Chris McIvor writes from Mozambique
Chris McIvor, Country Director for Save the Children UK in Mozambique, writes about our response to the flooding in the country.
Monday 28 January 2008
The real humanitarian response is only starting
The water goes up and then goes down. We breathe a sigh of relief but the next day the rains come again, threatening more floods, more displacement and more misery.
Today we learnt that there is a tropical storm off the coast of Mozambique ready to dump more water on an already saturated country. The next two months will be like this, a nervous period until the rains finally end, the cyclone season is over and the rivers return to normal. Like last year, the floods have only caused a few unfortunate deaths.
The latest figure from the government is four people drowned, which of course is four people too many, but it could have been much worse.
Clear evacuation procedures, an informed community and recent experience have helped to save lives when the rivers burst their banks a few weeks ago. "So are people safe now?" a journalist asked me a few days ago. By safe he meant far enough removed from the rivers so that they wouldn't drown. But drowning is not the only risk that people in Mozambique face when a flood of this proportion happens.
For the next few months we have several hundred thousand people to look after, scattered in some 90 reception centres across the length and breadth of central Mozambique. They are hungry and wet, have limited shelter and health care, no education for their children and little or no clean water for them to drink.
In many ways the real humanitarian operation is only starting. "People are safe from the rising water," I replied, "but it would be terrible if we saved them from drowning but could not look after them in the places to which they have fled."
Give people cash to help them recover from the flooding
The movement of families into camps continues, now estimated at around 75,000 people. Generally this is well managed and orderly and people are familiar enough now with their places of safety.
Over the coming days and weeks a principal need will be for food, since families have only managed to bring a small amount with them. Save the Children will work with the government, community leaders and other organisations to ensure that people receive what they need - a regular ration of maize meal, cooking oil and beans.
But the rain has not been a disaster for everyone. In the districts close to where the flooding has taken place it seems likely that the harvest this year will be above normal. In April when this begins to be harvested we need to be careful that any food aid programme we are running does not undermine local markets. "How can we sell what we have grown if people get free food and if they have no money to buy what we have?" is a complaint we have heard before from local farmers. Sometimes they have to export their crops to neighbouring countries in order to sell what they have produced.
So, why not give people cash or the means to buy what they need, if it is locally available? This will do two things. It will avoid undermining local production and ensure that farmers do not stop growing food because they can't sell it. Secondly, it will give people choice and dignity, some measure of control over their own lives. We shouldn't underestimate how important this is for people who have had these choices taken away when they end up as displaced refugees in their own country, dependent on the charity of others.
This is an approach that Save the Children has previously adopted in a number of emergencies, such as in Pakistan and Kenya.
There are sceptics. Some people say, "If you give them money they will only waste it." But there is enough evidence to show that this is not the case, that people will use money wisely and in the interests of their family. I remember the observation I heard last year, "If you treat us like fools we will behave like fools." Another way of saying this would be that if you give people responsibility they will behave responsibly too.
Read more from Chris on Sky news
