AICF focuses on action against hunger

By Florence Raynal

The French association for international action against hunger (Action Internationale Conter la Faim or AICF), which is apolitical and non-denominational, is celebrating 15 years of intense fighting against what it considers as the greatest scourge today: hunger in the world. Its purpose is to defend the right to life, quickly and lastingly.

PARIS: "Wells have to be dug today to quench tomorrow's thirst", a proverb says.

Malnutrition is a calamity from which 800 million people in the world suffer. Yet, over the last thirty years, the world mass of food available has increased by more than 20 percent per inhabitant. Fat cows for some and lean kine for others. Africa is the main country to suffer from this injustice and the 500 million or so people living south of the Sahara are, today, ten times poorer than the rest of the world. Future prospects, as foreseen by the experts are barely more cheerful. Towards the year 2,010, 300 million Africans (compared with 180 million at present) will suffer from hunger and malnutrition.

Refusing this certain death, the French association for international action against hunger (Action Internationale contre la Faim or AICF) devotes three quarters of its interventions to that continent.

"Drought does not suddenly strike a region and where we can act in time, we prevent the dramatic loss of lives, those thousands of deaths by starvation that hit the headlines as if a sudden inevitable calamity had once again hit Africa," explains Sylvie Brunel, the AICF's scientific director. Moreover, "as soon as peace returns to a country and as soon as real development policies are applied, the situation improves very quickly". Hence the AICF gives priority to on the spot action and develops programs in four areas: nutrition, health, water and agriculture.

The prime objective is not to allow hunger to gain ground. After an exploratory mission to identify the nutritional, medical and water needs of the population, an emergency program is implemented by teams of volunteers consisting of nurses, doctors, agronomists, hydraulics specialists and logistic experts. The main action taken consists of feeding and caring for the people and giving them access to water. Acute malnutrition has to be fought by intensive re-nutrition. Unhealthy eating habits have to be corrected. Agriculture has to be got off the ground again through the distribution of seeds and tools to prevent intermediary famine (following the loss of a year's crops). Vaccination programs have to be set up and diseases eradicated -- in Cambodia malaria is decimating the people. A supply of drinking water has to be provided and waste water and sewage evacuated, purified and rehabilitated. It is a long list.

In Haiti, for instance, volunteers work in the poorest shanty- towns and in the countryside to prevent the rural exodus. The prevention of cholera, the digging of wells, the installation of water-distribution and sanitation networks, the creation and provision of health care and nutrition centers and the distribution of food products concern more than 100,000 people there. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, 200,000 refugees were supplied with the basic essentials. In Georgia, 60,000 hot meals were served every month. In 1993, hundreds of tonnes of rations and thousands of doses of vaccines were delivered and distributed, numerous health care centers were equipped, medical infrastructures were built and dozens of refugee camps were supplied with water.

Once the emergency has been dealt with, it is systematically backed up by development operations (medical and health training, agricultural programs, etc.) so as to make the effects permanent. It is not enough just to deal with emergency. The local inhabitants have to return to normal living conditions, create their future for themselves and fully take charge of the development programs. So their training is essential for the AICF which hands down its skills to local workers whom the association remunerates.

From Sierra Leone to Somalia, from Mozambique to Armenia and from Haiti to Myanmar (Burma), the AICF acts in the sensitive regions of 19 countries. Its areas of intervention change as it has to be able to adapt to needs and anticipate dramas. "Being efficient also means acting in advance, foreseeing what could happen, and often accepting obscure battles, without any glory, against disease and the disappearance of rains which threaten villages", president Jose Bidegain points out.

Some 200 volunteers in the field, 3,000 local employees and 32 permanent staff members in Paris make sure that some fifty programs are carried out successfully. Today, contributions by public institutions (the European Union, UNCR, UNICEF, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, etc.), donations by more than 165,000 people and sponsorship by firms (Elf is backing a program in Angola, and Lyonnaise des Eaux-Dumez in Sarajevo, and Nestle is supplying powdered milk to nutrition centers) finance the action of the AICF (170 million francs, or more than US$30 million, scheduled for 1994). In 1993, 83.2 percent of the funds gathered were used for action in the field.

The AICF fully intends to continue to develop in order to be able to fight where hunger is rife. It does not lay down its arms in spite of the conflicts that rage in the world and the discouragement that could result from them. It recently launched a campaign to make people aware of the problems. The poster shows the smile and sparkling eyes of Leila, a girl. On the left, one can see her emaciated face when she first arrived at the re-nutrition center. On the right, four months later, her face glows with health, youth and life. "Leila, 100 francs later", the caption reads. It is crude, but effective.

-- AFI