Govt needs to be proactive in food matters
Jul 19, 2009
RECENTLY I was in Kachonga, Butaleja district with a team from World Vision Korea. Our trip took us to a family suffering from severe food shortage. The mother was cradling her youngest child, and the sight of this little boy wrenched my heart. <br>
By Sylvia Nabanoba
RECENTLY I was in Kachonga, Butaleja district with a team from World Vision Korea. Our trip took us to a family suffering from severe food shortage. The mother was cradling her youngest child, and the sight of this little boy wrenched my heart.
I could not bring myself to take a picture of him or even ask for his name. The best I could do was ask about his age, just to help me understand why he was so small. The mother said he was born last November, but he looked like he was only two months old. She added that the family eats once a day. The boy’s mother is not feeding well, and does not have breastmilk for him.
Today, the media is inundated with stories about people dying of hunger in Teso and northern Uganda, and children are feeling the brunt most. They are progressively getting malnourished. Every human being has a right to food, which right is realised when each man, woman and child in the community have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food.
This right is a binding obligation that is recognised in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Uganda’s 1995 Constitution also recognises the population’s right to food. Article 22 on food security and nutrition obliges the state to, among other things, establish national food reserves. This is what preparedness means, and it is what the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness needs to do. Disaster preparedness and public relations (PR) fall in different realms, but can be similar in strategy.
In PR, it is critical to have a crisis management plan, which is a sign of being proactive. Being proactive means that you try and anticipate what could go wrong and then get an emergency plan on how to deal with each of these anticipated disasters.
For the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness, being proactive would involve taking heed of what comes from the early warning systems and designing plans aligned to mitigating or preventing imminent disasters from happening.
Apart from national food reserves, the Government can also think about irrigation.
The writer is the senior communications officer of World Vision Uganda
RECENTLY I was in Kachonga, Butaleja district with a team from World Vision Korea. Our trip took us to a family suffering from severe food shortage. The mother was cradling her youngest child, and the sight of this little boy wrenched my heart.
I could not bring myself to take a picture of him or even ask for his name. The best I could do was ask about his age, just to help me understand why he was so small. The mother said he was born last November, but he looked like he was only two months old. She added that the family eats once a day. The boy’s mother is not feeding well, and does not have breastmilk for him.
Today, the media is inundated with stories about people dying of hunger in Teso and northern Uganda, and children are feeling the brunt most. They are progressively getting malnourished. Every human being has a right to food, which right is realised when each man, woman and child in the community have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food.
This right is a binding obligation that is recognised in the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.
Uganda’s 1995 Constitution also recognises the population’s right to food. Article 22 on food security and nutrition obliges the state to, among other things, establish national food reserves. This is what preparedness means, and it is what the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness needs to do. Disaster preparedness and public relations (PR) fall in different realms, but can be similar in strategy.
In PR, it is critical to have a crisis management plan, which is a sign of being proactive. Being proactive means that you try and anticipate what could go wrong and then get an emergency plan on how to deal with each of these anticipated disasters.
For the Ministry of Disaster Preparedness, being proactive would involve taking heed of what comes from the early warning systems and designing plans aligned to mitigating or preventing imminent disasters from happening.
Apart from national food reserves, the Government can also think about irrigation.
The writer is the senior communications officer of World Vision Uganda