural scientists and agricultural economists on our staff in 1986. We had 42 left when I arrived a year ago.
The 1990s has not been good to USAID and the agricultural sector in particular, because there isn't a big organized interest group in this city behind it. But if you ask the heads of state, if you ask Museveni and Kufuor and Chissano, what we should be investing in first, they will tell you agriculture, because it affects the whole population. That is where the people live, that is where the poor live.
It is interesting. One of the reporters said at the press conference, we notice this new partnership to end hunger in Africa, there are no farmers on the list. And I got up at the press conference and said, we have two farmers standing at the podium, because President Museveni is a farmer, and President Chissano is a farmer. And President Kufuor pulled me aside and said, ''I am one, too.'' So, add three.
The heads of state already know this. The problem is we have not been responsive in the donor community. We announced a major new initiative, and let me tell you what that is composed of. There are a number of seed varieties, improved seeds, not genetically modified, that have been developed by the Consultant Group on International Agricultural Research. It has a chain of 16 research stations developed in the mid-1960s. We are the largest donor. We are increasing our donations to develop these improved varieties of seed.
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What do the improved varieties do? They deal with agricultural systems with not enough water; in other words, arid agriculture. We are providing 48,000 tons of seed in Afghanistan that will increase food production by 775,000 tons of food. They will be able to feed their country after 2 years because of this USAID program that we have initiated. It is an improved variety that grows more wheat with less water. Okay? It is genetically modified, so I know it is controversial. Most of these heads of state all said, we want to make the choice ourselves. Don't tell us we can't do it. Because there are people in other counties who don't think they should have the choice. We do. We are working with them now.
I just opened a biotechnology center in Egypt. Kenya has one. Nigeria has one. President Obasanjo has asked me several times if we can help reinforce these research centers that are run by African scientists. We are also going to increase the training of Ph.D. agricultural scientists from Africa in the United States to go back to run these institutes in Africa. We have a program for training, technology transfer, and particularly scientific research in this area that can revolutionize agriculture.
We believe a lot, but not all, of the agricultural problems in Africa can be dealt with through science, because if you improve these varieties against pests, against viruses, against droughts, you can increase production with no more inputs, no more fertilizer, no more pesticides, no more herbicides, and yet production goes up dramatically. Whenever we have tried it in Africa, the farmers loved the stuff. We only give them seed that we use ourselves in the United States or that have been developed and have passed our own tests.
So we have a program. We are implementing it. It is one of my first priorities and Connie Newman's first priority. She is the Assistant Administrator for Africa who is managing these programs.
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Mr. SMITH. The Chair recognizes the Chairman of the African Subcommittee, Mr. Royce.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you.
Administrator Natsios, is it true that the reservoirs in Zimbabwe are largely full?
Mr. NATSIOS. Yes.
Mr. ROYCE. I want to share with you a concern that many Africans have, and it is an issue that the Zimbabwean press can't raise because they are in jail. It is a crime against the state there now to say anything critical of the government.
But the issue is this: We had an election in which 40 some percent of the people voted for Mugabe. Mugabe is not exactly happy, but we know from the exit polling that most of the country voted against him. Now we have the question of why water is not released that will help in planting a new crop. This is an issue that comes up repeatedly. And my concern is that when we look at the massive land seizures, when we look at the policy of withholding the water in the reservoirs, and when we look at the foreign exchange restrictions and everything else that makes it impossible virtually to get fertilizer and other necessities for farming into the country, an environment has been created where it is just about impossible to produce agriculturally.
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And the people that this falls on—I mean, now the government is in the unique position of being able to dole out—and that is why your work is so important. But the government is in the position of being able to dole out to those who are subservient, to those, you know, who are willing to take up cause with that government, and at the same time to punish those who did not support it. And it is truly a crisis of our time that we see this repeated.
You know, you mentioned the new program for North Korea. I want to share with you what one of the French NGOs told us in her testimony. And maybe she is wrong, but she says there are 30 some counties in the north where, because of lack of support for the Pyongyang regime, food does not get to those particular counties. They are called ''no go'' areas. No go. And people can't go in there.
Now, according to her, she says she and her team have interviewed a good number of North Koreans. And, yes, many of them get food, but not any from those counties. If you are from one of those 30 some counties, you have never received these supplements. Where does the food go? And this is what she tells us. She says, look at the photographs of the food in Pyongyang in the market being sold by the government for hard currency reserves.
So the point I am raising, Administrator, is that we have to be cognizant of food used as a political weapon. And I know you are, and I appreciate your efforts to try to overcompensate for the ability of some dictators and political leaders to abuse the sympathy, the empathy of the world in order to further their ends of getting more power and more control over their subject population. But I did want to raise this issue with you and maybe ask you, what has the effect of the land seizures had upon food production?
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Mr. NATSIOS. Let me just say, with respect to North Korea, we are very concerned about these very issues. And if you notice, in the statement we made Friday, we have raised those issues publicly and said we are drawing the line now with the North Koreans.
Mr. ROYCE. Thank you.
Mr. NATSIOS. I wrote a book about the famine in North Korea. I am intimately aware of it. I interviewed dozens of refugees from North Korea, under cover, in China, along the border, under very difficult circumstances for hours each for weeks several years ago to write the book. And it is a horrific story about what happened to them and how they got there and what is going on in the country. In the counties that are not being served, we believe the food and security are much worse. WFP got into one of those counties that had never been served, and the malnutrition rates there are much higher than other areas. So the theory of the French NGOs that you mentioned may well be true.
Mr. ROYCE. And my other concern is the North Korean Fifth Brigade was down helping Mugabe. I mean, that is kind of the common—and I had not known that. But I was in southern Zimbabwe and I was talking to some people, and they said they had family members thrown down a well because this particular area had not been supportive some years ago of the Mugabe regime. And they said North Koreans had been assisting or organizing the intelligence network and so forth. And I made some inquiries afterwards and found out the North Korean Fifth Brigade had been brought in to assist in setting up the police state. That really was an amazing mess.
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Mr. NATSIOS. Very disturbing. We are aware of the reports.
To go back to Zimbabwe, over the last 2 years there has been a 62 percent reduction in the amount of acreage being tilled on the commercial farms, 62 percent, which means they are not producing any food, primarily maize. Now, the important thing to repeat about that is the fact that that is irrigating agriculture which would have used the dam system—it is a very sophisticated agricultural system, one of the best actually in the developing world—to irrigate in the middle of this drought.
There was also a 775,000-ton drop in food production among subsistent smaller African farmers—and another drop. In Matabeleland, in fact that is the area that World Vision is in. These are small producers, but it is rain-fed agriculture, it is not irrigated. So that reduction is as a result of the drought, but the commercial reduction was a function of the confiscation of these farms and of the pricing policies through the state grain board.
So government policy is the result of half the problem. The other half of the problem is the drought in the poorer areas with rain-fed agriculture. But, if we had one and not the other, we could have handled this; but both at the same time taking place, both the collapse of the commercial farming sector and the subsistence agriculturalists, means we are facing this crisis. That is why half the country is at risk now.
Mr. SMITH. Gentleman, I have been advised that Mr. Morris has a plane to catch, and he will be late if he doesn't leave within about 30 seconds.
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So I want to thank you, Mr. Morris, for your outstanding testimony, unless you have something else to add.
Mr. MORRIS. No. Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity and would be willing to come back on any occasion. I have to be in Rome to give a commencement address at 11 o'clock in the morning, and it is a tight connection.
Mr. SMITH. Try to get some sleep on the plane. We will have questions that we will submit for the record.
Ms. Lee.
Ms. LEE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
I would like to first say to the panel, especially to Mr. Natsios, that I am glad to hear that you are saying that the prevention of an all-out famine is central to our strategy and our response, and that you are supporting the request for $335 million. But I would also like to ask you with regard to an emergency supplemental appropriation, such as the gentlelady from California discussed earlier, because this actually was used recently to fund food aid for Kosovo refugees, in the Balkans, and also to meet the food needs in Afghanistan. So I am wondering if you have considered the possibility of an emergency supplemental in responding to this crisis early as a preventive kind of strategy?
Mr. NATSIOS. We did request money for the reconstruction of Afghanistan, which is in the supplemental, which we very much appreciate the Congress putting in there. It is very important to us, and by doing that you reduce the pressure on the rest of the budget to provide assistance for Afghanistan. None of the food we provided over the last year to Afghanistan came from the regular appropriation. You remember that large $40 billion supplemental? All of the food that we provided to Afghanistan came from that supplemental, so it didn't put pressure on the account.
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So it does make a difference. I would prefer the $335 million increase to be in our regular account, and I have to say—be very crassly political—why it is more important. If I had a choice between putting $335 million in the supplemental and the regular appropriation, I would prefer the regular appropriation. Do you know why? It sets a baseline, and then the next year I can ask for more. If you put it in the supplemental, you know what everyone says, well, that was just a supplemental. It is not in the baseline of appropriation.
Ms. LEE. I understand that, but this would go into the appropriate account. But I believe that because of the emergency nature of the food security crisis and because of our strategy to prevent an all-out famine, that the $200 million added into the emergency supplemental, it could be easily justified if, in fact, that is our goal. And that has nothing to do with the $335 million, which we support and want to see. But, given the emergency——
Mr. NATSIOS. At this point, we have reviewed our budgets and our accounts, and we believe that we have sufficient food to deal with both the emergency there as well as other emergencies in the world. We think we are okay now. I would tell you if we didn't. So I think we are okay now with the amount of food we have without the supplemental, but we do need that $335 million increase next year.
Ms. LEE. And if you don't get the $335 million, then what? Do you have a back-up plan?
Mr. NATSIOS. Then I would say it publicly, that we are going to face a serious situation then.
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Ms. LEE. And Congresswoman Waters, Congresswoman Watson, and I—and all of us—who have been working on all of these issues with regard to Africa are concerned about the window of opportunity that we have at this point to address some of these very basic kinds of needs. And for us to believe that we have enough is, I think, fairly short-sighted and doesn't raise the emergency to the status that it deserves within our own government.
Mr. NATSIOS. If we didn't have the 500,000 tons in the Emerson Trust, we would be in trouble right now, I will just tell you very honestly. That trust was designed for these huge food shocks where there is a major emergency, and that is what we are using. We are doing what Congress intended us to do, and we haven't used that all up yet. So to go to a supplemental without having dealt with the problem through the existing mechanisms, to me, I mean, that is not desirable. We haven't got to that stage yet.
Ms. LEE. But I think, though, by your responding in that manner leads me to believe you don't believe that the crisis or the famine is going to explode; that somehow we can contain it with what we have.
Mr. NATSIOS. Well, we can contain it if we keep shipping food in with the Europeans. I want to see what my friend Poul Nielson and the European Union are going to do. We have actually done what we traditionally do as a baseline in this famine. The British have made a large commitment, but that is it for other donors. The Canadians haven't, the Japanese haven't, the Australians haven't, and Europeans have not, other than the British. So we will see what they commit to.
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I make a commitment to you now, personally, because I have been through famines, and I have watched them up close. They are horrendous. I never want a famine while I am in charge of USAID, and I have gotten the President's support in that, I have to tell you.
So we are going to do what we need to do. It is just that when people say we need to do more, the question is, it is a 1.2 million tons need. We are not going to provide all of it. Some other countries have to provide some. For the last emergency in Afghanistan, we did 75 percent of the food. That is a little imbalance, to me.
Ms. LEE. Sure. Other countries need to step up to the plate.
Mr. NATSIOS. Sure.
Ms. LEE. All donor countries should.
Mr. NATSIOS. Right.
Ms. LEE. But that, I don't think, should be our position in terms of our response. I think we should do—if we could do the 1.2 million tons, we should do it. And I think we should move in every direction to do that and urge the donor countries to step up to the plate. But certainly we can't stand back and wait, given the magnitude of the crisis.
Mr. NATSIOS. No, we are not waiting. We have been ordering food commodities. But you can't have all of it arrive at the same time, either, because the logistical system won't take it. It will sit at the port, which you don't want to happen because then it rots, and it gets wet and all that stuff. And there aren't enough roads to get the food in or enough trucks to move it, so we phase it in. We are making sure that what we call the food pipeline is full.
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What happens in a famine, in a food emergency like this, is a larger portion of the population becomes vulnerable later. In other words, right now it is a relatively small number of people. By September, however, the portion increases, and then by January it will increase substantially. So we phase the requirements in so that the food is distributed as people need it. We are okay so far, but we want to see what the Europeans are going to do, and then we will provide the leadership necessary to make sure that the requirements are met through the system.
Ms. LEE. And that leadership doesn't include supporting an additional 200 million plus for the supplemental as an emergency?
Mr. NATSIOS. I don't think it is necessary, Congresswoman. I don't.
Ms. LEE. Well, we will be working on that.
Mr. NATSIOS. Okay.
Ms. LEE. I guess some of us just don't agree with that.
Mr. NATSIOS. Okay.
Mr. SMITH. Ms. Watson.
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Ms. WATSON. I want to thank the Chair and the Committee for holding this hearing on this issue, and I think that—and, of course, I am one of the newer Members, but I think we should have had this hearing some years ago. I want to thank Congressman Royce, who I have talked to about traveling with him to some of the countries in Africa to get a sense of just how we are relating to these issues.
Now, we can list a multitude of issues that affect this area of Africa or the whole continent, and we know that the droughts and political problems and so on contribute to the problem, but what I would like to see is a stronger projected commitment over a period of time. I don't know if USAID is the only agency that can address this and be effective. I know the European Union and some of the other countries need to step up to the plate. But I think now that there is new-found interest on the continent of Africa, we could take advantage of that interest, because Africa will soon be our resource of last resort in terms of the natural resources that are found on that continent. It is really untapped in many areas.
So what I would like to see is a long-range plan not only to meet the crisis of food, but the economic crisis that we are facing in this country, and certainly Africa gets impacted. South Africa, for instance, went through its crisis and found out that it had to drop apartheid and had more opportunity for world trade. We need to have a more global plan, and we need to look at that continent that is now being plagued with AIDS, the drought, the lack of food and so on, and start planning so that we will have the resources in place to meet the crises.
What are the best agencies through which to work? And I can't emphasize enough that we don't need to be suggesting pulling out of the U.N. I just heard mention that Kofi Annan was a partner in looking at some of these problems just recently. But I have seen part of a platform coming from the opposition that we ought to pull out of the U.N. You have heard that. I don't think we ought to do that. And I think we ought to be planning with the U.N. as to how we bring all these nations in together, and even if they don't—I see a little shake like that.
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I just saw the California Republican platform. One of the points in it is to pull out of the U.N.
And I know I heard one of the Senators give a two and a half-hour speech at the U.N. about 3 years ago about exiting from the U.N. by the United States. So I think we have to look at this on a more global basis. I think that we have to plan and project ahead. I think we have to go into sincere partnership with those Nations that we have worked with and those Nations that present some political challenges and sit down and plan together.
And so my request from the Committee, Mr. Chairman, would be to have another hearing like this where we could hear the projections for a decade away, because it is going to take that kind of time if we are attempting to meet the needs. In spite of what other countries do, I think that the United States as one of the leading nations in the world needs to have a plan. The plan needs to be worked up in conjunction with the United Nations, USAID and the NGOs that have been very active over there. I think in many ways they do a better job, because they don't have to go through bureaucracy. They can just go ahead and address the problem.
The final thing I want to say is that we need to take advantage of many of the local efforts that have been started in these countries by local people, and I found as we were in South Africa last September and addressing some of the problems of AIDS and opening up a clinic in Umlazi out of Durban, that there has already been an effort on the part of the local people. So what we did was to supplement, not supplant but supplement their efforts. And so I think if we are concerned about our staffs that come from abroad, we might want to look at those people who are already there who have made meager efforts on their own with their own resources and see how we can work through them to reach our goals and objectives.
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Mr. NATSIOS. Ms. Waters, if I could just answer the comment, first I agree with what you said, Congresswoman. The first comment I would make is that we give a third of our budget from USAID to the NGOs. Many NGOs would not exist without USAID funding. Eighty percent of some of their budgets comes from USAID, so we recognize their ability. I worked for one for 5 years. I know what they are capable of doing.
A third of our budget, an additional third, goes to universities and colleges in the United States that work in the developing world, from trade associations, from hospitals, from nonprofits beyond the NGOs. So a large portion of our budget goes to institutions within the United States that work in the developing world, particularly in Africa.
We have proposed—the President's budget proposes for this year and next year a 25 percent increase in the budget for Africa. This is separate from what he has announced with the Millennium Challenge Account, which I will get to in a minute.
So I am committed to Africa. The budget for Africa has never been increased by 25 percent in 15 years like it has now. It is not widely known, but if the budget is approved the way we proposed it for fiscal 2003, we will have had a 25 percent increase in the spending in Africa, because Secretary Colin Powell and the President and I are fully committed to exactly what you said, a long-term plan.
I can't tell you what is in any state platform. I can only tell you what the Bush Administration's position is.
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Ms. WATSON. I can.
Mr. NATSIOS. We are not in favor of abolishing or withdrawing or weakening the United Nations. We are in favor of a competent, well-managed U.N. We work with them. We work through them. Seventy-five percent of the food the WFP got last year came from USAID and the USDA. So we already support the U.N. big time, big time.
The final thing I would say is the President has proposed a 50 percent increase in foreign aid—that is beyond what I just mentioned—called the Millennium Challenge Account, to those countries that are governing justly, improving economic freedom so that we can improve the business climate to get more investment, create more jobs, and finally countries that are committed to providing education, even with meager resources, and health. We will then go in and help them to do that, and we are working through that. We will be presenting it to Congress very shortly.
That is the largest increase in the history of the United States since the Marshall Plan in foreign aid, a 50 percent increase, $5 billion. It is not for 1 year. It is a permanent increase. Our aid program now is about $10 billion from all spigots. This goes up to $15 billion. It is a large commitment by the President and Secretary Colin Powell to do exactly what you have just asked, because I agree with you, and we have stepped up to the plate with this proposal, which we will have before you shortly.
Ms. WATSON. Mr. Chairman, if I can just conclude with these remarks. I do want to thank you for your proposals and your efforts in the past, and this is not an attempt to finger point and say where were you. This is an attempt to face the crises and project. We hope things get better, but right now they are probably at their worst stage. So my remarks are to encourage all of us who are involved, and you heard the commitment on the part of my colleagues on the Appropriations Committee to see that we do get the necessary funding.
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I have heard the pleas on the part of my colleagues to give greater appropriations to fight AIDS, to fight food famine, et cetera, and so working together with those goals and objectives that we are all stating here and projecting and continuing to have an action plan and to be committed to that plan is what I want to encourage, but I do want to thank you for your foresight to ask for an increase, the first of its kind.
We need more of that, and we need the support of the rest of our colleagues to see that it happens. I thank you very much.
Thank you for the time, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. SMITH. Ms. Waters.
Ms. WATERS. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I am sorry that Mr. Morris had to leave, because I would like him to know that his testimony here today and his commitment to feeding poor people and dealing with this crisis in Africa was communicated in a very profound way, and I felt him and that commitment, and it certainly did make me feel a lot better about this desperation that I am feeling about this crises.
Also, Mr. Wilkinson, I want to say the same thing for you. I appreciate your testimony here today and your commitment, your experience, and I think that you represent perhaps the strongest arm of feeding people through NGOs such as yours and others that we have. And without you, we wouldn't be able to do this, and so I am so grateful that you are here.
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To Mr. Natsios, let me just say that you obviously have a lot of experience. You have been down this road before, and you have a command of the problems on the continent. Let me just tell you what my concerns are about the USAID. First of all, I think you did describe that there have been tremendous cuts, and you were surprised when you came back or when you took over to see what had happened, and let me tell you, you are not out of the woods yet. When you talk about increasing funding to Africa, when you talk about USAID, there are not a lot of friends in the Congress of the United States who see this the way you and I may see it. So this is hard work when you are talking about dealing with the problems of Africa.
Some of us have spent the greater part of our careers just getting rid of apartheid in Africa before I even came to the Congress of the United States, working in the California State Legislature dealing with these problems. So I want you to proceed cautiously with the idea that somehow people understand and that this funding that you are anticipating probably will get done.
Now, I worry about the fact that you don't recognize this window of opportunity with the supplemental appropriations bill. You did say you are not a politician, so maybe I do understand it. But let me just say this, with this supplemental appropriations, where you have money going to Israel, you have money going to Afghanistan, what people are doing is they are ensuring that they deal with their crisis at the point that people understand there is a crisis. And when you have a vehicle that is moving through the Congress of the United States where crises are being dealt with, it is not the time to say, let my crisis wait because I have got something else down the line. That 325 that you are talking about will be in competition in budget negotiations and may get lost, and you will find that a lot of people that you expect to step up to the plate won't be there for Africa for sure.
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This is not easy: Legislating and public policy making for Africa. The reason the funding has not increased for Africa in all these years with Republican and Democratic Administrations is because Africa is at the bottom of the funding barrel, and it does not get the embracing that other places get.
So I worry a bit. I worry a bit when I listen to Mr. Wilkinson tell the story about a woman who died from starvation. As far as I am concerned, it is a famine going on. It is beyond crisis. Any time somebody dies from starvation and families are on the move to talk about trying to find food, we have got a problem. This problem will not be worked out because we are going to manipulate the commerce and that we are going to force governments, whether it is in Zimbabwe or any place else, to charge the right amount for commodities and somehow we factor that into dealing with what we are going to have available to us.
The crisis is going to be managed because we get ahead of it, we get ahead of it, and we have the resources that are necessary to ensure that we don't have any more stories about human beings that are dying from starvation in the year 2002. It is unacceptable. And so whether we are talking about this supplemental appropriation or other ways that you see Members are willing to move to give support to Africa, we are doing it because we have some experience around here, and we are trying to take advantage of a window of opportunity to protect that which we care about. And so I would like you not to close the door on that. I would like you to give that some thought. It won't be good enough at the height of competition to come back and say where are the people supporting me for my 325? People will be in strong competition on those appropriations committees for things they have been trying to get for many, many years, and Africa will go to the bottom of the barrel one more time.
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Let me just wrap this up by saying this. In Angola, the problem has persisted because there were some people who were not wise enough to understand what Savimbi was doing in Angola, and the amount of resources that were taken out of that government to pay for the war.
The ongoing, never-ending war has created a catastrophe in Angola, and I want to tell you whether we are talking about Angola right now or these other places, each of them have their own problems. I am not impressed at all with the representation that in Mozambique they have got a little bit more in some section that they could export someplace else. They shouldn't be exporting anything. I saw a woman give birth to a baby in a tree in Mozambique when the floods came. You don't control Mother Nature. A combination of the floods and the drought has helped to create this situation in these six countries that we are identifying, and something could happen tomorrow. Don't export anything from Mozambique. You better store it and try to get some more money so that you will be ahead of the situation.
Now, having preached my sermon and having said all of that, I thank you for at least being knowledgeable and informed about the work that you do. Oftentimes we get people who don't get it. I want to caution you again about Zimbabwe. Land reform is a big and complicated issue, and if we and the other donor countries had done what we could have done, we could have influenced the right direction for land reform. I am not forgiving Mugabe for the way that he has handled the situation, but let me tell you there were some commitments on the table to buy out some farmers that never, ever took place that helped to get us to where we are today.
Again, let me just wrap this up by saying I want you to leave this Committee today rethinking the fact that we are going forward. We are going to ask for this money. We are going straight to the conference committee, and we are going to say that we know Afghanistan is important, but we also know that the Taliban is still in Afghanistan running across the borders into Pakistan every night and putting our soldiers in danger. We know we don't have a democracy there, and we know that Karzai may never get a chance to do much if the warlords decide that they are not going to let anybody do anything, and we are not going to stop giving money there because we have this war on terrorism and Afghanistan stands at the center of that. And in order to have people understand that we care about it, we have got to do all of those things.
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But at the same time that we are giving money to Afghanistan and we are concerned that in Israel they have had to spend so much money dealing with these crazy suicidal bombings that have been going on and they have had to increase the expenditure of dollars—and one thing I like about Israel, it does not mind asking for money, and Israel will tell you we are spending too much money. The Palestine Authority is causing us to take money from budgets in a way that we never anticipated. We don't have a problem now, but we are going to have one in the future if we continue to have to deal with what we are dealing with.
So we want some money now. We want it in the appropriations bill. Fortunately, Israel will get a lot of support, because there are a lot of people who care about Israel. There are a lot of politics. There are a lot of support. There are a lot of things that are going on that Africa does not yet have. I want you to leave here thinking about this window of opportunity, and I would love for you to come back and support the idea that is going to be led by the Congressional Black Caucus for additional money for Africa and this impending crisis.
We do not want the stories of people dying from starvation. We cannot stand to have more people dying on top of the AIDS and HIV and the poverty and all of the other things that we are trying to deal with. So we want your support, and we don't want you to come later and say, if I had only known. We want you to get ahead of it, and we want to be there with you. We will be there with you for the supplemental. We will be there with you for the budget. We are in this for the long haul.
Some people say, you know, they have few reasons that they come here and serve. I have few reasons. I serve poor people in this country. I serve my district, and I serve my mother land of Africa, and I want to help and I want you to do the same thing.
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Mr. SMITH. The time of the gentlelady has expired.
Let me recognize the Ranking Member of the Africa Committee, Mr. Payne, for any concluding remarks and I think he has a closing question.
Mr. PAYNE. Well, thank you very much. I thank the members for their testimony and their questions. I thank the Chairman, Mr. Smith, who for so many years has been so supportive on issues of human rights wherever it happens to be. In many instances we will start a hearing at 11 and dwindle down to the two of us, but we do have four today. I would like to commend you for that. Just quickly, I wonder if—probably not time to answer, but I see where Secretary of Treasury O'Neill went to Africa, and Mr. Natsios, perhaps we can find out at another time if that will mean something since he is the Treasurer, whether we will see any new commitment.
I just might mention that there was a request that I made in the appropriations emergency funding that Ms. Waters talked about. It was a $15 million increase. It was $5 million for Burundi, where Mr. Mandela has just negotiated a settlement between the Hutus and Tutsis. They are going to have 18 months of one group, 18 months of another group and hopefully elections that will work.
Secondly, in Rwanda there are 110,000 people in jail. They have a system of judges having these trials in local areas so that they can kind of hopefully halve the number of people in prison, and we ask $5 million to help teach the judges and help train legal professionals and paralegals. And we also talked about $5 million for this fledgling Somali government which has come together and is trying to exist. We were told that none of those three could be done, because there wasn't enough money. However, we saw large appropriations go to Colombia and a number of places. I think you know where it went.
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So I just want to say that we do have a lot of work to do, and I would like to associate myself with the remarks of Ms. Waters, and I do thank all of the three panelists for the outstanding work that you all do, and, Mr. Chairman, thank you very much again.
Mr. SMITH. Mr. Payne, thank you very much. Mr. Natsios, Mr. Wilkinson and, although he has departed to the airplane, Mr. Morris, we want to thank the three of you for not just your fine testimony today but, more importantly, with the extraordinary work you do on behalf of suffering humanity. We are deeply appreciative. We want to be supportive and look forward to working with you.
Mr. Payne, thank you for your kind remarks. We do work very well as a team. This is a bipartisan Committee to a very large extent, and when it comes to humanitarian issues, there are no parties. There are only attempts to alleviate that suffering. So we look forward to working with you and, Mr. Payne, thank you.
The hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 1:30 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]
(Footnote 1 return)
DeVries, Joe and Toenniessen, Gary. ''Securing the Harvest,'' The Rockefeller Foundation, 2001.
(Footnote 2 return)
Project staff and area scientists attribute this to: (i) promotion of short-term fallows using leguminous trees and shrubs, (ii) soil and moisture conservation, (iii) improved crop varieties, and (iv) ability to retain all produce as practicing short-fallow farmers do not have to sell off significant portions of their crop to pay for the fertilizer used.
(Footnote 3 return)
The Coalition was established in 1985 and comprises US PVOs that conduct development and humanitarian programs overseas. The members are Adventist Development & Relief Agency International, Africare, ACDI/VOCA, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Counterpart International, Food for the Hungry International, International Relief & Development, Mercy Corps, OIC International, Save the Children, TechnoServe and World Vision, Inc.