Wednesday, June 3, 1998

Report Says Resolving Violent Conflicts Key to Ending Hunger; Cites Sudan Famine

Throughout the 15-year civil war in Sudan, government and opposition forces have used food and hunger as weapons to control territory and people. Presently, 2.6 million people are in need of emergency food aid, and one-third of the country's children are malnourished. The warring parties continue their protracted struggle over southern Sudan's land, water, and petroleum, as well as its religious culture.

According to a new report from the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), creating a hunger-free world in the 21st century will require prevention and resolution of violent conflicts, such as the one in Sudan, as well as concerted efforts to rebuild war-torn societies.

The report notes a close relationship between conflict and declining per capita food production in Sub-Saharan Africa. Over the period 1970-93, African countries produced on average 12.4 percent less food per person during periods of war than they did in peacetime. In several African countries, the report says, food crises caused by drought and mismanagement of agriculture and aid led to rebellion and government collapse, followed by even greater food shortfalls in the years of conflict that followed.

"Nowhere on earth is the link between armed violence and hunger as clear as it is right now in Sudan," said Per Pinstrup-Andersen, IFPRI's director general. As the report reveals, farmers have not been able to plant crops, let alone harvest them, because of land mines, soldiers' bullets, a decimated transportation infrastructure, lack of agricultural inputs, and a general breakdown of the country's social fabric.

"In Sudan, hunger itself has been a weapon of war," said Ellen Messer, an anthropologist at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies and the principal author of the report. "The international community really has to re-think ways to deliver aid so that it leads to peace and does not further fuel conflict, " she added.

"Sudan is endowed with fertile land and petroleum reserves," according to IFPRI's Marc Cohen, a co-author of the report. "However, these violent struggles have turned Sudan from a 'bread basket' into a 'basket case.'"

The study reports that violence and wars frequently take place as a result of politically dominant groups seizing land and food resources, denying access to others, and purposefully causing hunger and scarcities. These scenarios have occurred not only in Sudan and other parts of Africa, but in Mexico and Central America, civil-war torn countries of Asia, and in countries of the former Soviet Union.

Even after peace comes to former war zones, there are enormous reconstruction challenges, such as removing land mines, refurbishing water systems, replanting trees, rebuilding housing and infrastructure, and re-establishing communities, according to the report. Otherwise, fragile peace easily reverts to conflict.

The report recommends that international development programs incorporate conflict prevention and resolution into their action plans. "This may necessitate new ways of evaluating the impact of aid," said Messer. "In the report, we calculate the many costs of conflict. Are there ways development planners can figure the benefits of 'peace' into their equations?"

Also, according to Cohen, "Emergency aid has to be more than just handouts. Wherever possible, efforts to stave off famine with food assistance should include working with local people to promote peace and restore agriculture and other productive activities."

In addition, the report calls for careful targeting of aid agency accountability and both hunger relief and development assistance efforts in order to reach the most vulnerable or conflict-prone people before problems balloon into crises or tragedies.

The report was issued as part of IFPRI's 2020 Vision for Food, Agriculture, and the Environment Initiative, which seeks to identify the major hunger issues of the next 25 years. IFPRI identifies and analyzes alternative national and international strategies and policies for meeting food needs of the developing world on a sustainable basis, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and the poorer groups in those countries.