Examination of Witnesses(Questions 120-136)
DR JOHN
SEAMAN OBE, MR
RICHARD MAWER,
MR TONY
DYKES AND
MS KATO
LAMBRECHTS
TUESDAY 3 DECEMBER 2002
120. As NGOs you must have written guidelines
for staff on the ground about what the boundaries are.
(Mr Dykes) There are guidelines contained in the codes
of conduct drawn up by the International Red Cross and Red Crescent
Movement which NGOs are signed up to in the main—we have—which
are principles of political neutrality in terms of providing humanitarian
relief and assistance. I think the difference we would draw is
we accept we work in a political environment and if you have got
a humanitarian situation it is often driven by an apparent lack
of resources or an ability to access resources and that will give
a certain degree of politics, so you have to understand you are
working in a political environment, sometimes a very contested
political environment, and people will try to assign aspersions
to your actions. What you have to be able to do is demonstrate
not only to yourselves but to any other party who wishes, that
the assistance is provided for those genuinely in need, accepted,
and it reaches those and it is appropriate and it is not based
on any party political affiliation. I think that is an important
thing.
121. Could you send us a copy of the Red Cross
guidelines?
(Mr Dykes) Yes.[65]
Tony Worthington: That would be very
helpful.
Mr Colman
122. Two questions about asset depletion and
increased vulnerability. What are the knock-on effects of food
insecurity in terms of education, health and the asset base of
households? What are the consequences of such asset depletion,
and what can be done to rebuild people's assets?
(Ms Lambrechts) I think we all have a lot to say but
I will start off and probably other people will come in. You will
have read in our submission that we have spoken about asset depletion
particularly in the context—I am sorry to going to insert
this now—of HIV/AIDS in the region. I do not think we can
separate those.
123. Indeed.
(Ms Lambrechts) One of the issues that we have seen,
and that our partners in both Zimbabwe and Malawi have reported
to us, is the fact that in farming households affected by HIV/AIDS,
and when we say "affected" we mean adults in that family,
productive adults who have been involved in different cycles of
the production process of the harvest have died or are very ill
and cannot work any more, we have seen that in those households
there has been a severe depletion of different types of assets
used to farm the land. Stephen Devereux mentioned the whole issue
of human capital. Personally I do not like to use the words "human
capital" for human labour. Human labour is, of course, the
primary one because this is the only thing most people have. It
is actually quite important, particularly when we start talking
about adults dying in a household and only having—this is
the reality—child-headed households, children who have not
been taken in by extended families. One of the issues that Christian
Aid has tried to come to grips with and understand is how to look
at the government extension of services as a response and new
types of extension services to provide for really a new type of
farming households that are often headed by children who have
not received knowledge coming from those who used to farm the
land. This is not an issue that is currently appearing in any
of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers that have been drawn
up. In fact, food security as a whole is completely neglected
in all of these PRSPs. That is one particular issue that we would
like to investigate and look at to see how these extension services
should be realigned and redesigned, in fact, to take account of
the new reality. This is just in response to this huge loss of
human labour which, of course, has a knock-on effect on actual
output. The FAO has done quite a useful study, as you probably
know, on the actual percentages of loss of labour which is up
to a fifth of agricultural labour in some of the countries with
the resultant reduction in yields[66].
I will stop there.
(Dr Seaman) This was with specific respect
to education?
124. It is the impact of food insecurity on
education and health and the asset base of households.
(Dr Seaman) Looked at from the point of view of the
disposable income of whatever household, access to food and access
to education to some extent interplay. A repeated observation
is that there is a large proportion of most African populations
that simply cannot afford to send their children to school in
simple monetary terms. There has always been a cost associated
with education, a direct cost, whether that is uniforms in some
countries, school books, minor items. A proportion simply cannot
afford to send their children to school because of the loss of
the child's labour. I was just in Bangladesh looking at precisely
this. There is a problem even in households that appear nominally
able to afford to send their children to school with what one
might call cash flow. There are periods of the year in which fees,
school uniforms and so on, are needed. To step outside Africa
to Bangladesh, because it is in my mind, in January the uniforms
have to be provided and in January it is the period when even
a small landed labourer is at his lowest from the point of view
of domestic cash flow. The two play very closely together, to
the extent that if one wanted a larger proportion of many African
households to send their children to even primary school very
considerable thought would have to be given to income transfers
to households to make that possible, not just cheapening the direct
costs of education. Bangladesh has done this to some extent with
their stipend system. We did a large piece of work in Northern
Tanzania in 1998-99 where there was never a risk of starvation,
it was an argument about the economic impact of the droughts,
and it was predicted there would be a wholesale withdrawal from
school and, indeed, there was as people balanced the domestic
books in favour of access to food. In HIV affected households
this redoubles itself because of the youthful nature of many such
households.
125. Ms Lambrechts mentioned the need for a
new sort of farm extension system because the transfer of knowledge
is not taking place. Clearly there are other informal support
systems at community level to keep things going and I am assuming
they have weakened because of poverty and marketisation. Do you
believe that there ways in which the community support systems
can be supported and strengthened? We have heard about the need
to perhaps back local government which would come alongside NGOs
but are there other ways, do you think, that community support
systems could be supported and strengthened?
(Mr Dykes) I think there are a variety of ways. First
of all we have to recognise that they exist. I think we have to
recognise that government exists as well. The aim is to get the
best of both, not to replace one by the other. That is the first
point. The second point, however, is to recognise that for many
people that community level is what they relate to, it is what
they understand and it is what they will often believe and accept
from within that structure. It also has the ability to hold people
to account, for example, in terms of agricultural practice, of
asset increase, of trying to get a passing on of the gift. Unless
you do that properly through community mobilisation and work,
and it is accepted as a cultural norm within the community and
reinforced by the community, it often does not happen. If it is
imposed from a centralised state it tends not to work, the gift
is not passed on but retained. It has to be worked through with
the community, so you have got to work through acceptable community
norms and manners, that is one point. Second, engaging the community
in the analysis of what are the problems, what are the priorities,
what they can do and what they want other actors to do is an important
part. The process is an important part of the localised solutions.
Part is sometimes in trusting that community and rather than having
tightly designed, very controlled programmes with very prescribed
inputs, outputs and activities, giving some greater freedom in
a holistic way for communities to design and implement programmes
which are appropriate to their situation so they have got some
say and influence over them, they are not simply externally imposed.
That would all be important.
126. Are the churches and the mosques rising
to the occasion? Are they part of the community support system,
if you like?
(Mr Dykes) Churches and mosques, and I speak as a
member of staff at Christian Aid, have great strengths but they
are not always right in agricultural practice at least.
127. Within the local community?
(Mr Dykes) The point about these structures is that
they are there, they are trusted, and it is an important factor
in rural Africa, for example. Churches are not simply a place
for a prescribed church service, they are a meeting point for
the community, it is where they assemble, it is where they exchange
information, it is also a reference point for them. Using those
types of structures that do exist that have some confidence from
the rural communities seems to me is a proper way forward in trying
to increase agricultural productivity but also, say, for other
messages, including diversification and reducing vulnerability.
They have an important role and should not be overlooked but often
are, particularly from our country, which is largely a secular
country, where we tend to downplay the importance these have in
everyday life in rural Africa.
(Mr Mawer) I think as all of these normal coping strategies
become overwhelmed it is being able to identify which are the
small, maybe time bound and critical inputs that have to come,
for example, if you are a child-headed household. The one bit
that they probably need is help with the ploughing in this week
or this month and if that does not happen then they cannot achieve
and take on the responsibility.
Hugh Bayley
128. Can I just push you a little bit further
on the impact of HIV/AIDS. We have had a number of generalised
statements about the impact both on the productivity of people
with HIV infection and also their susceptibility to opportunistic
infections which come with malnourishment. I am much less clear
what can be done about it both in terms of responding to the immediate
crisis and in terms of creating a sustainable development strategy
for Sub-Saharan Africa, for any area which has a very high incidence
of HIV/AIDS. Kato raised the concept of the development of an
agricultural strategy specifically for smaller, weaker child-headed
households that cannot plough. Hitherto, I have been pretty sceptical
about the value of anti-retrovirals in Africa given the cost of
them compared with the health gain you would get with other treatments.
In Malawi I came to see it possibly as akin to a key worker strategy
in the UK, a way of getting a few more years of work out of a
key worker like a teacher or a nurse. Is that a sensible way to
look at targeting what would have to be a targeted strategy on
HIV, or should one look at drug therapies as a non-starter because
they will simply be colonised by the elite? Could we just run
round the table and have one or two suggestions from each of you
about the practical things that could be done to build sustainability
in an environment where a quarter, possibly even more, of the
population are HIV Positive?
(Dr Seaman) I assume we are talking about economic
sustainability. On the question of retrovirals I tend to agree
with you. The problem is that it is not so much the drugs, it
is often the system for delivering them, or the lack of that system.
It does require a relatively sophisticated system, fairly close
application to the individuals concerned. As we have been talking
about food security, health systems do not even begin to come
close to the criteria for delivering retrovirals on any large
scale regularly. I think it is questionable whether we would even
be capable of delivering to key workers outside of some urban
areas in most of the countries which we are discussing. On the
question of the economic sustainability per se, I have
come to see it really as in a sense there are two debates going
on. There is a debate going on about what we can do with the prevailing
resources and perhaps policy limitations. I would suggest, and
I think from all the evidence I know of from attempts to look
at this problem in rural Africa, the resources are simply insufficient
to the task, in my view, outside of small areas, projects run
by NGOs, which I am not against in any sense but they are small
areas that do not target a mass population. The resources are
simply not there to do anything very sensible. I think it is as
simple as that, I have reached that conclusion. The other side
of the debate is what—
Tony Worthington
129. Leave something for someone else.
(Dr Seaman) More resources.
(Mr Dykes) I think if there is some good to come from
this crisis—I say "some good"—it is the
recognition of the impact HIV/AIDS, not just as an emergency but
as everyday life for many millions of people in Southern Africa.
That is one point. My point would be not just an emergency strategy
but a development and anti-poverty strategy needs to fully take
account of HIV/AIDS. One of the points is to break the silence
that is affecting it in communities, break the stigma of it. Members
of the Committee have been to Malawi and many people still will
not talk about it, they will be going to the funerals, there are
communities being mourned and decimated, but it is "somebody
died". We have got to break that silence and stigma. It seems
that can be helpful. Secondly, we are calling for strategies,
certainly at the agricultural level, which do address it specifically
and openly and honestly which actually say "For those who
are HIV Positive we may have to target food aid. We may have to
target other forms of assistance". There is a problem here
in that many people will not come out and say they are HIV Positive.
We are juggling with if one offers certain incentives will people
be more prepared to state their status and be open about it, so
a community and a national level response is more formulated in
terms of those strategies. You then have to target households
affected directly by HIV/AIDS, people who are living with HIV.
Kato has mentioned about child-headed households. What you also
have to factor in is providing a range of opportunities for people
who are affected, not necessarily just in agriculture but that
can include some income generation and other activities. As regards
drug treatment, it clearly has a role to play and it can very
much reduce the transmission from mother to child very clearly.
The issue certainly in rural Southern Africa is not just of affordability
but even if one does target, and leave aside the philosophical
objections, certain workers and not others, how will the drug
treatment help them if their nutritional status continues to decline?
You have got to bring about enabling people if they are to live
longer and productive lives, having an adequate food supply and
an adequate nutritional status, not simply relying on drug treatment.
Mr Khabra
130. In many countries of Southern Africa it
was considered that state marketing systems were very expensive,
inefficient, poorly run and hindered the growth and efficiency
of markets for them to introduce liberalisation of the economy
and particularly agriculture and there was a role for the private
sector. It appeared that the private sector and liberalisation
clearly did not come up to the expectations of the people and
there has been some criticism of the new programme and particularly
Christian Aid is of the view that "Markets can only respond
to purchasing power, not to needs, hence the need to build institutions
and strengthen government capacity to design and implement pro-poor
policies". The question is what role has agricultural reform
played in shaping vulnerability and food insecurity in the countries
of Southern Africa? What lessons can be learnt from the current
crisis as regards the pre-conditions for successful liberalisation
and the appropriate role of the state in ensuring food security
and reducing vulnerability to shocks?
(Ms Lambrechts) That is a big question. I will try
to draw out perhaps two or three key points. On your first question,
what has been the impact of agricultural reform on food security,
in our submission we have looked at three countries—Zimbabwe,
Malawi and Zambia—in this regard. Of course, the overarching
issue for all three of these countries has been their dependence
on World Bank/IMF funds, on donor funds generally, and therefore,
to come back to the previous point that was made, these governments
have not always been in charge of their policies, have not always
been able to respond as in a democracy, as people know it here,
to strong demands and voices within their own societies, these
have been largely shaped by the World Bank and IMF with other
donors. The theories that have underpinned the advice that has
been given to take away support, to stop state support of prices,
to stop state support of marketing, of assisting small producers
to market to buy and sell their products, has been in some cases
fairly understandable, partly inefficiencies, a real lack of resources
to continue financing these huge subsidies, they were not seen
to be sustainable, and issues about governance and corruption
that have taken place in these. Christian Aid believes that these
very legitimate concerns have led to policies that have actually
thrown out—to use the term—the baby with the bath
water. What we have found is that in remote communities in Zimbabwe
where the Grain Marketing Board had depots before to buy the grain
off these communities, they literally are in communal areas which
is where most of the resource poor farmers live, but as of 1991
when the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Programme started being
implemented they have had no access to markets, to buyers of their
produce, and if we look at Zimbabwe today more than 90% of poor
households are dependent on money to buy food, they do not produce
enough food per hectare to be able to feed the household, as Stephen
explained. The loss of the money they used to get for that food
to be used in times of food shortage during the year has had a
severe impact and has led to cumulative years of malnutrition
in families. A UNDP sponsored study has found that, in fact, if
you get an accurate picture of the whole agriculture liberalisation
programme in Zimbabwe the only ones who have benefited have been
some traders. In Malawi we have found that there is no private
sector that can fill the gap, the traders, the companies, the
small enterprises necessary to fill the gap left by the state
leaving particularly remote areas that are not serviced by infrastructure,
and I am sure on your visits you have seen it does not exist,
rural feeder roads are hardly accessible to anything but maybe
the horses or the donkeys, no vehicles. Nobody has come forward
to fill that gap and, therefore, one needs to take a step back
and look first at what are the preconditions for policy change,
for reforms to address what are sometimes legitimate concerns.
These preconditions are primarily three things: rural infrastructure,
it is incredibly important to invest resources into that; to invest
resources, and I think this has been mentioned before, into building
up small enterprises, the private sector in the country, to be
able to fulfil part of the role that it can in regulating these
markets; and then affordable access, which may mean free access,
for the poorest to inputs and credit. One has to design policy
reforms. One cannot design this incredible reform, and we have
seen the outcome from what was done in the 1980s, without in parallel
addressing these almost preconditions for some kind of a market
to continue to function. As someone said before, my last point
is there always has to be a supplementary or a parallel policy
of looking at safety nets for the poorest and most vulnerable
households who, if one takes away price support, for example,
will need some extra support to be able to purchase food when
they cannot grow this for themselves.
131. You said liberalisation, particularly in
poor countries, does not always work in the interests of the people
and as far as corruption is concerned, it is well known perhaps
that anything controlled by the state, the government itself,
is more corrupt in these countries, corruption is a way of life.
With liberalisation corruption does not disappear. If it does
happen the corruption sometimes may increase because it will monopolise
and the economy is in the control of the strong and the rich people.
I think there has got to be a balance between the two as far as
giving any hope to the people in terms of food security and the
development of the economy, the diminution of poverty and also
providing public services to the people if they need them.
(Ms Lambrechts) I think that is a very important point.
Private monopolies do not necessarily mean better management or
less corruption than a public monopoly. The recent banking scandals
in Mozambique have illustrated that quite clearly. I think the
challenge lies now in countries like Malawi particularly where
one of the preconditions for the government to access future funds
from the HIPC relief fund and future loans is, of course, to privatise
ADMARC. You may have come across these debates in Malawi. The
challenge is to sit down and think through what is the most appropriate
response and not necessarily go down an ideological road, ie liberalisation
for the sake of liberalisation, but to look at what would be a
response that would be pro-poor that would actually serve and
help to sustainably grow the livelihoods of the most vulnerable.
Again, the process here is probably as important as the outcome.
By that I mean the involvement of people themselves who will be
affected by whatever is decided. How to begin to regulate these
functions is as important because that will in part determine
what the sort of structure is that will best serve their needs.
I am perhaps giving an answer saying this would be the best.
132. The last question is, is the response to
the ongoing crisis effective enough to ensure that there is no
repetition in 2003 of the food crisis that claimed hundreds or
thousands of lives in early 2002? If not, what are the risks and
problem areas?
(Mr Mawer) I suppose I would come back to what we
were talking about right at the beginning, the ability to understand
what the reality is of the situation, what really is the problem.
In many ways we have come a long way in the last 12 months. I
think governments and WFP and FEWSNET have put in place systems
at a national level called the National Vulnerability Assessment
Committees that are starting to get a handle on all the different
things we are talking about, supply, demand, ways of monitoring
this that are more complex or less complex to give a good picture.
That is one additional plus. What we are in the process of finalising
with DFID is this discussion of a grant of about £5 million
to actually assist SADC, the Regional Vulnerability Assessment
Committee, which will undertake capacity building in certainly
the eight most affected countries and that grant should be kicking
in early next year. The first thing is that, yes, we should know
what is going to be the impact of whatever changing crop production
is there. We should be able to predict rather than just respond.
Hopefully the second thing is that donor organisations, such as
DFID and the EU and USAID, are in a much better position so they
can have the dynamic expertise in the region that they did not
have at the beginning of this problem so that it is clearer to
people who are going to have responsibility for intervening, whether
it is WFP or whether it is NGOs. They should know how to link,
it should be clearer how DFID and CHAD, those people, work together,
it should be clearer also how we are able to influence the different
types of interventions and prioritisation that has gone on. We
have seen, if you like, donors, particularly DFID, prioritising
responses in Zimbabwe in the past year, they have looked at that
as primarily a humanitarian problem but we have seen in Malawi
that the tendency was to focus initially on governance issues
and we have seen that Angola has in many ways been nobody's priority
early on. Hopefully we will have a much broader debate about how
all the various people will be ready to intervene within it. The
last point is around how the various donors will actually co-ordinate
their responses because I think it is clear that this has not
been a success story, that the big players of USAID, EU and DFID
have not worked well together. This again comes back to this SADC
proposal, how can this be improved, what information do they need
to respond more rapidly, what information do they need so that
they will have confidence in it's conclusions. It is this issue
of trust, what kind of analysis will they trust. I hope through
the processes and these shared assessments that have been going
on in the last six months that is now clearer, so the analysis
will be in place and the donors and national governments will
be in a much more ready situation to respond to that analysis.
Tony Worthington
133. Just a point of clarification. You said
that SADC and DFID and the European Union had not worked together.
Was that on a regional basis or on a national basis?
(Mr Mawer) I am primarily talking about at a regional
level, but it is also at a national level.
Tony Worthington: Thank you.
(Mr Mawer) I have just been in Washington discussing
this from the USAID perspective and it is clear that there are
problems. There are obvious problems to do with the fact that
people's regional offices are in different places but it goes
quite a lot further than that.
(Mr Dykes) Can I just add to that. One of our concerns,
if I have understood correctly, is that whilst many of the mechanisms
and lessons learnt are about mitigation and response, they are
not really tackling the main causes: the chronic poverty, the
increased vulnerability for a variety of factors, relatively poor
governance, the failure of policies and practice, and it is not
just policies but the practice and implementation of them, for
more than ten years now in Southern Africa. Sometimes they have
been national government policies, sometimes they have been policies
and priorities forced on those governments that have led and contributed
to this and unless they are tackled there is always the potential
that if not next year then in two or three years' time the same
thing will come back.
Mr Colman
134. I was hoping to ask this of Stephen but
I will ask it of you. We have all had letters in the last months
about the fact that the freezer cabinets of every supermarket
chain in Britain are full of vegetables from Zimbabwe and Zambia,
you mention a country and it is there. I deliberately went to
East, Central and Southern Africa to look at what was going on
and talked to SADC and every country, every local NGO said to
me "Please do not stop the sale of these vegetables to British
supermarkets. This is very important and it uses a tiny, infinitesimal
amount of land. It is providing cash crops, employment and very
important work is being done in terms of transferability of knowledge
in terms of how this can be done working with subsistence farmers".
Very interesting work was being done and certainly in the case
of the ones I went to look at the whole thing was being managed
through the Ethical Trading Initiative, through local NGOs, making
sure that the contracts that ultimately go to Sainsbury's or Safeway's—you
choose the supermarket chain—are literally guaranteeing
good prices for the subsistence farmers at the other end of the
line and the inputs are being supplied and this is working. First
of all, would you agree that the British people can continue to
eat these vegetables coming from famine stricken countries? Secondly,
is this an example really for the future in terms of making sure
there is a mitigation of the famine to see this transferability
of skills into perhaps producing cash crops on a more commercial
basis than has been done before to feed the people of Southern
Africa?
(Mr Dykes) I would agree that the British public can
eat them. I am pleased you have mentioned the Ethical Trading
Initiative because I think what is important here, certainly from
Christian Aid's point of view, is Christian Aid is committed to
working with our partners for poverty eradication, so what we
would look for in any policy and practice is does this contribute
to poverty eradication. Clearly we have a situation where we recognise
international trade can benefit poor people, but often it does
not, and one of the tasks is to make sure that it does, not to
be for or against it. If the production is environmentally sustainable,
if the production really benefits the poor, it seems desirable
but there are other points. If you are actually going into agricultural
production for a cash crop it can take resources and attention
and focus and support away from agriculture for subsistence. There
is some more anecdotal than academic evidence that this may have
applied in parts of Southern Africa. Cash crops can be more capital
intensive but they can also be more labour intensive and if they
are more labour intensive how do you factor in HIV/AIDS and the
impact of that?
135. The companies themselves are actually providing
retrovirals.
(Mr Dykes) You come into a strategy recognising that
communities and countries probably need to diversify to reduce
vulnerability and not rely on either simply international trade
or agricultural subsistence. Provided that poor people genuinely
do benefit and it is environmentally sustainable—this is
not an argument that I have heard—none of our partners in
Southern Africa have asked for certain products to be boycotted
in any way.
(Dr Seaman) I absolutely agree with that but I just
have one small rider which is the very large markets in indigenous
produce in some parts of the region provide a certain counterpoint
to these highly specialised introduced markets in cash crops and
livestock by a margin in Botswana, Namibia and elsewhere, which
are really very major industries, major cash spinners. We really
should be trying to move to a situation where that is the pattern
of production in Africa, where they are exporting the things which
are most naturally exported rather than sugar snap peas and things
where the environmental costs of production are often very great
indeed.
136. But the people of Britain should continue
to eat them?
(Dr Seaman) Absolutely, there is no question about
that.
Tony Worthington: Can I thank Save the
Children and Christian Aid very much indeed for your useful evidence.
Thank you.
65 Available at: http://www.sphereproject.org/ Back
66
Committee on World Food Security, 28 May to 1 June 2001: `The
impact of HIV/AIDS on Food Security', Table 2. See: http://www.fao.org/docrep/meeting/003/Y0310E.htm Back
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