GENEVA (UNICEF) – Southern Africa is in the midst of a humanitarian crisis unlike any other. As many as 14 million people, half of them children, are at risk of starvation in the six affected countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
The 1992 famine was almost exclusively drought-related. In this crisis, each of the affected countries has been stricken by the HIV/AIDS pandemic, which has reduced agricultural productivity and food security.
HIV/AIDS has made hunger an even greater peril. An HIV-affected household can see its income drop by up to 80 per cent, and its food consumption by 15 to 30 per cent. One in four people in the productive age group (15-49) in this region is living with HIV.
This means that fewer adults must support more people, and the burden of care is shifted to society’s weakest and most marginalized, especially women and girls. Desperate people adopt damaging and high-risk ‘survival strategies,’ such as selling off land or exchanging sex for food or cash. These strategies undercut people’s ability to recover and contribute to long term poverty.
“In a region already bearing the full brunt of the HIV/AIDS pandemic, the food crisis presents a new and ominous threat to the survival of the most vulnerable – the children and women,” says Urban Jonsson, UNICEF’s Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa.
A ‘window of hope’
Children are especially at risk and therefore represent specific concerns and challenges. HIV/AIDS infects some 800,000 children in Africa every year. Today 3 million children live with AIDS and over 13 million have been orphaned by AIDS, most of them in sub-Saharan Africa. There are almost 4 million children orphaned by HIV/AIDS in these six countries alone and their numbers are expected to increase to 5 million by 2005.
Children below 14 years of age offer a “window of hope” to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. Many of them are still not infected and with proper awareness about preventing disease and behaviour change linked to this awareness, they have a better chance of protecting their own lives and other people.
School is the place where children can acquire new knowledge and life skills, and change their own behaviour to prevent them from getting affected by HIV/AIDS or being exploited and abused.
But the education system is threatened by teacher absenteeism and deaths, and the demands on children from households facing lost income and sick and dying family members are reducing attendance levels.
UNICEF believes that keeping children in school, especially during emergencies and crises allows children to be safe from exploitation and abuse; allows them access to a range of basic services (such as clean drinking water, personal hygiene and sanitation); and allows them to continue to acquire knowledge and skills that will help them escape from the spiral of poverty and HIV/AIDS, and become the future productive workforce for their country.
More than 14 million people are tremendously at risk, not just of hunger and deprivation, but of intergenerational impoverishment.
The Southern Africa crisis is complex and chronic and requires a comprehensive response that must focus both on reducing vulnerability and on building communities’ capacities to respond to future threats. UNICEF has appealed for $27 million to respond to this crisis, but only some $5 million has been received to date.
The 37 National Committees for UNICEF are private, not-for-profit organizations, primarily in industrialized countries, that support UNICEF programs. Extensive networks of volunteers help the Committees raise funds, sell the well-known UNICEF greeting cards and carry out other activities, such as the “Trick-or-Treat for UNICEF” program. These efforts help generate a deeper understanding of the rights and needs of children everywhere and provide ways for young people as well as adults to change the world for children.
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