Improve humanitarian governance

Citizens are faced with severe challenges due to the worldwide ‘polycrisis’. 

In 2022, the World Bank projected the Covid-19 pandemic to increase extreme poverty from 8.4 percent in 2019 to 9.3 percent in 2020, trapping an additional 70 million people into extreme poverty, bringing the total to 700 million.

In 2015 world leaders adopted the Sustainable Development Goals after retiring the Millennium Development Goals (MDG). This coincided with the fall of poverty rates globally due to China’s progress and the leap of other Asian tigers.

However, extreme poverty and unemployment rates remained high in Sub-Saharan Africa, where most countries missed several MDG targets.

Since last year, the world has been hit hard by Russia-Ukraine war on Ukraine, which has disrupted the global value chain of most essential commodities, including grain and fertiliser.

This has left prices rocketing in most countries, slowing the global progress to achieve SDGs to end hunger and poverty by 2030.

The pandemic worsened socio-economic hardship and left more people vulnerable in the Global South, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa where most economies hinge on agriculture.

This requires policymakers to draft radical agricultural policies that tackle both current and future crises to achieve food security.

Climate change crisis has also affected with most economies, including already vulnerable least developing southern African nations such as Malawi.

Since 2015, the country has suffered three devastating floods caused by cyclones such as Idai in 2019, Gombe and Ana last year and Freddy last month.

Cyclone Freddy has devastated Malawi, Madagascar and Mozambique.

In Malawi, the Department of Disaster Management Affairs estimates that the cyclone affected 2.2 million people, with 679 confirmed dead, 2178 injured, 537 still missing and 659,278 displaced.

 Prior to the disaster, government closed schools in the Southern Region, disrupting the race to achieve SDG4—quality education for all.

This rolls back efforts and programmes to help affected communities restore their livelihood assets.

For years, various international organisations like Ophracht (Mission) in Africa and local partners invested in rural livelihoods for the resilience of the most vulnerable communities.

Currently, there is a need to enhance the disaster risk network governance among humanitarian and sustainable development stakeholders to share knowledge, expertise and resources for a greater adaptive humanitarian recovery.

As the world still faces multiple crises, including rising poverty, global hunger is increasing, food prices are going up, and the climate crisis is worsening.

World leaders need to enhance their cooperation and collaboration efforts as no government could address these challenges.

National governments should focus on developing policies that invest in the people to address the socio-economic vulnerability, such as adaptive social protection.

Policymakers should also increase the allocation of budgets to vital sectors such as clean water and sanitation.

The poor are affected the worst when crises hit as they lack coping mechanisms such as social security insurance.

For instance, multiple crises people in Malawi have eroded the gains achieved in healthcare delivery, education quality, infrastructure development and human development.

Currently, the country does not have national insurance for disasters, even for the benefit of the most vulnerable people.

As such, government and its partners need to invest in resilient infrastructure development that would withstand future disasters.

President Lazarus Chakwera should also encourage citizen engagement in all phases of the humanitarian interventions cycle to create a sense of ownership.

Accountability and transparency should be the guiding principle of all humanitarian programmes being implemented. This encourages citizens and organisations to contribute vital financial or human resources for disaster management.

Amid the global poly-crisis, governments in the Global South should enact relevant laws to enhance disaster preparedness and mitigation, with a clear roadmap for disaster response.

The proposed laws would help to overcome some challenges that slow down the global agenda to tackle extreme poverty, hunger, education, inequality and climate change.