| |
The
Southern Africa region is facing a drought triggered humanitarian
and food security crisis, which has been further exacerbated by
the HIV pandemic, governance and poverty issues. Factors contributing
to the crisis are numerous and vary from country to country. They
include: drought, floods, disruptions to commercial farming, depletion
of strategic grain reserves, poor economic performance, poor governance,
foreign exchange shortages and delays in the timely importation
of maize etc. The crisis builds upon the frequent re-occurrence
of disasters in the region and an accumulation of disaster risk.
The regional Consolidated Appeals (CAP) for Southern Africa were
launched in July 2002. |
| These
CAP’s covered six of the southern African countries in which
the crisis has been prevalent. These are: Lesotho,
Malawi, Mozambique,
Swaziland, Zambia
and Zimbabwe. Since then, the humanitarian
community, Governments, South African Development Community (SADC)
and donors have been working in concert to address the acute vulnerability
of over 14.4 million people in the region whose lives are threatened
by the devastating impact of food insecurity, exacerbated HIV/AIDS,
severe poverty, disease outbreaks and limited access to social
services. In view of the gravity of the emerging crisis in Southern
Africa and in recognition of the critical non-food areas of this
crisis, particularly HIV/AIDS, a Regional Inter Agency Coordination
Support Office (RIACSO) was established in October 2002 with a
key role of ensuring that multi-sectoral and coordinated support
is provided to country teams for strategic planning, assessment,
monitoring and analysis of the Southern African Crisis. RIACSO
has just coordinated the launching of a follow-up CAP for the
period 2003/2004 in light of the recognition that serious problems
in food security will remain, as deep economic problems and market
inefficiencies continue to exist in the region. (...)
More information |
