In preparation for the Human Development Report every year, the HDRO commissions a number of experts to write papers on issues related to the theme of the Report. The following is a compilation of selected Occasional Papers written since 1992. Individually, each paper brings to light a key facet of human development in different parts of the world. Together, they help establish a framework of tools, concept and action to address the issue of human development worldwide.

Occasional Paper 17 -

ISSUES OF HUMAN SECURITY
 

• Civil Conflicts and their Consequences
• Food Security
• Health and Human Security
• Environmental Security

Civil Conflicts and their Consequences

Of all the preconditions for human development, peace is without doubt the most fundamental. In its absence, it would be illusory to expect an amelioration of the human situation. But the history of post-independence Africa is replete with civil conflicts and political instability. A review of some of the more glaring cases will serve to drive this point home. In recent years, some of the most devastating wars have been fought in the Horn of Africa. Ethiopia, which is now well into its third year of relative peace, has been bleeding for at least one generation. The Eritrean urgency has often been described as the longest conflict in Africa, and appropriately so. In its last decade or so, it pitted one of the largest armies in black Africa against a hardened guerrilla movement. But the fighting did not remain confined within the perimeters of an insurgency; in fact, it had developed into a full-fledged conventional war. This, combined with insurgencies that were initially localised but later engulfed the entire country, created a situation in which war became the single most dominant reality of Ethiopian life. Close to one million persons may have been engaged in combat on all sides of the conflict. Although nobody has kept an account of casualties, the available estimates make unmistakably clear that the loss of human life was enormous.

The peace that has dawned in Ethiopia is one of the more hope-inspiring developments of recent years. However, although the war has been over for almost three years now, it has created in its wake massive demobilisation of former government soldiers, large numbers of displaced people, hundreds of thousands of returning refugees and refugees fleeing conflict from neighbouring countries, and imposed gigantic tasks of economic reconstruction and social rehabilitation on a fragile economy.

In the Sudan, a conflict between two ethnically, linguistically, culturally and religiously distinct parts of the country, one in the north and the other in the south, is still in progress. The conflict which started as early as 1955 has virtually raged on unabated except for the period 1972 to 1983. In spite of various attempts at reconciliation, peace has become illusory. The two parts of the country are becoming polarised and the animosity between them is deepening more than ever before.

But perhaps nowhere in Africa has the social impact of war been as dramatic as in Somalia. Although often cited as an ideal example of a homogenous society (enjoying a common language, a common religion, etc.), Somalia today is a land without a government and without any kind of civil society to speak of. Conflicts between clans and sub-clans have reduced the country to such a degree of ungovernability that even the task of distributing relief supplies could not be undertaken without the massive intervention of foreign troops.

What makes the situation in the Horn particularly volatile is that the problems of all countries are inter-linked and tend to flow across national boundaries. Even Djibouti, often regarded as an island of peace in a turbulent region, has enjoyed less than total harmony in recent years.

Another major theatre of war has been Southern Africa. The civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, fanned by apartheid South Africa, have caused much suffering in the region, the consequences not confined to the major protagonists but also extending to the so-called front-line states as well, notably Zimbabwe and Zambia. The cease fire signed in Mozambique at the end of 1992 and the promise of the establishment of democratic governance in the country following multi-party elections in October 1994 give some hope that, at long last, that country will redirect its energies to the tasks of healing the wounds of war, reconstruction and development. Not so fortunate is Angola, where repeated cease fire agreements have been blown to pieces in spite of active mediation by the UN.

Further north, Uganda, Burundi and Rwanda are other countries that have been brutalised by war for several years. The recent shocking acts of organised genocide in Rwanda which resulted in the death of over 500,000 people, the flight of 2 million refugees to neighbouring countries and the internal displacement of an equal number of people can only serve to illustrate the depth of the tragedy of armed conflicts in Africa. In West Africa, the example that comes most readily to mind is Liberia, where to this day rival factions struggling for power are engaged in mortal combat, with untold consequences for the population. The fallout from this conflict has not spared neighbouring Sierra Leone. Another country that has been ravaged by war is Chad. And these are only the most conspicuous examples. There are also countries which are characterised by heightened political tension, which is the stuff of which future conflicts are often made. Perhaps the most notorious case is Zaire, but one could also mention Kenya, Cameroon, Togo, Congo, Sierra Leone and a number of others. Religious extremism has paralysed Algeria and shattered political stability in Egypt.

Virtually all of the conflicts owe their origins to a backlog of unresolved economic, social and political grievances, often complicated by ethnic and/or religious dimensions. As long as these underlying conditions prevail, whatever peace may be achieved is bound to be tenuous at best; quite possibly it may be the lull before another war. In this sense, it is difficult to name many African country that are truly at peace.

That war is destructive is obvious and requires no demonstration. It kills and maims, creates displacement on a massive scale, causes family disintegration, and traumatises people, especially children, perhaps scarring them for life. It also wreaks havoc on infrastructure, disrupts production and trade, and diverts limited resources from construction to destruction. No less significant is that it undermines political and social stability and makes it impossible for societies to be guided by a vision of the future, without which any strategy for human development over the long haul is unthinkable.

While a comprehensive reckoning of the consequences of war is virtually impossible, it is sufficiently devastating to know that between 1960 and 1990 seven million people are estimated to have lost their lives in Africa because of conflicts. Apart from killing and maiming, war creates massive population displacements. The problem of refugees and displaced persons is but one dramatic example of the terrible social consequences of war. Africa accounts for half of the world's refugee population. 29 It is further reported that there were 1.3 million refugees in the Sudan, about one million in Ethiopia, 900,000 in Malawi, 300,000 in Cote d'Ivoire, 325,000 in Guinea, 125,000 in Sierra Leone and 300,000 in Somalia, not to mention other countries. The recent genocide in Rwanda created over 2 million refugees in Zaire and Tanzania. There are, in addition, some 17 million internally displaced persons in Africa.

As happens elsewhere in situations of armed conflict, it is children and women that bear the brunt of the burden. For example, UNICEF estimates that "infants and young children accounted for 1.2 million out of 1.9 million deaths in Southern Africa during the 1980s caused by war".30 Likewise, children make up a disproportionately high percentage of refugees and displaced persons. They have also been conscripted to fight for causes they have no understanding of. The problem of child warriors has been especially acute in Uganda. And warriors or not, children who survive war situations seem to be traumatised for life.

In many African countries, war in concert with drought and other natural calamities has authored a harrowing record of human suffering because it not only interferes with production, but also obstructs the delivery of relief food and exposes millions to the risk of death by starvation.

Viewed globally, recent developments the end of the cold war in particular augur well for the prospects of turning swords into plowshares. In Africa, too, there have been some gratifying developments. As pointed out earlier, South Africa has become a multi-party democratic nation; relative peace has dawned in Ethiopia after years of a cruel and debilitating civil war; war-torn Uganda has been a relatively peaceful country for some years now; and peace, national reconciliation; and democratic governance seem to be possible prospects in Mozambique.

Unfortunately, such examples are few and far between. In an environment of armed conflict, the primary concern is with survival, not human development. All talk about people's participation becomes meaningless where civil society has broken down totally, as in the case of Somalia. It would be equally meaningless to talk about a peace dividend, when there is no peace or where it is so brittle that it cannot be taken for granted. The search for peace must, therefore, be taken as a matter of the highest priority.

However, peace cannot be achieved by merely preaching sermons in praise of it. In one way or another the conflicts that have been devastating African countries are reflections of economic, social and political needs that have suffered neglect for too long. In many of these countries access to power and resources is highly uneven and the opportunities for seeking redress through a peaceful political process minimal. In such circumstances, arms appear as the only solution. Therefore, unless the root causes of poverty, inequality and injustice are tackled, the chances of durable peace must remain fragile.

Food Security

The capacity of a society to feed itself may be taken as the most elementary test of its viability. It is in this sense that food security, taken to mean "access to a sufficient and continuous food source at all times"31 assumes special importance. The concept embraces two distinct issues: the availability of food on the one hand, and the ability to acquire it, on the other. This distinction is important because failure to grasp it causes a lot of confusion in understanding, and hence in seeking a solution to the food crisis. In certain cases there just may not be enough food to go around, whether through local production, stocks or imports. In other cases, food may be available locally or internationally, but the capacity to buy it may be wanting (on account of low or reduced incomes, price rises, or unavailability of credit). In fact, in many cases ability to buy may be a greater determinant of food security than availability.

It is also useful to distinguish between chronic and transitory food insecurity. The former refers to "continuous inadequate access to food" while the latter "is concerned with fluctuations in household income, food consumption, and in the availability of food at the national and global level".32

The chronic dimension focuses on the problem of nations and households which lack the means either to purchase or produce sufficient quantities of food. The transitory dimension treats the problem of intermittent disruptions in access to sufficient amounts of food, by nations and households as a consequence of the volatility of the food prices which in turn are a consequence of protective policies in food exporting and importing countries.33

At its severest, transitory food insecurity assumes the form of famines, death and disease on a large scale. It should be added that crop failures are not the only cause of famines, other factors being wars, natural calamities, etc.

It is Africa's tragedy that it has abundantly experienced both chronic and transitory food insecurity, including recurrent famines. Nor are these new phenomena since they can be dated to at least the 1980s. Eicher, writing in 1982, noted that "Africa's current food crisis is long term in nature and it has been building up for two decades".34This is borne out by the statistics on per capita food production. Thus, the continent's per capita food production, which fell by 7 per cent during the 1960s, declined by 15 per cent during the 1970s".35Even more revealing is that Africa was the only continent in which per capita food production declined during those two decades.

And the situation has grown worse since then. Thus, "no less than 34 African countries have experienced a decline in per capita food production since 1986".36 And more recent information reveals that not only per capita but even total agricultural production declined in 1992; by 1.5 per cent for the continent as a whole and by 7.7 per cent for Eastern and Southern Africa. In the latter region, the food emergency ... was further exacerbated by war, refugee movements and the underlying economic and environmental fragility of the countries and communities affected".37 In fact, only in Central and Western Africa did agricultural production grow. Cereal production in the continent fell by 12 per cent.38

But, as noted above, the problem is not only one of declining per capita food production, but also of the ability to acquire it. It is worth noting in this connection that "even in areas where per capita food production is not declining the poor do not have the income or resources to cope with hunger and malnutrition".39 And the famines that have recurrently devastated the continent in recent years are too well-known to require recounting in any detail.

Africa is therefore highly food-insecure. The most extreme manifestation of this insecurity has been death by starvation. According to ECA, more than 40 million people faced the threat of famine in 1992. 40 Short of that there has been malnutrition of a massive scale, taking its toll especially on children. Thus, by 1983-85 the average calorie availability per capita per day in Africa had fallen below the level achieved in 1969-71".41 And "Africa was the only continent to experience a fall in dietary energy supply during the 1980s".42 Food insecurity has also meant steadily growing dependence on food aid and imports. It has been estimated that about 50 per cent of Africa's food import needs are covered by food aid. 43 Africa's food aid requirements increased considerably since the beginning of the 1990s. Food aid requirements for Eastern and Southern Africa will increase in 1993/94 by 20 per cent from 1992/93 level. FAO estimates that 22 million people will need food emergency aid in 1994 as 15 countries face exceptional food emergencies.44

The causes of the crisis are several and interlocking. An important factor has been the fast rate of growth of population in conjunction with serious environmental degradation. Other factors have been dependence on rain-fed agriculture and other forms of technological backwardness; inadequate infrastructure; and civil conflict and political instability. Perhaps most significant has been a negative policy framework which has tended to neglect agriculture, as demonstrated by unfavourable resource allocation and undermining producer incentives. In the words of one report, "the neglect of agriculture was probably the single most serious policy mistake of the last three decades in Africa".45

Therefore, a reconsideration of such neglect must be taken as the starting point of any efforts to solve Africa's food insecurity problem. In a number of countries such a reconsideration has already begun. However, matters have not been made easy by the focus given by SAPs to export crops as opposed to food crops. In addition, given the structural nature of some of the problems, it must be recognised that not all of them are amenable to policy manipulation. But, if no meaningful progress is made in reducing Africa's food insecurity substantially, an important component of human security, and hence of human development, will be seriously compromised.

Health and Human Security

The issue of food is intimately linked with that of health, especially in a continent which is "the only region in the world where the nutrition situation has not improved during the last 25 years".46 But the problem of health in Africa transcends issues of nutrition, and despite some progress the challenges are seriously daunting. The facts are staggering. It is estimated that two out of three Africans suffer from one or more debilitating disease. Endemic diseases such as malaria, sleeping sickness, tuberculosis, meningitis and cholera have been on the increase in recent years. Even worse, they have reappeared in some zones from which they had been eliminated. It is especially revealing, for instance, that of the 110 million cases of malaria occurring world-wide, 80 per cent are to be found in Sub-Saharan Africa. 47 As many as one million persons die every year from this disease, and about 140 million are affected by bilharzia. 48 As is usually the case, those most affected by this situation are children.

Africa is still the only region of the world where the absolute numbers of all deaths and deaths of children under five years of age are projected to continue to increase into the next century.49

Although African children represent little more than 10 per cent of the world's children, they account for one-third of child deaths. 50 Such graphic statistics can be reproduced at length to dramatise the precarious health situation in Africa. But of all the health challenges faced by the region, none is as formidable as the scourge of HIV/AIDS. It has been estimated that between 10 and 12 million persons in the region are affected by the virus, resulting in two million cases to date and that if this trend continues, the figure will rise to 30-40 million by the end of the century. 51 In this case also, it is children and young people that are most adversely affected. According to the World Health Organisation,

young girls are especially vulnerable to HIV transmission in an increasing number of African countries due to a lowering of mean age of first sexual intercourse and sexual exploitation of young girls. Babies born to women infected with HIV have a 20 per cent-40 per cent risk of contracting the virus from their mothers. 52

Again according to WHO, in East and Central Africa, of 10 people with AIDS, one is a child under five.

By 1992, roughly one million African children will have been born with HIV infection and the 600,000 of them developing AIDS-related illnesses will most likely die before they reach the age of 5. Adult deaths from AIDS could also produce between 5-10 million orphans by the year 2000. 53

What makes the picture even more gloomy is that in many African countries expenditures on health have either stagnated or declined in per capita terms. And given the magnitude of the problem, it is unrealistic to expect that international assistance will make a significant dent. The security of Africans on the health front is therefore very much in jeopardy.

Environmental Security

At a global level, concern with the environment has reached such a high level that one would be hard put to find new projects that are not minutely scrutinised for their environmental implications. The notion of sustainable development, defined as "meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the needs of future generations", is an important development in this regard. However, interpreted too narrowly, it may give additional weight to the widely held contention that economic growth always takes place at the expense of the environment and that therefore there is need to sacrifice the latter in order to attain the former.

But as HDR93 points out and as the World Bank's World Development Report 1992 abundantly demonstrates, this is a false dichotomy that is fraught with significant negative implications. This is because the relationship between economic growth and the environment is a two-way one. Economic growth does have an impact on the environment, but not always in a negative manner. While growth may and often does involve irresponsible exploitation of natural resources and damage to the environment, there are also cases (e.g., poverty reduction) in which growth yields substantial environmental benefits. At the same time, environmental problems can also undermine development, partly because "environmental quality water that is safe and plentiful and air that is healthy is itself part of the improvement in welfare that development attempts to bring", and partly because "environmental damage can undermine future productivity".54 Therefore, the two-way linkage between economic growth and the environment should not be lost sight of.

These considerations are relevant to all countries, but environmental problems are not uniform across the board. In Africa, the most pressing concerns are soil erosion and degradation, deforestation and desertification, in addition to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation, indoor smoke from cooking fire and outward smoke from coal burning. 55 It is worth noting that these are problems that are largely generated by mass poverty.

Africa is an environmentally insecure continent. In the first place, its ecology is highly fragile. Of Sub-Saharan Africa it has been said that its environment is easily damaged. "Eighty percent of the soils are fragile, 47 percent of the land is too dry to support rain fed agriculture, and average rainfall varies from year to year by an enormous 30 to 40 percent",56 and this fragile ecology has been subject to considerable degradation in the form of soil erosion, deforestation and desertification, largely on account of mounting population pressure forcing people and their livestock to exploit marginal lands. According to one estimate, "at current trends, soil erosion could lower agricultural output in Africa by 25 per cent over the 1975-2000 period".57

The degradation of the soil is exacerbated by massive deforestation, itself caused by the over-exploitation of forests and woodlands both for agriculture and timber exploitation.

These are being lost at the alarming rate of over 5 million hectares annually ... Over 50 per cent of the original forest cover in some countries has already disappeared in the last fifteen years, and the situation is reaching critical proportions in others, so much so that the overall tree cover in Africa is now less than 30 per cent. 58

The loss of tropical forests is especially pronounced in West Africa, which accounts for more than half of the deforestation that is taking place in the continent. Other countries where deforestation has assumed serious proportions are Guinea, Cameroon, Zaire, Kenya, Ethiopia and Madagascar (which is reported to have lost 90 per cent of its original forest cover and together with it half the original endemic species). 59 Ethiopia, 40 per cent of whose land area was reported to have been under forest at the beginning of this century, now has only about 3 per cent of forest cover. The alarming rate of deforestation has been further aggravated by the crisis of household energy. "Four-fifths of Africans depend on woodfuels but well over 50 million face acute shortages, and the number is growing rapidly".60 According to a more alarming estimate, 40 per cent of the African population already faces acute energy scarcity and insecurity. 61

The problem of desertification is no less severe. With two-thirds of the African landmass consisting of drylands, by the early 1980s Africa accounted for 37 per cent of the world's drylands. And the rate of desertification appears to be accelerating, with the worst affected areas being the Sahara, Kalahari and Namib deserts, and with the problem touching much of North, West and Southwest Africa, and extending east to Uganda, Kenya and Somalia. 62 These phenomena have often translated into severe droughts, especially in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa, and more recently in Eastern and Southern Africa. Thus, the extended drought which hit Eastern and Southern Africa in 1992 cut its cereal output by half and made millions dependent on food aid. Severe and prolonged droughts have in turn led to a considerable reduction of Africa's water resources, not sparing even the Congo-Zaire basin, "which receives about 50 per cent of the total water supplied to the entire continent".63 This, coupled with rapid population growth and urbanisation, has resulted in acute chronic and seasonal water shortages in most African countries.

The situation is therefore clearly alarming. But it is encouraging that awareness of the problem has been growing. Apart from efforts being made by individual countries, there have also been some sub-regional and regional initiatives. Notable examples of the former are the Permanent State Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) and the Intergovernmental Authority for Drought and Development (IGADD) in Eastern Africa. Of the regional initiatives, note should be taken of the African Common Position on Environment and Development which was prepared in 1991 in connection with preparations for the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED). A more recent initiative is an African proposal containing strategies for the implementation of UNCED's Agenda 21 in Africa. 64 This proposal has identified seven priority areas of action: managing demographic change and population pressures; achieving food self-sufficiency and food security; ensuring efficient and equitable use of water resources; securing greater energy self-sufficiency; optimising environmentally clean industrial production; management of species and ecosystems; and preventing and reversing desertification. For each issue it has identified problem areas, development goals, a program of action, and resource implications.

But designing strategies is not the same thing as implementing them. Moreover, given the magnitude of the problem and the modest efforts being made to combat it here is no ground for much optimism. For instance, "deforestation is continuing at such a pace that on average, only 9 trees are planted for every 100 that are cut down. In some countries fuelwood supplies will soon be exhausted unless massive replanting is undertaken".65 Also, where massive soil degradation has taken place, reclamation efforts require enormous resources and much time to bear fruit. And the inexorable march of desertification seems irreversible.

In addition, most environment-related measures tend to concentrate on individual projects, without taking due account of linkages between projects and sectors. This approach "tends to address the symptoms, rather than the root causes, of environmental problems".66 There is therefore a compelling need to adopt a wider perspective. This is an area in which there is a critical need for accumulating information, introducing new methods of resource exploitation, and developing sensitivity to environmental concerns. It is also an area which offers a lot of opportunity for regional co-operation. Even with the most ardent commitment, however, Africa will for the foreseeable future continue to face serious problems of environmental security.
 

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29. Economic Commission for Africa, Report on the African Social Situation in 1993, Addis Ababa, 1993, p. 38.

30. See Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, United Nations, New York.

31. Shlomo Reutlinger, Policy Options for Food Security, the World Bank, 1984.

32. Ibid., p. 2.

33. Ibid., p. 3.

34. Carl K. Eicher, "Facing up to Africa's Crisis", Foreign Affairs, 1982, p. 151.

35. African Development Bank, Economic Commission for Africa and Organization of African Unity, The African Food Crisis and the Role of the African Development Bank in Tackling the Problem, 1984, p. 2.

36. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

37. Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Report on Africa 1993, Addis Ababa, 1993, p. 13.

38. Ibid., p. 2.

39. See Amartya Sen, Public Action to Remedy Hunger, The Hunger Project, 1990 and Carl K. Eicher, "Facing up to Africa's Crisis", op. cit., p. 151.

40. ECA, Economic Report on Africa 1993, op. cit., p. 151.

41. UNICEF, Africa Recovery in the 1990s: From Stagnation and Adjustment to Human Development, Florence, Italy, 1992, p. 4.

42. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

43. Nana-Sinkam, S.C. "Food Security of Food Self-sufficiency: Why Should Africa Increase its Food Production?", Food and Agriculture in Africa. Staff Papers, no. 2, ECA/FAO Agriculture Division, Addis Ababa, 1992, p. 5.

44. See Sadig Rasheed, Development's Last Frontier: What Prospects? Four Essays on African Development, Nairobi: ICIPE Science Press, 1994, pp. 11-12.

45. UNICEF, Africa's Recovery in the 1990s: From Stagnation and Adjustment to Human Development, op. cit., p. 41.

46. Organization of African Unity and UNICEF, Africa's Children, Africa's Future: Background Sectoral Papers, New York, 1992, p. 35.

47. ECA, Report on the African Social Situation, op. cit., p. 5.

48. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

49. ECA, Economic Report on Africa 1993, op. cit., p. 37.

50. Organization of African Unity and UNICEF, Africa's Children, Africa's Future: Human Investment Priorities for the 1990s, New York, 1992, p. 1.

51. ECA, Report on the African Social Situation in 1993, op. cit., p. 5.

52. OAU/UNICEF, Africa's Children, Africa's Future: Background Sectoral Papers, op. cit., p. 14.

53. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

54. World Bank, World Development Report 1991, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991, p. 1.

55. World Bank, World Development Report 1992, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 2.

56. World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, Washington, D.C., 1989, p. 44.

57. Ibid.

58. Economic Commission for Africa, Economic Report on Africa 1992, Addis Ababa, 1992, p. 11.

59. Economic Commission for Africa, African Strategies for the Implementation of UNCED Agenda 21: A Proposal, mimeo, Addis Ababa, 1993, p. 51.

60. World Bank, Sub-Saharan Africa: From Crisis to Sustainable Growth, op. cit., p.

61. ECA, African Strategies for the Implementation of UNCED Agenda 21: A Proposal, op. cit., p. 36.

62. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

63. ECA, African Strategies for the Implementation of UNCED Agenda 21: A Proposal, op. cit., p. 20.

64. Ibid.

65. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

66. Africa Recovery, Fact Sheet, August 1991, op. cit.

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