Margaret Thatcher Dies; Remade Britain

By ALAN COWELL

LONDON — Margaret Thatcher, a towering, divisive and yet revered figure who left an enduring impact on British politics, died on Monday of a stroke, her family said.

“It is with great sadness that Mark and Carol Thatcher announced that their mother Baroness Thatcher died peacefully following a stroke this morning,” a statement from her spokesman, Lord Tim Bell, said.

Lady Thatcher had been in poor health for months. She served as prime minister for 11 years, beginning in 1979. She was known variously as the ‘Iron Lady,’ a stern Conservative who transformed Britain’s way of thinking about its economic and political life, broke union power and opened the way to far greater private ownership.

She was leader of Britain through its 1982 war in the Falklands and stamped her skepticism about European integration onto her country’s political landscape for decades.

UK predicts terror attacks in Somalia

Add caption

THE British government says it believes terrorists are in the final stages of planning attacks in Somalia and urged UK nationals to leave the country. 
 
The Foreign Office already advises against all travel to Somalia, including Somaliland, where it says there is a specific threat to Westerners.

It said on Saturday it had revised its travel advice to reflect concerns that terrorists are in the final stages of plotting attacks in Mogadishu, the Somali capital.

Britain has no diplomatic representation in Somalia and is unable to provide consular assistance in the country.  Read more: http://www.news.com.au/world-news/uk-predicts-terror-attacks-in-somalia/story-fndir2ev-1226614094780#ixzz2PiGDCvc

Political risk deters action to avert famine - report

Displaced Somalis stand in a queue waiting to be served with cooked food in Hodan district, south of the capital Mogadishu, as famine had spread to six out of eight regions in southern Somalia, Sept. 5, 2011. REUTERS/Feisal Omar

Source: alertnet // Megan Rowling

By Megan Rowling

LONDON (AlertNet) - Governments are failing to prevent hunger emergencies in developing nations, despite ample warning, because they see more political danger than reward in acting early to avert famine, a report from the Chatham House thinktank said on Friday.

To prevent further food crises like those that hit millions of people in the Horn and Sahel regions of Africa in the past two years, the misalignment between political and humanitarian risks must be addressed, or aid needs will increasingly go unmet because drought-related hunger is affecting growing numbers of people in Africa, the report said.

"Rapid population growth, low levels of political inclusion, low agricultural yields and rapid environmental change mean the risk of food crises in the Horn and Sahel is increasing," said the report from the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs. "Conflict and geopolitics act as risk multipliers, meaning that full-blown famine remains a serious threat."

Drought-related food crises are the most deadly of all natural hazards and are estimated to have cost between 1 and 2 million lives since 1970.

The report explains why the international aid community is still dragging its feet on early warnings, even though these have improved considerably. For example, alerts were issued for 11 months before famine was finally declared in Somalia in July 2011, and the relief system was mobilised, it said.

One of the main reasons was political, as Western donor nations feared their aid could end up supporting the Islamist militant group al Shabaab, considered a terrorist organisation by Washington, according to the report. "From a donor perspective, the risk of humanitarian aid being captured by al Shabaab took priority over the risk of a humanitarian catastrophe in Somalia," it said.

Another worry for wealthy governments is being accused of wasting taxpayers' money on a crisis that never happened, said Rob Bailey, senior research fellow at Chatham House and the report's lead author.

"That results in a set of funding institutions and decision-making processes in donor agencies, the U.N. and NGOs that seek to minimise those (political) risks at the expense of not really dealing with the risk of famine at all," he told AlertNet.

In practice, this means centralised decision-making, onerous reporting systems, delays in releasing aid cash until it is too late, and a lack of willingness to experiment with new ways of doing things, Bailey added.

But the blame does not only lie with the international community, the report said.

SHAMED INTO ACTION

Governments in countries at risk of food crises are also guilty of ignoring warnings and playing down the severity of a situation. That may be because they don't want to harm their record on reducing hunger, or because they have little incentive to protect vulnerable communities which are often politically marginalised.

In 2011, when poor, sparsely populated northern Kenya was hard hit by drought, Nairobi was widely criticised for its slow response. The government was eventually spurred into action, partly by a campaign launched by Kenyan media and businesses encouraging the public to make donations via mobile phone, Bailey said, pointing to the potential for a free press and civil society to make a political difference.

Similar dynamics were at work internationally when, soon after, more than 18 million people across West Africa faced a major food crisis.

"In the case of the Sahel last year, there was very clearly a big sense of shame about what had happened in the Horn of Africa and particularly Somalia, and people were openly talking about the need to show that we've learned lessons," Bailey said. This led to a certain amount of early action that prevented a downward spiral into famine, he added.

"It worked in a way, but I don't think fundamentally anything has changed in terms of the underlying institutions, the operational capacities. It was about managing political risks rather than anything else, and on that occasion the political risk calculus favoured early action," the food security expert said.

The report suggests reforms that could generate greater political will for early action on food crises. Key recommendations include making governments more accountable to vulnerable groups, and supporting communities to protect themselves from drought and hunger.

A larger share of international emergency response funds should be channelled into preparing for and avoiding disasters, and more long-term backing given to innovative ideas such as drought insurance, Bailey said.

The report calls for the development of "resilience labs" where governments, aid agencies and early warning providers could team up to test new approaches and demonstrate success.

Donor countries could also work out a better system for sharing the responsibility to act on warnings and responding in a more coordinated way. And they could communicate to their voters at home that acting to prevent a crisis costs less than waiting for it to happen, Bailey said.

"The trickier stuff is how you shift incentives so that decision makers are going to be properly rewarded for taking decisions to respond early, and feel that they have cover in the event that those decisions - every now and again - prove not to be necessarily the right ones," he said.

The report, Managing Famine Risk: Linking Early Warning to Early Action, is being launched at Chatham House on Friday.

Aid groups fear impact of US austerity budget

By Tara McKelvey BBC News Magazine

The US Congress has slashed $85bn (£56bn) from the federal budget through the end of September. Now, foreign aid groups that rely on US support fear the cuts will devastate the people in the most desperate need.

The US budget cuts trim programmes at home and abroad

When Jeremy Konyndyk, director of policy for Mercy Corps, talks about budget cuts in the US, he barely mentions the impact the reductions will have on Americans.

Instead, he worries about people overseas - such as those he met recently in Niger.

In January, Konyndyk visited a village in the county's Ouallam region, roughly 62 miles (100km) from Niamey, where he met a group of about 20 women who had received a goat through a food-security programme.

"This programme at least gives them some prospects for getting through the drought without getting totally wiped out," he says. The budget cuts, he says, will make it harder to help those and other women in Niger.

US funds are helping tamp down violence in Mali, where French troops have beat back Islamist rebels

The US Congress has slashed $85bn from US spending for this fiscal year, which ends in October. The deficit reduction measures are referred to in Washington DC jargon as sequestration.

In Washington, White House officials say the cuts will affect everything from White House tours (cancelled) to domestic airline flights (delayed). Despite those claims, though, some of the cuts to the budget will barely be felt.

"It's not the end of the world," says Gordon Adams, an American University professor who was a senior budget official in the Clinton White House. "It's a haircut."

But the cuts affect not only Americans - people around the world will see its impact.

“About a million kids won't be vaccinated”

Tom Hart US executive director for the ONE campaign

European officials may spend less time in meetings, for example, because their counterparts in Washington will be making fewer overseas trips. Some Pentagon officials have already cancelled trips to Europe this spring.

But for people living in other parts of the world, the impact could be more significant.

The US is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, according to the London-based Overseas Development Institute. The US also offers military assistance to countries in the Middle East and other regions and funds programmes for global health, refugee aid and more.

The March law writing the cuts into the budget slashed funding for these and other programmes by roughly 5%.

More than $2.7bn will be taken from state department foreign operations and other programmes, according to the Congressional Research Service.

In some cases the cuts will affect government institutions in other countries. Aid to countries such as Egypt (the US provides roughly $1.3bn annually to its military) and Israel (roughly $3bn annually) also may be reduced.

The budgetary reductions will have an impact on individuals, say aid workers, since the cuts will be applied to programmes already stretched thin.

Contributions to international peacekeeping, which helps to tamp down on violence in conflict-ridden countries such as Mali, will be reduced by $20m.

And funds for humanitarian programmes, which help families in the Horn of Africa and other places in crisis, will be cut by roughly $200m, state department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland has said.

Efforts to fight disease in Africa may also be affected, since global health programmes will lose more than $400m in US funding.

"We work on programmes for the most needy people on the planet," says Tom Hart, US executive director for the ONE Campaign, the advocacy group founded by U2's Bono.

"These people are living on the edge. About a million kids won't be vaccinated. A million bed nets that prevent malaria won't be distributed."

Communities in Niger receive US assistance for agricultural programmes

Hart and other advocates fear the lives of many people overseas will become harder if aid programmes, which include food security and agricultural projects, are reduced.

And many humanitarian aid workers say their programmes are already financially strapped.

"At this point, we are facing an acute number of crises," says Jeremy Kadden, a senior legislative manager at InterAction, a consortium of non-governmental organisations based in the US. "We have more people in need than ever before."

Konyndyk of Mercy Corps says the budget cuts chip away at efforts to help people in other parts of the world and put Americans in a bind.

"The government is faced with a kind of Sophie's choice," he says. "Which disaster do you save?"

 

Chatham House report: Famine risks are badly managed

By Mark Kinver Environment reporter, BBC News 

Despite early warnings, donors seem reluctant to intervene

Famine early warning systems have a good track record of predicting food shortages but are poor at triggering early action, a report has concluded.

The study said the opportunity for early action was being missed by governments and humanitarian agencies.

It said the "disconnect" was starkly apparent in Somalia where no action was taken despite 11 months of warnings.

Up to two million people are estimated to have died in drought-related emergencies since 1970.

The report by UK think-tank Chatham House, Managing Famine Risk: Linking Early Warning to Early Action, looked at the issue of drought-related emergencies on a global scale but focused on the Horn of Africa and the Sahel regions.

"The regions are quite unique in a way because you have these droughts, where there are normally successive failed rains; then you have a process whereby you have subsequent harvest failures then people adopt coping strategies," explained report author Rob Bailey.

"They start selling off assets, running down food reserves, taking on credit - they get themselves into an increasingly desperate situation."

Mr Bailey, a senior research fellow at Chatham House, said that after a period of time the coping strategies became exhausted, triggering a famine.

"But the whole process can take 11 months from start to finish, and that is why there is an opportunity to intervene early," he told BBC News.

"Yet despite this very significant opportunity and despite analysis showing that when you do intervene early it costs less and you save more lives, it does not happen."

Gambling with lives

The main reason, he observed, why there was a delay, was a result of perceived political risk by governments.

"Ultimately, early action requires government action," he added.

"It requires donor governments - like the UK and US - to write a cheque early on before the crisis is at its worse phase, and that is a big ask for governments to do because governments are primarily concerned with managing the political risks to themselves.

"They see political risks in funding these sorts of things because budgets are tight and public support for aid spending is less than it used to be, so it is seen as a particularly risky endeavour at the moment."

If the early action by donor governments prevented the crisis, that could also cause problems as well because it could be argued that there was not a crisis waiting to happen in the first place.

Unstable political systems can complicate aid efforts to help starving people during famines

Mr Bailey cited the 2011 famine in Somalia as an example where the issue of political risk shaped the global response to the humanitarian emergency.

"That was not a result of early warning information - it was probably the single most documented and monitored evolution of famine in history," he explained.

"But still no early action happened and probably the main reason for that is because the areas of Somalia that were at most risk where under control of a Jihadist militia, which the US and other western donor nations categorise as a terrorist organisation."

He added that there was concern among donor nations that carrying out humanitarian missions in those areas could strengthen the position of the militia, especially if aid ended up in the hands of the group.

Counting the cost

Early warning systems were first introduced in the Sahel and Horn of Africa regions in the early 1980s when it was first realised that it was possible to track the "chronology of famine".

"Since then, things have got a lot more sophisticated so now there are early warning systems that use satellite to estimate harvests more effectively, how much pasture is available. We have more much more sophisticated weather forecasting models." Mr Bailey said.

"They also use a lot more household-gathered data, where infants are weighed and malnutrition is quantified. Also, it is monitored whether certain coping strategies, that are recognised as pre-famine indicators, are becoming established."

He explained that a full-blown emergency response was very expensive, so there was a strong financial argument to act sooner rather than later.

"When you are at the situation where malnutrition rates are very high and people are dying then you need to be moving very large amounts of food, medicines and healthcare products through pipelines to areas where access is often very poor.

"Humanitarian agencies have often said that early intervention is cheaper. There was a study carried out recently that looked at the potential savings of acting sooner rather than later.

"This involved a range of initiatives, such as pre-positioning of food and medicine supplies so agencies are able to source them earlier, perhaps when prices were lower."

A recent study looked at intervention costs in Kenya and southern Ethiopia over two decades. It found that, on average, early intervention resulted in a saving of US$1,000 per person.

"This is serious money when multiplied by the number of people affected in these situations," Mr Bailey calculated. An estimated 18 million people were affected during the Sahel crisis last year, he added.

It is estimated that earlier intervention saves aid budgets about $1,000 per person affected by famine

Drought-related emergencies, particularly in the Horn of Africa and Sahel regions, were unlikely to go away in the future, projected scenarios showed.

"I think there is a very strong case to be made that the agricultural trends, the demographic trends and the climatic trends are pointing towards a rapidly deteriorating risk outlook," Mr Bailey said.

"The key message is that early warning systems give us a real opportunity to manage that risk really effectively.

"It is very rare that you can have a risk that can be so well understood and predicted, and give us such an opportunity to intervene and mitigate it."