From: Berhane Habtemariam (Berhane.Habtemariam@gmx.de)
Date: Mon Oct 26 2009 - 07:16:46 EST
Oxfam report: Geldof’s appeals haven’t changed a thing as Ethiopians face
starvation yet again
* oxfam
* Teh report says that little has been done to help Ethiopia since the
famine of the 1980s
Published on 26,Oct 2009
It is quarter of a century since Ethiopia suffered a devastating famine that
killed more than a million people and triggered an outpouring of
international compassion from ordinary people, but the world has done little
to prevent a rerun of the tragedy.
In a new report, Oxfam International makes a scarcely veiled admission that
the Band Aid movement and Live Aid concerts, promoted flamboyantly 25 years
ago by rock musician Bob Geldof, have done virtually nothing to change
things for the better.
The report, titled Band Aids And Beyond, says that instead of finding ways
to reduce the risks of recurring crises every three years in four “the
humanitarian response is still dominated by ‘Band Aids.’”
Written by Nick Martlew, Oxfam’s humanitarian policy adviser on Ethiopia,
Band Aids And Beyond bemoans the fact that long-term strategies to help the
people of Ethiopia to help themselves – and thus greatly reduce dependence
on international charity – receive less than 1% of international aid, which
is focused too much on short-term food aid.
“Food aid does not tackle underlying problems that continue to make people
vulnerable,” said Penny Lawrence, Oxfam’s international director.
Lawrence said everyone should have seen trouble coming. “Short-term
responses, especially imported food aid, still dominate,” she said. “We
cannot make the rains come, but there is much more that we can do to break
the cycle of drought-driven disaster in Ethiopia and the Horn of Africa.
In a repetition of the 1984 famine, which triggered the biggest charity
drive in world history, Ethiopia’s
agriculture minister Mitiku Kassa is again appealing to international donors
for nearly £100million of food to save some 11.5million people from
immediate starvation.
There is no doubt the Ethiopian government appeal for immediate food aid
help will be heeded, largely from the United States’ vast stocks of surplus
grain, but this time there will be more hard-headed, less emotional
responses from western publics.
A growing school of thought is arguing: Do not reach into your pockets
unless you know the money is going to truly practical development projects.
Otherwise, do Ethiopians a favour. Sit on your hands because food aid only
extends Ethiopia’s accruing suffering.
Oxfam admits in Band Aids And Beyond that while food aid immediately saves
lives, “it crowds out other initiatives that support communities’ strategies
to prevent the next drought from becoming a disaster.”
People were misled during the 1984 Band Aid and Live Aid appeals, when Paul
McCartney, David Bowie, Sting, George Michael, Bono, Queen and three score
other top pop stars together sang the refrain “Feed the world, let them know
it’s Christmas time.”
Reports at the time suggested that the Ethiopian famine was a natural
disaster. But, in fact, the disaster had been created by the country’s
dictator, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam, as part of a strategy of total fear
that he dubbed the “Red Terror”. Mengistu, according to Human Rights Watch
and Amnesty International, presided over half a million executions during
his 1974-1991 rule.
He also herded Ethiopia’s peasant farmers into giant Soviet-style collective
farms, without providing water, ploughs, oxen or carts, a disastrous
strategy that spawned the terrible famine that Live Aid paid for, while
naively helping prop up Mengistu.
He diverted most of the aid to Africa’s largest standing army, which carried
out widespread ethnic cleansing while United Nations workers reported the
dictator was flying in “plane-loads of whisky.”
Médecins sans Frontières, the French aid agency, could not stomach the evil
misuse of the food aid, and when it protested to the Mengistu regime it was
expelled from Ethiopia. MSF’s founding director, Dr Rony Brauman, remarked
that colluding with Mengistu meant “saving a thousand lives to condemn a
hundred thousand.”
Similarly, this time, a quarter century on, there are political factors
other than drought that have caused famine and which no amount of foreign
aid can ameliorate. A prolonged border dispute with Eritrea has eaten up
huge amounts of state resources. More crucially, Ethiopia’s land,
post-Mengistu, still belongs to the state and cannot be sold. “Consequently,
there’s a lack of investment in land because people do not have an incentive
to invest cash in land that does not belong to them,” said Thea Hilhorst,
Professor of Humanitarian Aid and Reconstruction at Holland’s Wageningen
University. One consequence is that state land gets divided and sub-divided
among the families who sit on it. Plots become so tiny and the soil so
exhausted that it cannot feed the families who work it – even in times of
normal rainfall.
One person quoted in the Oxfam report who can see the complexity of the
problem is Birhan Woldu, who was a baby in 1984 and had her life saved by
Irish nursing nuns who gave her an injection and food aid. She became the
face of the famine and has appeared on stage with Geldof and Madonna. Birhan
has a diploma in agriculture and a degree in nursing, but argues: “It may
seem strange for me to say now that to get food aid from overseas is not the
best way.
“Shipping food from the USA is costly, uneconomic and encourages dependence.
We need better infrastructure communications to move food around to where it
is needed. Above all we need education. Let us grow our own food and help
manage our own systems so we are not hit so hard when the next drought or
flood comes.”
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