Reducing the impacts of food insecurity and HIV/AIDS - a collective failure?
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HDN Key Correspondent Team (3 June 2002)

NOW: Southern Africa's worst food shortage in a decade is spreading across at least six countries: Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia & Zimbabwe.

NOW: The HIV/AIDS epidemics in those six countries are among the most severe the world has ever seen.

Have we learned nothing about the linkages between food insecurity, vulnerability to HIV and the impact of HIV/AIDS on rural livelihoods and agricultural production?

NOW ... IS ALREADY TOO LATE to put food insecurity and HIV/AIDS on the agenda.

With one week until the World Food Summit (Rome 10-17 June, 2002) and one month before the International AIDS Conference (Barcelona, 7-12 July 2002) we need to urgently determine what we know and what we need to know about these interactions, and to accelerate towards genuine action to mitigate against the common impacts of food short-
ages and HIV/AIDS. These two conferences must lead to concrete steps in this critical priority area.

Unbelievably, with the response to HIV entering its third decade, and as another severe food shortage unfolds, one of our most enduring questions is how the vicious cycle between food insecurity and HIV/AIDS impact and vulnerability can be understood and broken.

Research on the impact of HIV/AIDS on agriculture, rural development, nutrition, food security and rural poverty has been carried out. Unraveling the interaction between them has been problematic because of the institutional frameworks that have seen food security as being worlds apart from the biomedical paradigm that has - and still does - characterize the way we have thought of AIDS to date.

Simply repeating the mantra that "AIDS is a development issue as well as a health issue" is clearly not enough. We now know what that kind of lip-service has achieved. The current food shortages in Southern Africa are without doubt partly attributable to the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemics in these countries. They are a stark demonstration of the collective failure to recognize - and act upon - the deep- rooted linkages between food insecurity and HIV/AIDS.

The food and HIV/AIDS sectors seem to have finally woken up to the crucial importance of working together. Hence recent efforts by the 'food agencies' - such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO); the World Food Programme (WFP); and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) to carve out collaboration agreements with the 'AIDS' agencies, including the Joint UN Programme on AIDS (UNAIDS) and to a lesser extent the World Health Organization (WHO). The agencies are working towards a common analytical framework for mitigation responses to the epidemic.

But what is this achieving? There remain gaping knowledge gaps and a lack of operational collaboration between these agencies. Apart from small-scale initiatives, organised mostly by nongovernment organisations and local community groups, there are very few examples of successful approaches to reducing the impact of HIV/AIDS and food secu-
rity on one another. Even in countries with exemplary AIDS programmes or agricultural sector strategies, national plans to help reduce these impacts are almost non-existent.

To understand these gaps is not to excuse the obvious lack of attention this issue has received. This must especially be the case when we consider the fragile food security of the 40 million people living with HIV today, and that of the twenty million men, women and children who have already died from AIDS-related conditions. We must also focus on the food insecurity and HIV vulnerability of the people of six countries with among the most severe HIV epidemics AND now the consequences of a harvest failure that was foreseen and documented months ago.

The unfolding food shortage in Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia & Zimbabwe will increase the vulnerability of millions of their people to HIV. At the same time, the personal, household and community impacts of HIV/AIDS are already fanning the flames of food insecurity.

As part of HDN's pre-conference collaboration with the Barcelona Conference organizers, we shall do what we can to facilitate this dialogue - making the INTAIDS eForum available for these discussions and exchange of information, and by summarizing and posing searching questions.

But the real resources are with you - community organizations, people living with HIV, government officers, those working in the 'food' and 'AIDS' sectors. Sharing your knowledge and understanding is the only way we can move rapidly and together towards a greater understanding of what should be done and how, and the opportunities that exist to make that happen.

If you have something to say about the relationship between food insecurity and HIV/AIDS, their impacts on one another, or approaches to reduce them, then let's hear from you. Maybe you know of small-scale approaches that are working and might be replicated elsewhere? Or you may be in a position to explain why institutional collaboration and new policies in the area are vital? Whatever your perspective, suggestions about practical ways the HIV/AIDS-related impact of the current food shortage in southern Africa might be mitigated are particularly welcome.

HDN Key Correspondent Team Email: [email protected]
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chives of discussions can be read at: http://www.hdnet.org Other links:

FAO/World Food Summit plans: http://www.fao.org WFP: http://www.wfp.org IFAD: http://www.ifad.org This discussion has been organized as part of the preparations for the International AIDS Conference, to be held in Barcelona, 7-12 July
2002.
To visit the web site of the conference, go to:
http://www.aids2002.com/IE_Home.asp
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