How does conflict affect food security in Ethiopia and Eritrea?

During the past 40 years, Ethiopia and Eritrea have experienced long periods of famine and food insecurity. Many researchers identify different environmental, social or economic explanations for this. However, the contribution of the political sphere, especially war and conflict, should not be ignored.

Ethiopia and Eritrea have extremely high rates of chronic under-nourishment. Ethiopia requires humanitarian assistance to feed at least 8 percent of the population each year and has experienced ten major drought-famine periods in the last forty years. Changing weather patterns, failure to stem land degradation caused by increasing population pressure, adverse price trends, poor rural infrastructure and lack of support for livestock-centred livelihoods are seen as the main causes of deepening vulnerability to drought and successive food crises.

However, independent research suggests that ongoing conflict between Ethiopia and Eritrea, and across the Horn of Africa, contribute significantly to long-term food insecurity. Ethiopia and Eritrea fought between 1998 and 2000 following a border dispute. In 2000, when the war reached its climax with Ethiopia’s invasion of Eritrea, famine conditions emerged in south-eastern Ethiopia. The United Nations estimated that over 16 million people faced starvation throughout the region. Though treated as separate issues by the two governments and aid agencies, the war and the food crisis were linked, reflecting a complex web of longer-term interactions between food insecurity and endemic conflict.

The research shows:

• Both governments diverted material, financial and human resources away from services that support food security and towards the war effort, and have continued to do so.
• Many people displaced from rural conflict zones were farmers, meaning crops were left untended and unharvested. Animals and other household assets were left behind.
• The border closure between the two countries halted flows of Ethiopian grain into Eritrea and of cash remittances from Ethiopians working in Eritrea, increasing food insecurity on both sides.
• Conflict prevented people from producing, acquiring, trading and transferring food in the ways they would during non-conflict times.

To pressure the two governments to end the conflict, donors drastically reduced development aid, even though this was important for longer-term food security. More controversially, they delayed relief supplies until famine conditions were exposed in the international media. Security conditions further limited the effectiveness of relief operations once these did begin.

Long-term food insecurity in Ethiopia and Eritrea cannot be explained by increasing populations, drought and environmental degradation alone. Policymakers must consider how these and other social and economic factors (for example ethnic and national identities, infrastructure constraints, trade relations, price trends, changes in nutrition and health status) interact with political developments, especially conflict, to reinforce food insecurity. Aid providers need to consider these interactions. The research recommends:

• Humanitarian aid responses to food crises must be quick, unconditional and sensitive to needs beyond food aid.
• Donor agencies must reconsider the effectiveness of the conditions they apply to aid in conflict situations and how these conditions will affect displaced and food insecure people.
• Successive food crises should not be viewed as isolated events, but as part of a pattern of food insecurity, conflict and population displacement which demands a longer-term response.

Source(s):
‘War and food security in Eritrea and Ethiopia 1998-2000’ in ‘Disasters’, 29, (1), 92 -113, Overseas Development Institute, by Philip White, 2005

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id21 Research Highlight: 27 January 2006

Further Information:
Philip White
107 Union Road
Sheffield S11 9EJ
UK

Tel: +44 (0) 114 2553885
Fax: +44 (0) 114 2553885
Contact the contributor: philip@rauwhite.freeserve.co.uk

Other related links:
'The southern Africa crisis: food insecurity, HIV/AIDS and the international response'

'Improving food aid in the Great Lakes region of Africa'

'Exploring the causes of armed conflict in Africa'

'Agriculture heals the wounds of conflict'

'Water access in Ethiopia – can conflict be avoided?'