As a severe drought deepens in
Somalia, the risk of famine is looming in the war raged country, with about
half the population in need of some form of assistance, according to an
assessment by United Nations agencies and humanitarian partners, (UNSOM, 2017). This is not first
time Somalia to deal with drought and possibly, if not urgently tackled the
consequences will be as the same as the famine in 2011 of human catastrophe
where many poor people lost their lives. So if history repeated itself, the
many presidents (Federal regional level) have to take responsibilities and at
the meant time they should bow their heads with shame.
Of course, there are many factors
that contributed this famine to arise, to mention few, most part of the country
has not seen the seasonal rain for few years, war and conflict are still
pushing press for the disaster, much lessons was not learned from the famine of
2011, so no mechanism was putted in place in order to tackle future droughts and
above all, even if there is collective response, locally and internationally,
it will be very difficult to reach the suffering people because of lack of
proper infrastructure and badly affected areas are not in the hands of the
regional states.
All of the above mentioned factors do
contribute the disaster but on the other hand, there is critical factor that
some scholars argue that the reality is famines are not caused by lack of food
and climate change, but rather by perverse economic policies, bad governance
and war. They critically
analysed and based their arguments so far there is no famine disaster that
recorded in where there is an effective democratic government. Most of the
disasters are recorded only in some African countries that raged war and there
is no effectively governance system.
As Agbor and Moyo (2011) argued, no
functioning multiparty democracy can experience famine because democratic
institutions—regular free and fair elections, independent courts and
legislatures, free press and vibrant civil society—are all effective mechanisms
of upholding the basic rights of citizens, including the right to food
(“Development as Freedom,” 1999:178). Democracy also offers vulnerable citizens
the opportunity to vote out incompetent governments that fail to deliver
improved well-being to their constituents. Indeed, as de Waal in “Democratic
Political Process and the Fight against Famine” (2000:12) asserts, ‘fully
functioning democracies do provide protections against famine, but weak
democracies might not’.
Evidence suggests most of the famines
recently witnessed in Africa have been largely due to institutional failures
resulting from the lack of broad-based accountable governance and much less to
market or production failures. (Agbor and Moyo, 2011). This
governance deficiency often manifests itself through imperfect institutions,
which either fail to reallocate production surplus away from food-surplus areas
to food-deficit ones within the same country, or are incapable of effectively
providing food price support to vulnerable citizens.
Although the decline in food
availability is almost inevitably witnessed immediately before all major
famines, it has not been the main precursor. If met with timely and effective
responses, declining food availability can be prevented from degenerating into
a famine. Usually, effective anti-corruption mechanisms and efficient public
interventions in agricultural support systems and extension services,
effectively address food availability declines in the build-up to a famine.
To conclude, while a range of
factors, arguably exogenous to government control—such as climate change and
international donor response—are crucial in the famine prevention strategy,
emphasis must be placed on accountable democratic governance as an effective
mechanism for averting famines in Somalia. An anti-famine political contract
between citizens and the state, which democracy promotes, can be effective at
addressing declining livestock/grain terms of trade shocks that frequently challenge
poor households.
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