The Political Economy Approach and Human Rights

This approach emphasizes on the political economy and human rights, and the emerging complexities of contemporary famines⁴⁷. This approach attributes famine occurrence, whatever the economic or natural shocks, to governments’ incompetence and lack of commitment at best, or to a deliberate action or inaction at worst. The positions of writers, ranging from moderate to radical, are subsumed under the political explanation of famines (Fassil, 2005:57).

Some writers hold the ideas that despite excess food somewhere in the world, famines occur in other parts of the globe due to denial of access to food resulting from lack of political commitment. Moreover, despite much rhetoric for ensuring food security, donor nations and

47 War, conflict, political instability and the concomitant results (e.g., displacement, death), and their interaction with climatic extreme events gave rise to the idea of complex emergences, ones where the root causes of vulnerability lie in a variety of relational exchanges (Alexander, 1997 cited in Bankoff, 2003). The emphasis of the ‘idea of complex emergences’ is the interconnectedness of factors that lie behind the disaster (famine) (Bankoff, 2003:24).

international organizations have channelled very limited resources for food security efforts in particular, and for development in general. A case in point is the steadily decline in the flow of financial aid into Africa (Cheru, 1989; Adedeji, 1991; Mengisteab and Logan, 1995 quoted in Blaikie et al., 2004:75-76).

Other writers argue that donors also set preconditions which negatively affect the policies of receipt countries. Such precognitions compounded with globalization (world economic system) and structural adjustment policies have undermined households’ food security and affected national food production (Devereux, 2002:9; Blaikie et al., 2004:76).

Many writers also attributed famine to political conflicts which take different forms like civil strife, ethnic conflicts, border wars, etc. These conflicts, both historically and currently, are known for their adverse impacts on systems of food production and distribution. Of 21 famines occurred since 1970, 15 had war as a causal trigger, either alone or in combination with drought (von Braun, et al., 1998:3,176)

Some authors also considered famines as consequences of government action or inaction.

They ascribe the responsibility for famine causation primarily to the political regime.

Historical famines which were attributed mainly to failure of then political regimes of the respective countries included the Soviet famines of 1921 and 1932/33; China’s Great Leap Forward famine; the 1990-91 famine in Sudan (Devereux, 2000; 2002); the 1973-74 and 1984-85 Ethiopian famines (Devereux, 2002; Fassil, 2005:57; Mesfin, 1986). These examples indicate that even in earlier times, famines always had political dimensions⁴⁸.

Still some writers even went to the extent of considering the occurrence of famine as violation of the right to food, crime against humanity and an instrument of mass murder (Macus, 2003;

de Waal, 1989 cited in Fassil, 2005; Devereux, 2000:26; Edkins, 2002:17). In this case Edkins took extreme radical position with regard famine causation. Edkins stated his argument in the following terms:

Any definition of famine that sees it as failure of some sort is missing the point.

Whether famine is seen as failure of food supply, a breakdown in food distribution system, a multi-faceted livelihood crisis, the outcome is the same. These concepts blind us to the fact that famines, and the deaths, migrations or impoverishments that they produce, are enormously beneficial to the perpetrators: they are a success not a failure, a normal output of the current economic and political system, not an aberration (Edkins, 2002:17).

Edkin’s argument is that “allocating responsibility to rulers or those groups in power for an inadequate response is merely a first stage”. He further contends that it is important to avoid conclusion that “democracy prevents famine” and “framing anti-famine contracts as simple measures against governments that fail to respond quickly enough to emergency crises”. Then Edkins concluded that,

…. ‘famines occur because they are made to happen’. There is a need for a new language that talks of mass starvations, which, like mass killings, are regarded as a

48 Early 20^th century famines in China and Soviet Union and recent Korean famine could be described as “state failure famine” (Devereux, 2002:25-26).

crime against humanity…. […famines…] are not caused by abstractions - climate, food supply, entitlement decline, war - they are brought about through the acts or omissions of people or groups of people. These people are responsible for famine and mass starvation - they should be held accountable (Edkins, 2002:15, 17).

Devereux also shares Edkins’ notion with regard to famine causation. He stated that “famines occur because they are not prevented: they are allowed to happen. Most food crises have a long gestation period, not days or weeks, but months or years, so failure of public action must be incorporated in the causal analysis of all famines” (Devereux, 2000:27).

A very recent view related to the above famine explanations is absence of democratic government and free press. This view is provided by Sen (1999) and he argues that institutions like democracy and free press play a role in preventing famines through influencing government to make serious efforts to prevent famines.

Despite all endeavours in the past half of the century for famine theorizing, there is not one single agreed upon theory on famine explanations. The existing famine theories/explanations focus on one or a couple of casual factors (natural, or economic, or social, or political). None of them can claim superiority over the other. In relation to this Blaikie et al., (2004:147) noted that “no single theory is dominant; each may have certain advantages over the others”, and the

“choice of explanations is governed by ideological and discipline based preconditions”.

Devereux (2000:24) stated that two strands are currently competing for ‘paradigm dominance’. The first strand, which is “dominated by economists, views famine as a natural disaster or economic crisis resulting from failures of government policy, early warning, markets, or relief interventions”, and the second which is “dominated by political scientists and human right activists, views famine as a political pathology which should be analyzed in terms of local power struggle, state repression of afflicted population groups, and a refusal by international humanitarian communities to enforce the fundamental human right to food”

(Devereux, 2000: 24).

Devereux further argues that most works of the economists (Ravillion 1996; Sen, 1981; von Braun et al., 1998) have emphasized natural and economic factors excluding political issues and violation of human rights in their famine explanation. Having reviewed the explanatory power of demographic, economic and political theories, Devereux (2000:2) suggested that each of these theories “embodies the reductionist perspective of disciplinary specialization, and tends to look for ‘technocratic’ and ‘technological’ solutions to end famines”. But according to Devereux, despite enhanced technologies and institutional capacity, various famines are allowed to occur due to lack of ‘political will’ where the main factors lie.

Therefore, Devereux proposed a ‘taxonomic approach’ to famine analysis as reconciliation of recent debates on famine causation: “not to deny the complex interactions between multiple contributing factors, but recognizing that different elements play dominant roles in different context” (Devereux, 2000:26). Yet the same author noted a criticism against this approach too, stating that identification of a dominant explanatory variable implies still reverting to the reductionism of mono-causal theories and this blurs important distinctions between triggers and structural vulnerabilities which are both needed for holistic analysis (Devereux, 2000). In this case Devereux further suggests an “alternative approach (empiricist rather than

theoretical) which would be to examine each famine individually in terms of […] - economic, natural, political, and social […] - and to assign causality to a proximate trigger in one category exacerbated by structural vulnerabilities in one or more of the four categories”

(Devereux, 2000:26). Devereux’s proposal implies the need for empirical research and contextual analysis of contributing factors for a better understanding of famine causation.

2.4.5 Summary

The above review of literature shows that the ‘naturalness’ of disasters has been refuted by various researchers through empirical researches on vulnerability that began since the 1970s.

Currently there is a general consensus that disasters are outcomes of interplay between environmental factors/processes and social systems. In other words, disasters are viewed as the intersection of hazard events and vulnerable human systems. Thus, there seems to be no substantive divergence over what constitutes the definitional nature of disaster.

The current literature reveals the complexity of famine and the dynamic nature of social and economic processes that contribute to vulnerability to specific famine. Nowadays the trend in famine explanation is to view famine first as an outcome of interaction of multiple causal factors, of which a category of factors may play significant roles in creating vulnerability in specific context. The review of famine theories also suggests that an improved understanding of specific famines needs to consider politics which are overlooked by traditional famine explanations/theories (i.e. demographic, social and economic). With regard to famine theorization Blaikie et al., (2004) also noted as follows:

…the task of building theories of famine is particularly difficult because of the complexity of each specific case. […] there is always a series of contextual events peculiar to each famine… […] therefore narrative of each event will be important element in the explanation of particular famines, and it is always advisable to maintain a flexible analytical approach (Blaikie et al., 2004:148).

As stated earlier, during the 1970s and especially the 1980s the relationship between human actions and the effects of disasters - the socio-economic dimensions of vulnerability - was increasingly well documented and argued. From the late 1980s many conceptual frameworks were developed to provide frameworks for understanding vulnerability to disasters. The perspective of social vulnerability has been gradually an important conceptual tool in disaster research. In the late 1980s and early 1990s there emerged important frameworks or models to understand vulnerability to various disasters and livelihood chocks. In the following some important frameworks of disaster risk and vulnerability are briefly described.