From: Steve Askin <saskin@igc.apc.org>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.african
Date: 31 Aug 92 19:54 PDT
Subject: NCR: A Somali dies every second
Nf-ID: #N:cdp:1471700094:000:3781
Nf-From: cdp.UUCP!saskin    Aug 31 19:54:00 1992


 
FAMINE RELIEF STILL INADEQUATE; 
On average a Somali is now dying every second
     By Carole Collins, U.N. Correspondent
     National Catholic Reporter (c) 1992
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     New York, Sept. 4, 1992 -- By late August, the world had
belatedly responded to the famine in Somalia, dubbed "the worst
humanitarian tragedy in the world today" by American officials.
     But the effort remains grotesquely inadequate.
     Private donations for Somalia relief total less than 1
percent of the $110 million that 29 emergency relief agencies
raised in only six months during the 1984-85 Ethiopian famine,
according to InterAction, an umbrella group for private voluntary
organizations. 
     In mid-August, major western governments - including the
Bush administration - began massive airlifts of food to the 5
million starving people of that civil war-torn, famine-wracked
northeast African nation. The United Nations also agreed to boost
the number of U.N. troops from 500 to 3500, and to post them to
ensure orderly relief deliveries throughout the country, not just
in the capital, Mogadishu.
     But uncoordinated food dumping by competing relief donors
(including the U.S.), say aid officials in Kenya, risks sparking
clashes between rival clans fighting over looted food. Should
that happen, the patchwork of ceasefires with warring factions
carefully negotiated by the Red Cross to allow food deliveries
could unravel with tragic consequences.
     While flooding the country with food - to feed people and
eliminate a prime source of armed violence - is vitally
important, for perhaps a third of Somalia's people it comes way
too late. 
     The emergency relief group Medicins Sans Frontieres (MSF)
noted laconically in its August report that "our worst fears have
come true. The Somalian people is dying.... Now the countdown to
death has started."
     A Somali is now dying on average every second from the
famine. Dubbing Somalia 'the country God forgot,' Rebecca
Katumba, a Kenyan journalist for Women's Feature Service, noted
that white cloth - the traditional burial shroud for Muslims -
often is the only emergency relief item to reach Somalia's
starving 'in time.'
     InterAction public policy director Tony Gambino noted that
the media "doesn't perceive famine as a story until there are
bodies everywhere."  Their beginning to cover Somalia, he said,
tipped the balance in favor of government action when added to
growing citizen pressure. 
     Letters and faxes "do make a big difference," said Adwoa
Dunn-Mouton, staff director of the Senate Foreign Relations
Subcommittee on African Affairs, noting that many Congressional
offices, sensitive to constituents' concerns, tabulate their
incoming mail each week by issue.  
     "Only by calling and writing in" will people change
political leaders' "view that no one cares about Africa," she
added. "I can always tell when people are writing their
congressmen by the number of calls I get from Congressional aides
asking for information."  
     But now that activists have succeeded in getting the Bush
administration to pay attention to Somalia, said Gambino, they
need to shift their efforts to an equally urgent need: raising 
money for Somalia.  Many relief agencies lack the funds for
medicines, blankets, seeds, tools, transport, and salaries. (END)
 

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