“ Increasingly, it became clear that a new flow of international aid, cash, and not goods, worked to mitigate the risks of an immediate famine. For now, in spite of acute risks in some parts of the country, Somalia has successfully averted a food crisis,” How Aid in Cash, Not Goods, Averted A Famine In Somalia 08 September - Source: IPS News - 594 Words In February, when the government of Somalia sounded an alarm to the UN about risks of a famine in the country, the UN’s Office of Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), besides quickly shuffling a response team, was acting from a steep sense of history. The Office, instead of sending out massive aid packages, distributed cash vouchers to families who could spend it to buy goods according to their needs. The famine between the years 2010 and 2012, which killed more than a quarter of a million people in the country, offered important lessons to the aid community. This spring, when poor rainfall led to large scale crop failure
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