ONE’s commitment to the Horn of Africa at the Clinton Global Initiative

Sep 23rd, 2011 4:52 PM UTC
By Michael Elliott

Please welcome ONE President and CEO Michael Elliott to the ONE Blog. In his first piece, he writes about ONE’s commitment to the famine at the 2011 Clinton Global Initiative.

As a consequence of the famine in Somalia and the wider crisis in the Horn of Africa, more than 30,000 children have died in just three months — and the lives of more than 13 million men, women and children are at risk. None of us can simply stand on the sidelines and watch, and it is for that reason that at ONE we made a commitment today at the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) — an annual meeting in New York that brings together global leaders to implement solutions to the world’s most pressing issues — to launch a multi-year campaign called “Drought is Inevitable, Famine is Not.”

While it was humbling to make that announcement alongside other aid and development leaders at CGI this morning, I also felt a sense of anger. None of us should have been on the stage making our commitments. We know how to stop acts of nature such as droughts leading to needless deaths – but we aren’t doing it. The tragedy unfolding in the Horn of Africa deserves an urgent, global response, but world leaders are falling short of expectations. And approximately $1 billion in emergency aid is still desperately needed for immediate relief.

To address this shortfall, our campaign, “Drought is Inevitable, Famine is Not,” will combine grassroots organizing across our global markets with top-level political engagement to increase awareness of the crisis and effectively press G8, G20 and African governments to respond to both urgent needs in the Horn of Africa and invest in long-term solutions like agriculture to help prevent future famine.

We’ll be using every tool in our toolbox to get people engaged in this campaign. These tools range from debuting a provocative new PSA in the coming weeks to activating our more than 2.5 million ONE members to recruit their friends and family both through social media and offline in their communities.
In the short term, we will ask world leaders to meet their share of the $1 billion gap in emergency funding. And in the long term, we will urge countries to meet the promises they made at the l’Aquila Summit in 2009 to invest in agriculture development programs and help break the cycle of the crisis for good.

Over the past few months, our ONE members have taken real action on the famine in the Horn of Africa. More than 220,000 ONE supporters have urged world leaders to stop hunger and its causes. And a powerful group of 58 musicians and artists — including Bono, Youssou N’dour and K’naan — signed a letter today calling for African and other world leaders to keep their promises on agriculture projects and long-term food security.

Our commitment at CGI will deepen ONE’s current work on the Horn of Africa with the goal of putting sustainable solutions in place while also helping those desperately in need in the coming months. We’ll need your support more than ever. Please stay tuned to ONE.org over the next few weeks to learn more about this campaign and find out how you can get involved.

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