On Thursday, it rained. For the first time in more than a year, the parched land along the Kenya-Somalia border received some relief. Six hours later, dusty roads had turned into bogs, low-level flooding was everywhere, and the district hospital's parking lot had turned into a filthy lagoon that contaminated the hospital's chief water source.
The Horn of Africa has one of the harshest climates in the world. Droughts that used to occur every 10 or 15 years are now coming every three or four years – and there just isn't enough time to recover. This year's drought is the worst in 60 years, and the United Nations declared a famine for the first time in a generation, with 13 million people at risk. Somalis have fled their homes to places such as the Dadaab refugee camp, just inside the Kenyan border. Dadaab was built 20 years ago for 90,000 people; by the end of the year, that number will reach half a million.
While humanitarian relief has kept people alive in Dadaab, this effort is not sustainable. Trucking in water and flying in food and medicine save lives, but we must rethink the way aid agencies operate in the region. We need to blend the immediate life-saving effort with creative longer-term community development.
Kenya and Ethiopia are suffering from the same weather conditions as those across the border in Somalia, but they're not caught in a war. That means community development and government programs since the last great famine of the 1980s have successfully built on community skills and resilience. Mobile health units and schools are able to provide social support to the herders who move their animals around the region in search of water and pasture.
Even inside Somalia, community development is possible. In the absence of a functioning government, Unicef has negotiated partnerships with town councils and local businesses to make local water supply sustainable. Building on Somali business acumen, these private-public partnerships make a profit when they connect the water supply to a house (town elders ensure that displaced people and families headed by women get their water for free).
There are no humanitarian solutions to humanitarian crises. We need the short-term Band-Aid of humanitarian relief, but this crisis has been going on for 20 years, so we must change the way we work. Giving food and shelter is not enough – aid agencies need to adopt the principles of community development and involve everyone affected by the crisis. Farmers, herders, refugees and displaced people, local communities and government officials have valuable insights that a massive humanitarian response all too often overlooks. After all, even in this harsh climate, they've been able to survive for millenniums.
Preventing and managing drought-related food insecurity requires a lengthy commitment that not only saves lives but sows the seeds of recovery. Increased investment in agriculture, small business development to provide extra income for the nomads, flexible schooling and decentralized health services, local management of water points, and nutritional surveillance that enables a faster response to spikes in malnutrition are some successful risk-reduction tactics. But the key is not what a program looks like – the key is to listen to and learn from the community.
The rains that began on Thursday are not enough for the harvest and bring new challenges for the relief effort. But if we learn how to listen and work with community members and shift away from 20 years of relief, then they'll have a better chance for a more hopeful future.
David Morley is president and CEO of Unicef Canada.