It is both tragic and ironic that World Humanitarian Day 2011 falls during the first famine in Africa in nearly 20 years.
On this World Humanitarian Day we must stand in solidarity with the people of East Africa fighting famine and the food crisis. It is important to note that famine is not caused by drought or a lack of food to feed the world’s people. As Amartya Sen explained people go hungry when they cannot access food, because they are either too poor or because markets and governments fail. Drought on its own does not cause famine.
The big issue that’s on my mind is today how can we enable poor and excluded people to build their resilience to an ever increasing range of shocks which include a lack of access to food and water. We know that there is a direct relationship between vulnerability and resilience and that we can do a lot to enable people to reduce their vulnerability and increase their resilience to shocks such as drought.
After nearly two weeks of snail paced negotiations in Copenhagen, ActionAid decided that enough was enough. We decided it was time for our 
