'Criminal': First UN famine coordinator pushes to eradicate starvation

At the end of last summer, two United Nations officials visited the Banadir hospital in drought-stricken Somalia where widespread rebel and Islamist violence has restricted humanitarian access to the urban facility. Reena Ghelani, then director of operations and advocacy at the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, and Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs Martin Griffiths, saw a facility that was overcrowded and crammed with hospital beds occupied by starving patients who had trudged from other regions of the country seeking treatment for malnutrition. “They were the lucky ones. I don’t know how many didn’t make it. But to see that and to think that’s where we are again, it’s criminal,” Gehlani told Devex. “You never, ever get rid of the image of seeing parents … with children who they are slowly watching starve to death.” An estimated 223,000 people in Somalia are projected to experience catastrophic levels of food insecurity in the first half of this year. After the trip, Griffiths discussed creating a role specifically focused on famine prevention with U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, Gehlani said. She expressed her interest in the position and Guterres named her U.N. famine prevention coordinator in November. She now leads and organizes a system-wide response to rising global food insecurity, coordinating both the humanitarian and development sectors, regional bodies, and governments. Ghelani, who met her husband in Somalia, describes herself as “passionate” about the countries in the Horn of Africa, having worked in the nation multiple times since 2005. “This region’s dear to my heart, not just Somalia, so I grabbed it,” she said of the newly created U.N. role. “I grew up in this industry.” Development in Somalia over the last 15 years is striking, Ghelani said, but it’s “outrageous” that the country is again inching ever closer to levels of famine. While one has not officially been declared yet, people are almost certainly experiencing famine conditions. The last time Somalia had a famine, in 2011, an estimated quarter of a million people died. Somalia has also suffered years of violence, where Al-Qaeda-backed rebels have fought government troops since 2007. Although largely forced from the nation’s cities, they remain rooted in rural areas and are able to launch devastating attacks on civilian populations. Born in Uganda with Australian citizenship, Ghelani found herself out of money in Kenya during a travel gap year in her youth. She worked on a refugee program with the Australian mission, in camps in Kenya and Ethiopia, particularly connecting to the work because some members of her own family were refugees. “A light bulb went on. This is what I wanted to do,” Ghelani said of those visits. She studied international law when she returned to Australia, and then worked for the country’s aid program. It was then she decided to explore a career with the U.N., where she served with the UN Refugee Agency, UN Human Rights, and the U.N. Department of Peace Operations. She has been with OCHA for 17 years. The decision to base the famine prevention position in the Horn was deliberate, Ghelani said, so she can travel to countries currently on the brink of famine more easily than if she were in New York. It also allows her easy access to the Djibouti-based Intergovernmental Authority on Development, an African organization originally conceived to help manage a regional response to drought. “It makes such a difference in every way, being in touch with governments and communities in their own time zone,” Ghelani said. “It was a very smart move.” Despite the numerous global crises currently challenging the multilateral system, Ghelani still believes in the power of the U.N. to help solve them. That doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement, but there’s no other system that “could ever replace what we have,” she said. She’s engaged in discussions about reform of the U.N. High-Level Task Force on Famine Prevention headed by Griffiths, which could involve expanding membership outside U.N. agencies to include NGOs and multilateral development banks. A group of NGOs argues for a seat at the table to help the task force become more effective by narrowing its focus to only the most food-insecure countries. They say the task force cannot act quickly enough and should develop mobilization plans to avert mass starvation and deaths before they begin, instead of waiting until potentially hundreds of thousands have already perished. “The root causes — if we don’t address them, we are not going to get out of this cycle. So it’s still about the big picture issues,” Ghelani said, pointing to conflict, climate, and economics. “The U.N. can be the facilitator of bringing these different groups together.” Gehlani hopes her role will help break that cycle when it comes to famine. Success would be eliminating her own position — the famine prevention coordinator — by the end of this year. Famine prevention work should be embedded enough in other U.N. and government structures that a standalone position isn’t necessary. Key to success would be mobilizing “early money” and getting funding to countries in crisis before famine has been declared and people are already dying, Ghelani said. That’s a challenge for an already stretched humanitarian system — OCHA appealed for a record $51.5 billion for 2023 — when not enough money goes towards food crises, she said. “I know it’s a heavy lift and there’s so much going on in the world right now, but it does feel like that because of Ukraine, the world’s paying a little bit more attention to the food crisis,” Ghelani said. “We need to be able to communicate better about ‘there is a problem, but we can do something about it,’ and what that is in a way that is identifiable.”