Report Development, food aid and the needs of children

Children are humanity's investment in the future. Their protection and development is an urgent and vital challenge of our time. Children are the poorest and most dependent and vulnerable section of human society. Their well-being is determined by their economic and social environment. In this context, women have especially significant roles. The recent economic recession, one of the worst the world has endured, has reversed the progress achieved for children in the previous three decades. Over 15 million children under five die each year. Malnutrition is associated with over half the deaths of children between six months and five years of age in developing countries.

A study prepared for UNICEF on the ' impac t of world recess ion on children q has demonstrated how the impact of the recent recession, and the present adjustment process resulting from it, have fallen disproportionately and unnecessarily on the poor and their children. The declines in income and cuts in public expenditures have had an especially heavy, discrimina- tory impact on children.

A particularly dangerous result of the rapid and radical economic adjust- ment measures thrust upon develop- ing countries by external and internal pressures has been to force them to concentrate on very short-term ac- tions. In economic terms, provision for children is a long-run investment to which a country struggling for survival finds it difficult to assign proper priority. The pressures to sacri- fice long-term investment in human capital are strengthened by the fact that the negative effects on child development remain invisible in the absence of appropriate data, monitor- ing and evaluation, and will only be fully felt at some time in the future. Furthermore, the most vulnerable groups are least able to make their interests and needs felt in domestic and in te rna t iona l discussions on adjustment and economic strategies. At present, such discussions focus primarily on obtaining a financial seal of approval for borrowing purposes. They should also take into account the effects of economic adjustment on the human resources of a country.

It should be emphasized, however, that first and foremost it is the people and governments in Third World countries whose efforts will most signi- ficantly influence the well-being of children. International cooperation should be designed and delivered in ways that support those efforts and promote self-reliance. Fundamentally, this implies providing assistance to genera te and s t imula te demand through increasing employment and incomes among the poor, and to help meet that demand in a transition period rather than only embarking on welfare-oriented and palliative aid programmes. It also involves attacking the recurrent emergency problems of developing countries not only with ad hoc year-by-year, relief assistance but, to the greatest extent possible, with well-conceived development aid which supports action to remove the causes of recurrent emergencies, leading to sustained growth with equity and to the well-being of children.

Aid should, therefore, be provided in a balanced way. It should combine humanitarian concerns with support for economic progress. In that way, international cooperation will help provide the environment in which measures to improve children's well- being can be most effective and most sustainable.

A workshop was held by UNICEF and the World Food Programme (WFP) in November 1985 on 'Food aid and the well-being of children in the developing world'. 2 Four main

points of emphasis emerged from the workshop. These points are outlined below.

Employment , income and self- reliance: the problems of children largely result from poverty and under- development. Their well-being is inex- tricably linked to the well-being of the family, community and nation. Mea- sures designed to address the concerns of children directly are necessary. Other measures are also essential which affect the state of children indirectly, but significantly, by bene- fiting the household or community, or by supporting appropriate national policies and programmes.

Approaching children's well-being in this broader, developmental con- text involves taking measures to address the causes of poverty. Short- run and urgent, welfare-oriented programmes to contend with the im- mediate problems of children must, therefore, be coordinated with broad- ranging, medium and longer-term me- asures to increase the employment, production, incomes - and thereby the self-reliance - of the poor, leading to, and sustaining, improvements in their children's well-being. The objective should be to assist households, com- munities and nations in the developing world to take such steps.

Tile roles o f women: experience has shown that improvements in the in- come levels, education and position of women are among the most effective ways of improving the well-being of children.

Women's roles

There is an urgent need for greater recognition and appreciation of the continuum of women's productive and reproductive roles and the implica- tions of this continuum for the design of programmes directed to improving the well-being of children. There is no dichotomy between women's produc- tive and maternal-related tasks. Both tasks are performed in a continuum of labour-time allocations, upon which a physical limit is imposed. A major failing both of domestic policies and programmes and of international assistance is that in addressing women's reproductive roles in the

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social sectors and their productive roles in the economic sectors separate- ly, they dichotomize in development programming what is not dichoto- mized in everyday life. The fact that burdens placed on women lower their productivity in the economic sphere and diminish their capacity to fulfil their domestic responsibilities, includ- ing child care, needs to be addressed in an integrated manner.

There is an essential interrela- tionship between the health, nutrition and other survival and development needs of children and the availability of resources to women. Recognition of this interaction assumes even grea- ter significance in times of economic recession. Structural adjustment poli- cies have imposed greater demands on women's limited resource base, espe- cially in time and energy. It is now more appreciated that women play critical and strategic roles in increasing agricultural production and in attain- ing economic growth in developing countries, as well as for the well-being of children, and that these roles are inextricably intertwined.

Selection criteria: the approach of using socioeconomic groups, rather than categories of individuals, for the selection of beneficiaries of food aid was recommended, as it took into account the economic environment, living conditions and problems specific to each group.

Past shortcomings

More rigorous selection criteria need to be established to direct food aid programmes more effectively in view of the past shortcomings in reaching women and children in the poorest households. It was recognized that those in greatest need of assistance in agricultural and rural development programmes may not be the same as those who were nutritionally most at risk.

The fo l lowing soc ioeconomic groups were considered to be those that food aid should serve on a priority basis: small, subsistence and semi- subsistence farm households, particu- larly those unable to produce suffi- cient food for their own consumption or for market sales; households de-

pendent on livestock; the landless poor; and poor households in urban areas. Among those groups, it was recommended that households headed by women should receive priority.

lmproved project design: acceptance of the need for more interventions aimed at increasing the access of poor households to food and health services raises basic questions for the design, operation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes and projects. How can interventions be selected and designed that are relevant to the specific situa- tions of different socioeconomic groups in differing economic, social, political and health environments? In w h a t f o r m m u s t c o n c e p t u a l frameworks for the choice and design of projects be developed? And what skills and resources will be needed?

There was general agreement that the 'poverty mapping' approach, using socioeconomic indicators, should be complemented with descriptive and narrative information about the pro- cesses and events that lead to progres- sive impoverishment and deprivation. Project selection and design could then operate within the context of livelihood profiles, or descriptions of functional groups of households, in a manner that takes into account their place and status within the develop- ment process of individual countries. That approach would simultaneously improve the matching of projects with problems. It would also enable be- neficiary households to be selected more on the basis of economic need and the prospective risk of their chil- dren becoming malnourished or ill. The intention would be prevention rather than cure, such as in the case of attempts to counter the effects of seasonal variations by making in- terventions well before the lean sea- son to provide employment and in- comes, reduce indebtedness or to stock village cereal banks and seed stores.

In the broad approach to the adjust- ment process, it was essential to have a limited number of indicators of the human condition, alongside economic indicators, which would dethrone the pre-eminence of GNP as an index for aid eligibility. Such human indicators should be easy to collect and should

Report

show changes over time. They should indicate clearly to decision makers the current state of, and trends in, the human condition. For that purpose, the conventional category of severe malnutrition was considered to be probably the most important and use- ful indicator.

Food aid for development

Food aid is a broad-based resource that can be used in many ways to support activities that directly and indirectly benefit children. However, the different functional roles that food aid can play and the contributions it can make need to be better known, understood and demonstrated.

There should be great clarity and understanding of the different ways in which food aid can be used. The sequence of analysis in the program- ming of assistance should be: who are the people to be assisted and what are their problems; whether food aid is an appropriate type of assistance; and how and in what ways should it be provided.

Aid in kind supports household income. Food aid transfers income to the poor in the short term. It is self-targeting on the poor through project aid. It is much less certain whether through programme aid its benefits accrue to low-income groups. Steps should be taken to ensure that the longer-term benefits of projects supported by food aid accrue to the poor. If the additional income trans- ferred through food aid is also associ- ated with employment and income- generating activities, it can generate additional demand for food and con- tribute to the multiplier effect, leading to sustained economic growth and well-being of children in poor house- holds.

Areas identified

Four areas have been identified at a consultation following the workshop for UNICEF/WFP collaboration in which food aid has an obvious role as a development resource and where complementary inputs are often re- quired. They are projects and prog- rammes designed to:

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Report~Book reviews

(1) protect vulnerable groups during economic adjustment and govern- ment austerity measures;

(2) improve household food and heal th securi ty, in par t icular where UNICEF support to low- cost health interventions could complement WFP food aid used in various ways to expand access of poor households to food and good nutrition in a sustained way;

(3) increase women's potential con- tribution to the attainment of development goals, increase the economic returns to their labour and, at the same time, enhance their capacity to combine their productive and reproductive roles so as to further the well-being of children;

(4) in emergency situations, improve the joint responsiveness of the two organizations and increase the deve lopmenta l impact of emergency resources.

If the decade of the 1980s is one of cont inuous recession, balance-of- payment deficits, debt crises, sluggish growth and recurring emergencies, what should be the special roles and functions of food aid in such an adverse economic environment in Third World countries? The protec- tion of the vulnerab le groups of women and children would obviously acquire added importance. Direct me- asures, such as supplementary feeding projects and various forms of subsidy programmes, would be necessary in certain situations. The provision of employment and incomes through food-for-work activities to help poor households to produce, buy and ac- quire more food is also important. Food aid for price stabilization and adjustment schemes of benefit to poor producers and consumers could be of special benefit to women and children. So, too, would the potential foreign exchange and budgetary resource sav- ings (or additional revenue from coun- terpart funds) accruing from food aid and the use of such savings or revenue for the benefit of women and children. The role of food aid as a compensa- tory element to give increasingly harsh economic adjus tment measures a more human dimension would take on

a more prominent and vital signifi- cance.

A number of proposals were made by participants at the workshop for further action in using food aid for the well-being of children in the develop- ing world. Only selective reference to some of the broader recommendations is made here. (The report of the workshop contains the full list of proposals and recommendations.)

A clear commitment should be ex- pressed by donor countries and agen- cies to support those adjustment prog- rammes resulting from the recession which stressed economic adjustment with a human focus. Within these programmes, food aid, in association with other forms of assistance, could be used to preserve and advance activities for promoting the well-being of children.

A policy dialogue should be held among donor organizations and top decision makers in developing coun- tries to ensure that the interrelated issues of food, nutrition, health and poverty are fully taken into account in the economic structural adjustment process.

Greater involvement of local com- m u n i t i e s in p l a n n i n g and im- plementing food-aided projects should be encouraged, for which a literature review of past experience should be car r ied out and techniques and approaches developed to bypass or minimize the negative effects of local power structures.

A better working understanding of the functions, processes and effects of food aid is necessary in order to

extend its benefits and avoid its pit- falls, and to promote further its coor- dination with other forms of develop- ment assistance in cooperation with other aid agencies. Guidelines are required on the different uses, func- tions and effects of food aid to im- prove the current level of understand- ing about it, and to stimulate and strengthen agency cooperation.

The interdependence of children's well-being and the availability of re- sources for women was emphasized. A greater understanding of the interrela- tion between women's productive roles, and the various uses of food aid in supporting those roles, should be propagated through the dissemination of appropriate guidelines and informa- tion.

Recogn iz ing that ch i ld ren are humanity's investment in the future, a process should be set in motion of compiling an inventory of what is needed for their well-being in terms of food aid and other resources, and determining how best they could be combined and used and how they might be focused most effectively. An international programme of action should be drawn up for carrying chil- dren through the recessionary 1980s without damage to themselves and the future of their countries.

John Shaw WFP, Rome

1UNICEF, 'Impact of world recession on children', Pergamon Press, Oxford, UK, 1984. 2See the UNICEF/WFP (1986) publication on this subject, available on request from both organizations.

Book reviews Diet and ill-health THE FOOD REVOLUTION

by Verner Wheelock

Chalcombe Publications, Marlow, UK, 1986, 119 pp, £8.95

The book is primarily concerned with the dramatic change in attitudes to-

wards diet and health in the UK and other industrial countries during the last decade or so. The author, who is Head of the Food Policy Research Unit at Bradford University, UK, in a beautifully systematic and succinct presentation, brings together all the issues, evidence, arguments and policy implicat ions concerning the rela-

280 FOOD POLICY August 1987