APPENDIX 4
Memorandum submitted by Oxfam
KEY MESSAGES
The scale of immediate need is immense, with
one million people having left their homes and lost their livelihoods.
Donors must give reconstruction aid swiftly
to help rebuild Mozambique's infrastructure, and to get education,
health and other services running again.
All countries must follow the UK's lead and
cancel Mozambique's debt.
The international community must learn to
give humanitarian assistance on time and on the basis of need
not media coverage or political or economic interest.
THE SCALE
OF CONTINUING
NEED
The political and media attention that is focused
on inter-departmental disputes concerning the UK's initial response
to the crisis in Mozambique should not obscure the continuing
needs of the people of Mozambique. Even before the floods, 70
per cent of the population lived below the poverty line. Ten million
people did not have adequate drinking water. Two out of three
adults could not read or write, and more than 1.5 million Mozambique
children were not in school. As a result of the floods, about
a million people have lost their livelihoods, their houses, their
tools and seeds and their livestock, leaving them vulnerable—not
just now, but long into the future. Beyond this immediate human
cost, the floods shattered much of what was a very fragile infrastructure.
A poor country, but one successfully overcoming its legacy of
war, has been dealt a crippling blow.
The cyclone destroyed a key rail link on which
fuel and goods were brought in from Zimbabwe and South Africa.
Hundreds of kilometres of roads—fundamental, among other
things, to Mozambique's market reforms—have been washed
away, and electricity and telephone lines downed. This damage
will cost millions to repair; the Government's early estimate
is $250 million. More than 140 schools were destroyed in three
provinces by the end of February, and many more will have been
destroyed since. Health centres have also been wrecked. The Government's
capacity to deliver important social services has been decimated.
THE BURDEN
OF DEBT
The country has a major debt problem. In June
last year, its foreign creditors reduced Mozambique's debt repayments
from just over $100 million a year to around $71 million. The
country was due to pass through the decision point of HIPC2 (the
Heavily Indebted Poor Country initiative) earlier this year. However,
the date was pushed back because the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund (IMF) were unsatisfied with the standard of Mozambique's
national plan to reduce poverty. The Secretary of State for International
Development, Clare Short, said the delay was unnecessary. Countries
shouldn't be forced to produce the impossible "perfect plan",
she said.
The new reduction would have taken Mozambique's
annual debt service bill to between $45 and $62 million. But even
this reduced figure is far too high. For example, the country
can only afford to spend $20 million on primary health care and
just $32 million on primary education and this before the
floods, and the massive clean-up and reconstruction costs it is
now facing.
WHAT THE
INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY
SHOULD DO
Donors must give reconstruction aid swiftly
to help rebuild Mozambique's infrastructure, and to get education,
health and other services running again. If it takes, for example,
two years to rebuild destroyed schools, that is not just a delay
in recovery—it also means thousands more illiterate Mozambique
children. These children will have lost the chance to escape poverty
and contribute to the return to the progress that their country
had achieved over the past eight years. Donors should pay for
the cost of rebuilding schools and health centres and, at
least for a period, pay the day-to-day running costs of paying
teachers, buying school books and so on. Clare Short's announcement
of a further £12 million in emergency assistance on 11 March
is welcome; this brings the UK's full commitment up to £20
million, and it is clear that, despite early confusion, the UK
has done more than other donors and more quickly.
Mozambique now needs immediate 100 per cent
debt cancellation from both multilateral and bilateral
creditors. Debt relief is not an option. It is unacceptable
that a country recovering from the devastation of these floods,
coupled with long-term major challenges in poverty reduction,
should continue to service foreign debt. The UK, having led the
way on debt cancellation, should press Mozambique's other major
creditors—especially the World Bank the IMF, the African
regional development banks, France and Italy—to do the same.
The Paris Club meeting of creditors on Tuesday 14 March provides
the perfect opportunity to push for debt cancellation across the
board.
Debt cancellation must come from additional
resources and not from the reconstruction aid which donors
should also give. This will require creditor governments to cancel
all debt owed to them, and for governments and the World Bank
and IMF to provide the necessary finance to cover multilateral
commitments. The HIPC Trust Fund is presently under funded with,
for instance, the US resisting such financing. France and Italy
are key creditors and must move quickly to full cancellation.
BROADER LESSONS
TO BE
LEARNED
While no one could have known how bad the floods
would become, it is clear that they were not treated seriously
enough or soon enough by donor governments. Early warning systems,
including the UN's may well have failed, but the failure of collective
will to act early was just as important. It was only when massive
media attention focused on Mozambique that western governments
really took notice. That occurred because of a fresh surge of
water down the Save and Limpopo rivers, but floods had already
been going on for nearly three weeks.
The estimated one million affected in Mozambique
are part of a much bigger picture of those affected by natural
disasters around the world. Even before these floods, an estimated
135 million people had been affected by climate-related disasters
in the last 12 months, from Venezuela to Orissa. To these should
be added roughly 35 million people displaced by war, from Colombia
to Sudan.
The international community only responds adequately
when either there is huge media attention, and therefore public
pressure, or when strategic economic and political interests are
at stake. This results in a massive skewing of the delivery of
humanitarian aid. In 1999, for example, the world spent more than
$200 per head on emergency aid in Kosovo and the rest of former
Yugoslavia. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, where over a
million people have been displaced by conflict and two million
people face serious food shortages, the world spent only $8.40
per head.
There is not enough emergency aid to meet all
needs. As Western governments have got richer over the last decade,
the amount of emergency aid they give, measured as a proportion
of their wealth, has declined by a third. Among OECD countries,
it is now only 0.02 per cent of their gross National Product.
Crucially though, this problem, is exacerbated by gross inequality
of a response. The lesson from Mozambique should be that the international
community, and wealthy governments in particular, must give humanitarian
assistance on time and on the basis of need—not on the basis
of politics or the vagaries of media coverage. As Clare Short
rightly pronounced in February last year: "people in need—wherever
they are—should have equal status and rights to assistance".
That must apply to the victims of the forgotten emergencies of
Africa and elsewhere as much as to those "lucky" enough
to suffer in the media spotlight.
Oxfam
13 March 2000
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