The rugged topography and harsh climate of Eritrea, combined with the devastation caused by war with Ethiopia, has led to economic hardship and food insecurity for more than two million people in this small country in the Horn of Africa.
The border demarcation which is part of a comprehensive peace agreement signed in June 2000 has stalled, hampering the socio-economic development as significant human and economic resources are being diverted to mobilisation and militarisation.
The economic progress Eritrea experienced after its de facto independence in 1991 was reversed by the 1998-2000 border war aggravated by consecutive years of drought/crop failure beginning in 2000. As a result, foreign exchange resources have been depleted, constraining the country’s capacity to import basic food items, the prices of which are steadily increasing in the retail market.
War has left parts of the countryside riddled with land mines and some grain producing areas of the western lowlands can no longer be cultivated. Up to 70,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs), have been living in makeshift camps for over five years. Only recently the Government, with support from the international community, has launched a resettlement campaign to move these IDPs back to their places of origin, where they will continue to receive support until they are able to re-establish their livelihoods. An estimated 10,000 IDPs still remain to be resettled.
The 2003 Livelihood Systems Measurement Survey (LSMS) found 66 percent of the population living below the poverty line, with rates as high as 80 percent in rural areas. As a result of the war, up to 40 percent of households are female-headed and thus especially vulnerable to food insecurity.
WFP was present in Eritrea before its independence in 1993; however, closed its offices in 1996 after the seizure of its food stocks. It reopened its offices in 1998 at the beginning of the border war with Ethiopia; Refugee (returnee and expellee) populations and IDPs were provided with general food rations.
Following the signature of the Algiers peace agreement in 2000, more recovery-oriented activities were introduced while support displaced persons continued. WFP expanded the scope of its operations to include farming populations suffering from partial or complete crop failure, following the drought that struck the Horn of Africa between 2000 and 2004.
In June 2005, following a request of the Government of Eritrea, the WFP Executive Board approved Protracted Relief and Recovery Operation (PRRO) 10192.1 which targeted up to 1.26 million people with up to 465,000 metric tons of food over a period of 2 years. It was intended to support beneficiaries who had received food aid through previous operations.
The majority of this food aid was earmarked for free food distributions, the remainder was earmarked for school feeding, adult literacy activities and health sector activities (therapeutic/supplementary feeding/HIV-AIDS). With favourable rains in terms of quantity and distribution in 2005, and the prospects of a good harvest the Government announced that Eritrea would reach a state of food security.
In order to secure this and concerned about food-aid dependency, the Government announced in September 2005 a policy shift away from free food distributions in favor of food-for-work. Pending its proposed shift to food-for-work as opposed to free food hand-outs, the Government suspended general feeding operations in September 2005 except for recently resettled IDPs and IDPs in camps. In April 2006 after WFP attempted to amend its work plan to accommodate the change in policy, the Government announced a new policy involving exclusively cash-for-work (participants would be paid a salary in cash for their work to be financed through food-aid monetization).
It remains unclear precisely how this cash-for-work scheme would operate in practice; nor is it clear how those unable to work and in need of continued direct food assistance such as malnourished children, pregnant/nursing mothers, primary school children and people affected with HIV/AIDS will be supported under this new policy. WFP and its food aid partners have expressed their flexibility and readiness to enter into a dialogue on how best to support the Government in its aim of achieving food security and self sufficiency.
WFP has been actively involved in the establishment of a National Nutrition Surveillance System within Eritrea’s Ministry of Health. Every six months, this Ministry, with support from NGOs and UN agencies, organizes nutrition surveys in all six regions of the country. Following the non-issuance of work permits, imposition of travel restrictions, and the curtailing of project activities of key partners, the future of this important monitoring tool is uncertain.
