U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE

67–167 CC WASHINGTON : 2000

THE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA

HEARING

BEFORE THE

COMMITTEE ON

INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

MAY 18, 2000

Serial No. 106–148

Printed for the use of the Committee on International Relations

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international—relations

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COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

BENJAMIN A. GILMAN, New York, Chairman

WILLIAM F. GOODLING, Pennsylvania

JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa

HENRY J. HYDE, Illinois

DOUG BEREUTER, Nebraska

CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey

DAN BURTON, Indiana

ELTON GALLEGLY, California

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

CASS BALLENGER, North Carolina

DANA ROHRABACHER, California

DONALD A. MANZULLO, Illinois

EDWARD R. ROYCE, California

PETER T. KING, New York

STEVE CHABOT, Ohio

MARSHALL ‘‘MARK’’ SANFORD, South

Carolina

MATT SALMON, Arizona

AMO HOUGHTON, New York

TOM CAMPBELL, California

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

KEVIN BRADY, Texas

RICHARD BURR, North Carolina

PAUL E. GILLMOR, Ohio

GEORGE RADANOVICH, California

JOHN COOKSEY, Louisiana

THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado

SAM GEJDENSON, Connecticut

TOM LANTOS, California

HOWARD L. BERMAN, California

GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York

ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American

Samoa

MATTHEW G. MARTINEZ, California

DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey

ROBERT MENENDEZ, New Jersey

SHERROD BROWN, Ohio

CYNTHIA A. MCKINNEY, Georgia

ALCEE L. HASTINGS, Florida

PAT DANNER, Missouri

EARL F. HILLIARD, Alabama

BRAD SHERMAN, California

ROBERT WEXLER, Florida

STEVEN R. ROTHMAN, New Jersey

JIM DAVIS, Florida

EARL POMEROY, North Dakota

WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts

GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York

BARBARA LEE, California

JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York

JOSEPH M. HOEFFEL, Pennsylvania

RICHARD J. GARON, Chief of Staff

KATHLEEN BERTELSEN MOAZED, Democratic Chief of Staff

THOMAS CALLAHAN, Professional Staff Member and Counsel

NICOLLE A. SESTRIC, Staff Associate

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C O N T E N T S

WITNESSES

Page

Catherine Bertini, Special Envoy of the United States Secretary-General on

the Drought in the Horn of Africa and Executive Director of the World

Food Programme .................................................................................................. 2

The Honorable Hugh Q. Parmer, Assistant Administrator, Bureau for Humanitarian Response, U.S. Agency for International Development ................ 16

J. Stephen Morrison, Director, Africa Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, DC ...................................................................... 26

Gary Shaye, Vice President for International Programs, Save The Children .... 30

APPENDIX

Members’ Prepared Statements:

The Honorable Benjamin A. Gilman, a Representative in Congress from the

State of New York and Chairman, Committee on International Relations .... 34

The Honorable Tom Campbell, a Representative in Congress from the State

of California .......................................................................................................... 36

Witnesses’ Prepared Statements:

Catherine Bertini ..................................................................................................... 37

Hugh Q. Parmer ...................................................................................................... 44

J. Stephen Morrison ................................................................................................ 54

Gary Shaye ............................................................................................................... 59

Additional Information:

Letter from Assistant Administrator Parmer in response to a question concerning French assistance to the Djibouti port ................................................. 62

Letter from Assistant Administrator Parmer in response to a question concerning Italy’s contributions to relief efforts in 2000 ........................................ 63

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THE LOOMING FAMINE IN ETHIOPIA

THURSDAY, MAY 18, 2000

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS,

Washington, DC.

The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10 a.m., in room 2172

Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Benjamin A. Gilman (Chairman of the Committee) presiding.

Chairman GILMAN. The Committee will come to order, if Members will take their seats, and please close the doors.

This morning we are conducting a hearing on the conflict and

famine in Ethiopia.

Ms. Bertini, I would normally say it is very kind of you to be

with us today, but I suppose that that would not be quite accurate,

since you are in London and we are communicating with you by

teleconference. Nonetheless, I am so pleased that this Committee

now has the technology to be able to take advantage of your expertise from afar, and you usually are in far distant places throughout

the world.

We appreciate your taking the time out of your busy schedule to

speak with us about the starvation in Ethiopia and the effects of

renewed fighting, and our nation’s ability to address it.

The House will begin voting on a series of measures in a very

few minutes. At that time, we may have to interrupt our hearing.

I would like, therefore, to go immediately to your testimony, and

I will postpone my opening statement until after we return from

those votes; and I would ask my colleagues to do the same.

At this point, I would like to ask our Ranking Minority Member,

Mr. Gejdenson, the gentleman from Connecticut, for any opening

remarks.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. This is an important

area. We have 16 million people in the Horn of Africa who risk

starvation. There is a brutal and senseless war going on. It would

be easy to throw our hands up and say there is nothing we can do,

and they brought it on themselves, but obviously, that would just

leave a lot of innocent people to suffer and die.

There are lots of international organizations like Save the Children in my own State and many others who are trying to save people. The United States ought to use all of its resources to stop the

war and end the starvation.

I am looking forward to hearing from Ms. Bertini, whom I had

the privilege of being with earlier in the week.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gejdenson.

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Catherine Bertini has directed the World Food Program since

1992. She has done extremely well. In 1999, 88 million people

around the world received World Food Program food aid. When the

Secretary-General learned of the threat of famine in the Horn of

Africa, he appointed Ms. Bertini as his special representative to

that region. With her typical enthusiasm, Catherine Bertini immediately embarked on a mission to the Horn, followed by a thoughtful and comprehensive report. As a representative from our great

State of New York, I take special pride in mentioning that Ms.

Bertini is a graduate of the State University of New York at Albany.

We welcome you, Catherine Bertini. We look forward to your testimony. Your written statement will be entered into the record in

full. Please feel free to summarize.

Ms. Bertini.

STATEMENT OF CATHERINE BERTINI (VIA VIDEO-CONFERENCE), EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WORLD FOOD PROGRAMME, AND SPECIAL ENVOY OF THE U.N. SECRETARYGENERAL ON THE DROUGHT IN THE HORN OF AFRICA

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I am

pleased to be here with you too, even though ‘‘here’’ means London;

and I appreciate the invitation. But I would be with you and Members of the Committee anywhere as we work together on critical

issues that are a matter of life and death.

I also want to thank the staff of the embassy here in London,

very efficient staff, for working with your very efficient staff who

have made this possible.

You remember during the mid-1980’s, when President Ronald

Reagan said a hungry child knows no politics. Once again, his

charge and that commitment that he made on behalf of the American people is something that we have to bring to fore, because it

is true that while some of the countries in the region of the Horn

of Africa are involved in a brutal war, we have to remember the

hungry children. Once again, credit must be given to the United

States of America who has taken an early lead in addressing these

problems of the crisis in the Horn of Africa.

I will summarize my statement and ask you to put the rest in

the record.

Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, your full statement will be

made a part of the record.

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you.

As the Secretary-General’s Special Envoy to the Horn of Africa,

I have found that, first of all, the crisis is not yet a famine, but

it easily could be; and it could be unless we put every effort possible into preventive measures in order to ensure that a famine

does not occur. There have been 3 years of consecutive poor rainfall

which has made it very hard for people and for animals. Their food

is gone and their water is scarce. The health conditions are deteriorating, and the hardest hit people are those who make their living

with their animals, pastoralists who wander in search of food and

water for themselves and for their animals. We are always particularly concerned about women and children, because they are the

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most vulnerable. We estimate that in the whole region there are

16 million people who are at risk.

The Secretary-General’s timing in naming a special envoy was

critical, I think, in order to put the United Nations in a position

to be proactive, to be raising the issues and to be encouraging additional contributions and more coordinated aid efforts in the region.

You will note from the map of the region entitled Greater Horn

of Africa, Drought-Affected Areas, that there are huge areas affected by this lack of rain, and that they cross borders between

Kenya, Ethiopia, and Somalia in particular. There are many people

who cross borders, people who are, again, moving with their animals to find food and water, and they do not pay attention to

where the borders are, they are just looking for relief. That means

that we have to be very careful within the humanitarian community that we are providing complementary assistance. We don’t

want to place, for instance, a huge feeding center near the border

in one country and then have that mean that hundreds and thousands of people are moving across the border to another area as

well. So we have to have complementary programming.

We also have to be very careful on the security side, because as

people move, so do problems. So we have to be sure we have communications systems set up; and we are now in the process of doing

that, so that we can have aid workers communicate with each

other on a regular basis throughout the region.

We have found that the biggest unmet needs are for clean water

and for basic medicines. We have found that support for the livestock sector is almost nonexistent, and many of the people who are

affected count on their livestock for their livelihood; and we have

found that although food aid has been coming in, we need to ensure

that we have the right kind of quantity and quality.

For instance, people who had been counting on their animals but

no longer have animals, were used to some basic protein in their

diet. They need to still get some of that. We also need to be sure

that children have the right kind of food when they are very vulnerable.

I proposed to the Secretary-General, and he accepted that the

United Nations do a new assessment and by the end of May announce an additional appeal. There are appeals already on the

books, appeals already to donor countries asking for assistance.

They were prepared with estimates based on assumptions made in

November and December of last year, and those assessments assumed that there would be rain by now. But the rain has been sporadic; it is not enough. So this new appeal will build on the current

requests and ask for additional assistance, especially in the areas

of water needs and health needs.

We are hoping that UNICEF will play a lead role, as well as

WHO providing medical expertise and FAO in its efforts to help

with livestock and seeds.

The OCHA, the United Nation’s humanitarian coordinators organization, is playing a very active role. They provided excellent support for my mission, and now, they have a staff member appointed

by the Secretary-General to report to him through OCHA in order

to manage the coordination of humanitarian affairs for the Horn of

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Africa. He is Manuel Aranda daSilva, and he is based in Addis

Ababa, already at work.

One more area that needs to be highlighted is the area of transportation. The ports that we will be using need additional upgrades. The World Food Program has been working on that now.

Also, the roads in and out of those ports need to be improved, and

we are asking donors for assistance in helping to do that. The

transport within the individual country, especially Ethiopia, needs

extra expertise, and we have been providing that to the government, but it also needs coordination among all the donors—the

NGO’s and the United Nations—so that we can maximize the use

of a limited amount of trucks and reduced port capacity.

Then, finally, Mr. Chairman, I want to say, how can the United

States help and what else can the United States do? I did have the

opportunity to talk with you a bit about this before and with Mr.

Gejdenson and with others. Let me just quickly summarize.

First of all, USAID has been very proactive, acting early and

quickly in the Horn. They have given very generous contributions

of food, and I would hope that when the new appeal comes out

later, they would continue to give generous contributions, assuming

that the needs have increased after the assessment is finished. Related to that, however, I would hope that the United States would

take a special look at the needs, the non-food needs like medicines,

water supply, cans to carry water, and seeds and tools, and livestock expertise and support. I would hope that the United States

would make contributions also to the agencies to be able to work

in these very crucial areas.

We have found that even in the regions where the most severe

hunger existed, the people who died had died not of malnutrition

primarily, but of diarrhea, of measles, of upper respiratory diseases, things that could have been—people who could have been

saved with the right kind of medicine.

Another area I think where the United States can be helpful is

in upgrading the roads, particularly the ones in and out of the

ports in Djibouti and Berbera. Because even once the port improvements are complete, we still need decent roads; otherwise, that will

slow down the movement of food and other important items in and

out of Ethiopia in particular. Then also the United States and its

other partners, donor partners and all of the NGO’s and the United

Nations must work very, very closely on coordination, perhaps

more closely than we have in any other place, because, again, of

a limited port capacity. It is very important for us to coordinate

when the ships are coming into port, from whom the trucks are

being leased, when the trucks are available; all of these things are

critically important.

Finally, the United States might consider sending some experts

for a few months to the regional coordination unit to be able to provide assistance on issues like livestock development, public health,

and possibly security, because security for United Nations staff and

humanitarian staff in the region is critically important as well.

Most importantly, of course, in addition to this critical humanitarian need, the United States could use its political and diplomatic

skills in a major way in its efforts to bring peace to the people in

the region.

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The American people have reached out to poor people and people

who need food and medicine throughout the world in many generous ways before. The American people have saved millions of

lives. With your leadership, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Gejdenson, Members of the Committee, the active work of the Administration and

the brave work of NGO’s and U.N. staff around the world, I know

we can do so again in the Horn of Africa.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Bertini appears in the appendix.]

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Catherine Bertini, for your excellent report. I know you have a time constraint, and we will try to

be brief.

You mentioned a number of things that we should be doing—generous contributions and the upgrading of the ports and coordination of relief activities and provision of livestock, et cetera.

What do you feel is the most critical that we should do immediately while we are working on this? What is the top priority?

Ms. BERTINI. From a humanitarian perspective, two things I

would say, Mr. Chairman. First, is money to upgrade the roads so

that the goods can move through; and second, is additional support

for medical and water-related non-food items.

Chairman GILMAN. In upgrading the roads, are they capable of

fulfilling that responsibility if we help them financially?

Ms. BERTINI. The way it would be done, Mr. Chairman, is that

the World Food Program would contract people to do the work and

would monitor and follow the work. We would bring in some of our

own experts to supervise this and hire local people to manage it.

So we have had good success in doing this in areas around the

world before, so I can assure you that we would do it quickly and

well enough for the food trucks to move through.

Chairman GILMAN. Will the ports in Djibouti and Berbera be

adequate to handle the transport requirements?

Ms. BERTINI. That is a good question. First, let me say that we

anticipate that 170,000 tons of food and other items need to move

through either of those ports, particularly into Ethiopia. That is assuming the current needs, but that is for all of the humanitarian

aid. The needs might go up.

Djibouti can probably provide about 140,000 or 145,000 tons.

Berbera can probably provide about 20,000 or 25,000 tons. So that

means that it can be handled, but it is very, very tight, and that

only assuming that everything goes extremely well.

The Djiboutian port officials believe that the Djibouti port could

handle actually as much as 200,000 tons, but that would require

extremely smooth coordination. If this does not work, then we will

have to go back to the officials in Ethiopia and Eritrea and discuss

the use of the Assab port.

Chairman GILMAN. Ms. Bertini, are you aware of any of the food

or humanitarian supplies being diverted to the war effort?

Ms. BERTINI. We, of course, investigate every time we hear anything, and just in the last couple of days, we have had a couple of

allegations that we are looking into. For instance, we learned that

the government sent about 1,132 metric tons of food to displaced

people, and because we learned this after the fact, we were not able

to monitor this food, and we must be able to review it.

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We also understand that some food has been going to another

area where it is intended to be used to feed displaced people, but

this is food that had been requested for drought victims. So it

means that we have to upgrade our ability to monitor the food from

the warehouse to ensure that it is going to the right people.

Chairman GILMAN. One last question. Six bridges in between the

port of Berbera and a famine area are reported to be out. Can we

put Bailey bridges in and leave them there? Would that not serve

economic development interests in Somaliland, as well as meet our

logistic requirements?

Ms. BERTINI. Absolutely. Part of the improvements of the port

and the road and bridges and access ways out of Berbera would

certainly be longer standing to help support the economic development of this region in that peaceful part of Somalia.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much, Ms. Bertini.

Mr. Gejdenson.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you. Let me first say, the ability to predict the weather is much better today, so we knew that there were

going to be rainfall shortages. It is easier to mobilize this Committee to hold a hearing today, so I am not just blaming others, because there is a crisis now, it is immediate. We have so many

places in the world to pay attention to; and if you tried to get our

attention 3 years ago or 2 years ago, it probably would have been

more difficult.

But are there things that we should have been doing 3 years ago,

2 years ago, 1 year ago that would have made this situation more

manageable, and what would they be?

Ms. BERTINI. Two things I think, Mr. Gejdenson.

First of all, generally the United Nations has a much better process for being able to predict drought areas. I should say, beyond the

United Nations, coordinating with U.S. facilities, as well as other

international facilities. So this particular drought was predicted to

be less severe than it was. There were a lot of efforts made last

year on the part of the governments in the region, as well as the

agencies supported by donors such as the United States, to bring

in a lot of food and to work on contingency planning. The problem

is, even the worst-case scenario presumed that there would be a

longer amount of rainfall by now, and that did not occur.

Over the long term, in answer to your question, we need to be

rethinking how we deal with droughts in this part of Africa, or in

any areas where droughts come often. Because if they do, I think

what we have to do is help provide support and assistance to the

governments to be able to react in a different way.

I heard an interesting review of this by Dr. Richard Leakey, who

is now the head of the Civil Service in Kenya, when I visited him

on this mission. He said, we in this part of Africa have to start

thinking about droughts as African winters and we have to change

our mind-sets. He said, you people in the north where the snow

comes, you know you are not going to grow food then, you know

you have problems with passable roads, so you make preparations

for that. Somehow, we have to rethink how we position food, how

we plan for food for the animals over the long term.

One thing that might help the process, as Secretary-General Kofi

Annan has not only asked me to go to work on this issue of the

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current drought, but he has also asked Mr. Diouf of FAO would he

work on some longer-term solutions. As yet, we don’t have those to

discuss.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Let me just ask, I think it is clear that we have

to do whatever we can to help the people who are suffering, no

matter how insane the policies of the government in a country may

be. But how do you find—how do you make sure that your involvement, our involvement, doesn’t increase the ability of the government to sustain the war? In a sense, they now can ignore several

hundred thousand people or more who need assistance because the

international community is rushing in, and so they can put all of

their resources and effort into fighting?

Ms. BERTINI. I think the drought, first of all, is bigger than the

government’s capacity to be able to handle it, even if there were

not a war, and that would be true for both the governments that

are involved in war. Of course, we are also providing assistance in

Kenya and Somalia and Uganda, Tanzania and elsewhere, and the

war is not an issue in most of those places. So I think the assistance is necessary, in any event.

Does it provide a bit of relief to the government that we are

sending this food, additional food because of the drought? Perhaps.

But the people who are drought-affected I believe need massive

amounts of food from us no matter what.

Do we have an alternative? I don’t think so. I think we have to

be sending the food and making sure that it is going to the

drought-affected people. That is our big challenge. But we have to

send the food, because the alternative is that innocent people will

suffer even more.

Mr. GEJDENSON. Thank you.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Gejdenson.

Mr. Royce, the Distinguished Chairman of our Subcommittee on

Africa.

Mr. ROYCE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you for

calling this hearing on famine in the Horn, and on America’s effort

to help. I do hope we have the opportunity to look at one of the

root causes of this famine, which is the wasteful war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Today, we are looking at a scenario in which both nations have

both spent to date, $1 billion. Every day that goes by, a half-million

is spent by Ethiopia alone on paying their troops. When we talk

about the lack of vehicles for transport, the infrastructure problems

in the famine context, I think it is important for us to realize that

those vehicles have been commandeered. They are at the front.

There is a reason why those vehicles are not there to transport humanitarian assistance.

This is the largest war in the world at the moment, and millions

are starving, and I don’t think we should pull any punches. This

is gruesome. It is a gross devaluing of human life by both sides.

The international community must speak out against this sad

chapter in Africa’s history, including imposing an arms embargo;

and I commend the administration for pushing that at the United

Nations.

Often, the war is described as senseless. The leaders of these two

countries were friends, so it goes. They fought side-by-side against

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the previous regime. So people ask, how could these two countries,

which showed so much promise, take up arms against one another,

and lead tens of thousands of their young men and women to their

deaths and help generate the crisis with a famine?

This is not senseless. The war has deep fundamentals. The countries are at odds over economic and political issues. The war has

cultural roots, and as for the territorial dispute, in my estimation,

it is a convenient ruse for both nations wishing to deflect attention

from the deeper issues of this war.

One of the deepest issues driving this carnage is that both governments see domestic advantage in making war; that is the sad

reality. Until we get beyond arguing over old maps and treaties,

tens of thousands of young men and women will continue to die,

and the world will hear about the perverse celebrations from both

capitals over how many enemy lives they have snuffed out. No, this

war has an all-too-real logic.

Finally, let me share a New York Times report of this Tuesday

from the trenches:

Ethiopian soldiers said they had found something in the trenches emphatically

not dead: a 1-month-old baby. Many women are in the Eritrean army and the baby

may have indicated just how this war has become a part of normal life in Ethiopia

and Eritrea over the last 2 years. ‘‘I got the feeling that he lived there,’’ said an

Ethiopian soldier as he watched the baby being carried from the trench.

Ms. BERTINI. Mr. Royce, I think, first of all, the humanitarian

work is affected by our inability to use the ports in Eritrea, so we

have to use the Djibouti and Berbera ports, and it would be easier

if we could use the ports in Eritrea.

Second, the people on the border are displaced; there are many

people who lived on the border in either country who are now displaced because of the war, and while that is not necessarily a

drought-affected area, it just does put many more people at risk because of what is happening in the war, and they are cut off from

all their normal facilities—food, medicine, everything else. So it

makes for a lot more people who need assistance, though not

drought-related.

On the drought-related side, in addition to the port, there are

some problems in terms of the distribution. There is a limited

trucking capacity, and there is interest on the part of the government to manage the trucking facilities. Some of this was done before the war, but it is much more controlled now, let’s say. I cannot

say whether that is a result of the war or not, but I can say that

we are working with the government to try to allow experts from

the United Nations, particularly the World Food Program, to be

able to help manage the distribution in certain parts, for instance,

of Ethiopia where we feel that we could do it relatively efficiently,

compared to the current operation of distribution.

So I think those are some of the areas where we have seen effects so far.

Mr. ROYCE. What are the people that you are helping saying

about the war? What is their observation?

Ms. BERTINI. When I visited with people in the countries, we

didn’t talk about the war; we talked about the people’s lives and

how they were struggling to keep their lives and their families together. So I think the war was very far away from some of them.

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Of course, in some communities, the husbands and fathers

weren’t there; they were perhaps at the war, but when we asked

where they were, that is not what we were told.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Ms. McKinney.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I have a statement that I would like to submit for the record.

Chairman GILMAN. Without objection, your full statement will be

made a part of the record.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you.

Ms. Bertini, first of all, I want to express my agreement with the

words that have been said before me.

But, Ms. Bertini, in your testimony, your written testimony, you

make the observation that the poorest people really don’t know

anything about the politics that are driving this; they are merely

the victims.

I am looking at a map of the affected places, and I believe Gode

is there. I hope you have the same map. I am looking at Djibouti

and Berbera, and it appears to me that by the use of those two

ports, you have access to more of the people who are hardest hit.

Could you talk to me about the use of those ports and the advantages? Because you have mentioned the use of the port of Assab,

but it is farther away from the areas that are hardest hit. Talk to

me.

Ms. BERTINI. The Djibouti and Berbera ports are closer to the

people in the southeastern part of Ethiopia, and they would be

used—particularly the Djibouti port—would in any event, but the

port in Assab is larger and the roads coming in from the port of

Assab are better than they are from Djibouti, which is why we

need to have money to upgrade the road, because with the heavy

trucks running on the road, upgrading would certainly help dramatically.

The same with Berbera. The roads are very bad coming in, but

as the Chairman pointed out, if we did upgrade them, including the

bridges as well as the roads, we would also have long term economic development of that region, that part of the world.

I think it is important to point out, though, if you look on that

map, that the most populated region the drought is affecting is actually north of Addis Ababa; and that is where the Assab port

could have been useful.

But I don’t want to demean the Djibouti and Berbera ports. They

are good ports and we need to use them; we just need to make

some upgrades to make them work better.

Let me say also that it is not like we could go in tomorrow and

use the Assab port anyway. There would need to be a lot of

changes made. Many of the workers who used to work in the Assab

port were Ethiopian, for instance, so there would need to be new

workers recruited and trained. We would have to bring in expatriate drivers and they would have to have some place to stay, both

in the port and over the border. There are a lot of issues that have

not been resolved anyway.

Ms. MCKINNEY. What do you know about the use of land mines

along that road leading to the Assab port?

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Ms. BERTINI. I asked the Eritreans that question, actually, and

they said that the road wasn’t mined, but it is an issue that we

would have to look very carefully at, not only the roads, but the

sides of the roads. Because if a truck needs repair, it goes off to

the side of the road; or is trying to avoid a goat in the middle of

the road, it goes off. One would have to have pretty sure knowledge

that it wasn’t mined.

So I don’t know; I haven’t asked, and it is something that needs

to be checked. Also, in the harbor.

Ms. MCKINNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Ms. McKinney.

Mr. Chabot.

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be relatively brief,

and if my questions have already been asked and answered, I

apologize, but I had another Committee that I had to be at.

So my main question is this: I just met with the Ambassador

from Ethiopia in my office the other day and we have met with the

Eritrean ambassador numerous times; and this war, all wars,

many wars are pointless, and this one seems to be particularly

pointless and a waste of human life and resources of countries

which ought to be putting these goods to other uses.

But could you elaborate somewhat on the connection between the

war and how this is going to affect the ability of the countries to

some extent deal with the famine themselves and what, if anything, the United States should be doing to resolve that?

Ms. BERTINI. The most important thing the United States should

be doing is, at the highest levels possible, trying to find peace for

the region and ensure an end to the war. From a humanitarian

perspective, let me say that the drought is larger than the war in

terms of the country’s ability to manage the assistance needed because of the drought. So we must be there, whether there is a war

or not.

However, there are some issues in terms of the transport capacity and the management of the trucks, the port availabilities, that

are affected by the war.

Mr. CHABOT. Thank you.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Chabot.

Mr. Ackerman.

Mr. ACKERMAN. Thank you very much. I appreciate all of your

great efforts in this work that you are doing.

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you.

Mr. ACKERMAN. You mentioned before that part of the problem

was the inability to access the ports of Massawa and Assab, or you

said the ports in Eritrea, leaving the impression that it was Eritrea. Is that the impression that you wish to leave, that it was the

Eritreans that were not enabling us to use those ports? Why can’t

we use the ports is the question.

Ms. BERTINI. First of all, let me say your voice was cutoff for just

a second, but I got the end of your question, which is why can’t we

use the port, specifically, why? Is that correct?

Mr. ACKERMAN. Yes. Who is not enabling us to use the ports that

are in Eritrea?

Ms. BERTINI. The message from the Eritrean Government is, you

can use the ports, you can use them tomorrow, or at least this was

11

the message to me. Whether or not this has changed because of the

outbreak of more fighting in the last week, I do not know. But the

message of the Eritreans was, you can use the port tomorrow.

The message from the Ethiopians was, we don’t want you to use

the port, and besides, we don’t think it is necessary to use the port,

because we think that for all of the food and everything else that

needs to come in, there is enough capacity at the Djibouti port,

with the Berbera port as back-up. I will relate a couple of things

on my discussions with both of them. In my discussions with the

Prime Minister of Ethiopia, we discussed this, and he agreed that

if his analysis is wrong, his analysis being that the Djibouti port

plus Berbera were enough, that I would come back to him and we

would discuss other options. He made it known that the Assab port

would be his last option to be discussed, but we would find another

way to be able to get food and other goods into the country.

On the Eritrean side, I talked with them about by what means

we could use the ports today, and there were several issues involved there. One is, there are some technical issues where there

would need to be some work done which the World Food Program

is doing—in the event that that port would be available. Massawa

is not a port we would be using, we would be using the Assab port.

On that side, we would need to, first of all, be assured that there

are no mines on the roads or alongside the roads.

Second, we would need to bring in an expatriate group of truckers in order to drive the trucks, and we would have to build housing in the port and across the border in Ethiopia for the truckers.

Then also, we have——

Mr. ACKERMAN. Is there an impediment to that? Would there be

somebody to prevent you from doing that?

Ms. BERTINI. No. Assuming both countries said it was all right,

no.

Mr. ACKERMAN. You don’t anticipate there would be objection to

that?

Ms. BERTINI. Not if they agreed we could use the port. That

would be part of the usage of the port. It would be required. We

couldn’t do it otherwise.

Then, can I continue? Would you like to hear the rest?

Mr. ACKERMAN. Yes.

Ms. BERTINI. Then we have the issue of staff in the port because

my understanding is that 75 percent of the stevedores, people who

worked in the port before were Ethiopian, so the port would have

to find more people.

So there are technical things that we are working on in order to

try to be ready should we be allowed to use Assab port.

But the other issue, Mr. Ackerman, is that some donors have

some reticence about sending food for Ethiopia through Eritrea, because 2 years ago, there were 70,000 tons of food which the Eritreans appropriated and used themselves that was destined for

Ethiopia. I raised this question with the Eritrean authorities also,

and their answer today is, they can assure us that they won’t do

that again.

Mr. ACKERMAN. Are you confident that there are sufficient trucks

for the relief effort in country?

12

Ms. BERTINI. No, there are not sufficient trucks for the relief effort.

Mr. ACKERMAN. Have you put out a call for additional trucks?

Ms. BERTINI. We have asked for additional resources, and the

World Food Program is bringing in 108 trucks that will be there

the 1st of June. They are from Sudan; we are leasing them from

the Sudan. Other private-sector people are bringing in additional

trucks and the World Food Program is bringing in 400 additional

trucks.

Mr. ACKERMAN. I just wanted to remind you that part of the

huge problem the last time around, in 1983–1984, was that there

were so many different kinds of trucks that the major problem became getting parts, because you were able to get parts for the

wrong trucks, and I just want to remind you to be alerted, to try

to coordinate trucks and parts from the same people.

An additional question that I have——

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. ACKERMAN. May I just have one more quick question?

Chairman GILMAN. Without objection.

Mr. ACKERMAN. The effectiveness of the Ethiopian Government’s

Disaster Prevention and Preparedness Commission in their response, how would you evaluate their ability to do the job?

Ms. BERTINI. I think that they are professional. I think that they

have been understanding of this problem and raising flags about it

and I think that they have some good people who are well-organized. It is, however, a bureaucracy, and like all bureaucracies, it

sometimes moves slower than some of us would like. But the

United Nations has a good relationship with them, and we hope

that we can work out any difficulties.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Mr. Meeks.

Mr. MEEKS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I too just want to join in thanking you for all of the work that

you have been doing in trying to prevent further disaster over in

Ethiopia.

Let me ask this question, though. It seems as though it was just

yesterday, although I know it was 16 years ago, when we were

faced with this kind of situation. I am wondering, with all of the

modern technology of today, and with all of the opportunities, with

reference to irrigation, et cetera, what are we doing or what has

been done or what can we do so that we can make sure that we

don’t have to react after the fact again; but we can prevent this

from happening beforehand by making sure that we are using our

modern technology so that people won’t be affected by droughts, as

they are now?

Ms. BERTINI. I think in this part of the world, we are always

going to find that there are people who are trying to deal with the

negative effects of the drought. I think that this year is different

than the mid-1980’s, because we—the governments, the United Nations, the United States—everybody is raising this flag relatively

early to say, we really need to get this assistance now.

But I think that your question goes much deeper than that, and

that is, what could we be doing to help the people over the long

term?

13

There are some kinds of public works, in fact, a lot of public

works that have been done, especially in Ethiopia and Eritrea,

since the mid-1980’s, but because the land mass is so large and

there are so many people, it will take many more decades before

a lot of that is useful for the whole population is completed.

But to give you an example, there have been a lot of projects

where the people themselves have worked on irrigation programs.

They have worked on terracing for erosion control, because sometimes when it rains it just wipes out so much top soil. Much of the

area where the livestock roam is very dry, it is very arid, and there

are big cracks that just form naturally in the ground. So there has

been a lot of work to bring rocks in. This is manual labor, it is very

tough. By the way, the women carry the rocks mostly, the men just

kind of put them in the ground.

But anyway, there has been a lot of work filling in a lot of these

crevices, because otherwise, it cuts off the space that the animals

would have to move around.

But again, it is such a big place that even a significant amount

of development work goes a relatively short way in terms of trying

to deal with a big problem like drought.

But when I think about the future, there are some kinds of

things that could be done, and I will point to two, because these

are two of the biggest areas that we saw where there were really

gaps, and one of them is in livestock management. Since so many

people, especially in this region, count on livestock for their livelihood, I think that much more could be done to bring in some expertise, to train people, local people in the regions, who could carry on

then this information about how to store food for your livestock,

how to find water when there is very little water available, how to

make a decision when to sell before your cows die, a lot of different

kinds of things that our livestock expert on the mission was telling

us about. So I would hope we could build a network to help with

that.

The other network that is desperately critical is the health and

water network. This is something that just doesn’t exist very much.

I don’t mean the wells as much as clean water sources. We went

to places throughout the region where if one was sick, one would

have to go many miles to find a clinic to be able to help. So you

don’t do that unless you are very sick, because there is no public

transportation. You go on the back of a donkey or somebody carries

you. It just means that without that kind of an extension of medical care—for basic medicines, basic medicines for diarrhea and

vaccinations, colds—many more people are at risk.

So I would answer you that those are two things that I think

could be done with a lot of effort but not too many resources.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentleman’s time has expired.

Let me just mention, we have a series of votes we are being interrupted with. It will be about 45 minutes of votes, so we are

going to have to reduce our time for each Member.

Mr. Payne, please be brief.

Mr. PAYNE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will be brief.

Let me certainly thank you, Ms. Bertini, for the fine work that

the World Food Program is doing. This is a problem. It seems to

me, we should really be further ahead. I just listened to what you

14

said, and certainly, I am sure that you would appreciate more

funding for the famine early warning system. We have given $7

million this year for that. But I think that is something that is cyclical.

There was a big famine in 1962–1963. I was in the Wollo Province and Dese City in the 1972–1973 famine and spent time there.

At that time, people were nomadic, though, and they were moving,

and no one really knew the famine was happening. It was, as a

matter of fact, referred to as the ‘‘unknown famine,’’ because the

administration of the country did not let out the fact that this famine was occurring; and it was very, very devastating, and I remember working up in that area back then. Then in the 1982–1983

famine, the same thing happened.

Thus we know that they are cyclical, we know that they come

about every 10 years.

It would appear to me that—it would seem like some of the

things that you have mentioned, but it seems to me that there

should be a real world effort in trying to come up with a plan—

because in the year 2008, 2009, or 2010, there is going to be another serious drought. We know that right now, as we are talking.

So that is just an appeal, and perhaps we can work on that here

through our State Department to push that with the OAU.

Let me just ask a quick question. On both Eritrea and Ethiopia,

sanctions have been suggested, and I wonder, would sanctions impact the food program?

Ms. BERTINI. As I understand the sanctions, they are for arms,

are they not?

Mr. PAYNE. Arms, and other—it will go beyond arms. I just wonder, has that been brought to your attention and what impact

might that have on your program?

Ms. BERTINI. I wouldn’t think it would have an impact, I would

say, unless there is a sanction on food and medicine and other

things that are in short supply. That would, in fact, have an impact

on the program.

Mr. Payne, I want to mention that the Secretary-General on the

30th of March when he announced my appointment as special

envoy, he also said he was creating a task force to be able to deal

with some of the longer-term issues of why droughts keep coming

and what we can do about them, particularly in this region, so, I

would refer you also to him and to Mr. Jacques Diouf, who has

been appointed to look into this.

Mr. PAYNE. Mr. Campbell and I have introduced a resolution 316

that deals with the famine and trying to get additional support

from our government.

Thank you very much.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Payne.

Ms. Bertini, we want to thank you for your time. We want to

thank the U.S. Embassy in London for its accommodations, and we

hope we can do more of this with you as time goes on. Hopefully,

there will be no more crises of this nature, but I am sure we will

be confronted with some.

I am going to recess our hearing until the votes are over. It will

probably be about a 45-minute period. We have one vote, plus 5-

15

minute votes. Thank you very much. The Committee stands in recess.

Ms. BERTINI. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

[Whereupon a short recess was taken.]

[Recess.]

Mr. TANCREDO [presiding]. The Committee will come to order.

I have a statement that I would like to read into the record before we proceed with testimony. This is the statement of Congressman Tom Campbell, submitted for the record at the hearing of the

House International Relations Committee on the looming famine in

Ethiopia.

I call today on Ethiopia to stop the massive attack recently launched on neighboring Eritrea and to return at once to the peace table under the auspices of the

Organization for American Unity.

As a Member of this Committee, and its Subcommittee on Africa, I traveled to

Eritrea and Ethiopia in 1998 shortly before the first outbreak of hostilities between

the two countries. Now, after 2 years of sporadic fighting followed by months of

stalemate, with troops in trenches opposing each other, Ethiopia launched an infantry assault on Friday, May 12, 2000, with more than a quarter of a million infantry

backed by armored tanks. The attack went well into Eritrean territory, and well beyond the remote, lightly populated area whose sovereignty has been contested ever

since the war began.

There is no victory in the shameless massacre of 25,000 soldiers in a 3-day period,

beginning last Friday at midnight. Over a year ago, I offered a resolution, along

with my distinguished colleague, Congressman Donald Payne, that called on both

countries to put down their weapons. That resolution, H. Con. Res. 46, passed the

House of Representatives on October 26, 1999, and is pending in the Senate.

Now, the world is watching while precious lives and resources are being spent in

battle, when both are needed, instead, to ensure there is a harvest this year. People

in both countries are facing starvation conditions, yet Ethiopia has chosen to extend

this war. I am heart-broken, as I had such hopes for Ethiopia’s development, such

pride in their accomplishments, and maintain such love for her people.

It has not been easy to focus America’s attention upon the needs of Africa. This

war between two of Africa’s poorest countries gives us a perfect excuse for those who

would turn away and continue to do so.

I will enter the statement into the record.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Campbell appears in the appendix.]

I will now introduce Mr. Hugh Parmer. We welcome Mr. Parmer,

Assistant Administrator of the Bureau for Humanitarian Response

of the U.S. Agency for International Development. Mr. Parmer’s

bureau coordinates disaster assistance and emergency response. He

recently returned from a trip to the Horn.

We are very interested in hearing your findings, Mr. Parmer,

particularly with regard to the logistical hurdles of getting adequate supplies of food into the remote parts of southeast Ethiopia.

STATEMENT OF THE HONORABLE HUGH Q. PARMER, ASSISTANT ADMINISTRATOR, BUREAU FOR HUMANITARIAN RESPONSE, U.S. AGENCY FOR INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

Mr. PARMER. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to come and appear before the Committee today. I want

to thank this Committee and, in fact, the entire Congress for the

broad bipartisan support which humanitarian operations around

the world have received. Since the Bureau for Humanitarian Response, which I head, contains both the Office of Foreign Disaster

Assistance and the Food for Peace office, we are the major responder—the 911 responder, if you like—for the U.S. Government.

16

I spent 14 days, beginning on March the 11th in the Horn of Africa, and I would like to, if I may, share with you some of my experiences there. I will of course submit written testimony which will

be more formal in nature, and I will be glad to answer any questions that Members of the Committee might have.

If I could go to that second map, you can see, of course, the Horn

of Africa identified on the map in front of us. If I could make the

second microphone work, we will see if I do better with it than I

did the first.

My trip took me first to Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, and from Addis

Ababa into the southern part of the country to a town called Gode.

Gode is in the Somalia region. Its inhabitants and people in the

surrounding area are pastoralists by nature; they travel with their

herds. It is the area which was identified to us as the most heavily

impacted by the drought.

Certainly, when we arrived there, we had reason to believe that

that was an accurate description. The first impression that you got

in Gode, as you stepped off the aircraft into a car and headed toward town, was the large number of livestock that were dead and

rotting in the fields. Over on the monitor we just gave you a bit

of a picture of some dead cattle that we came across as we drove

into town.

We were told that virtually all of the cattle in the region had

died. Sheep and goat casualties were in the 70 and 80 percent

range; even the camels, who are the most resilient beasts that

these pastoralists have in their herds, were beginning to die, and

that problem was compounded by an Anthrax epidemic that had

broken out among the cattle.

In Gode itself, we saw a stark, border-like kind of town, dusty

and dry; there was no green in the entire region. What we saw in

Gode were two things. First, a therapeutic feeding center where

small children who are qualified by a height-weight ratio were

brought into the center and provided with necessary nutrients to

treat their malnutrition. That center had 100 children enrolled in

it at the time that I arrived there, 10 of whom, however, of the

original enrollees had died in the week before my arrival.

You will see a slightly different number in my testimony, because

other Members of our parties got different numbers—but the local

emergency committee people told me that 91 children under 5

years of age had died in the town of Gode in the 2 weeks before

my arrival there.

There was also a supplemental feeding center. At that supplemental feeding center, there were approximately 850 children that

were being served. When I was there, there were another 500

mothers and children in a crowd outside the center waiting for

their children to be measured and weighed to see if they could

qualify.

To give you a little bit of the human sense of it, I talked to a

woman who had a very malnourished child in her arms. I asked

her about her child through an interpreter, to which she replied,

‘‘Well, this was one of my three children. I had three children when

I arrived here 2 months ago; two of them have died.’’ My question

then was, ‘‘Aren’t you receiving assistance and help from the govVerDate 11-MAY-2000 10:37 Nov 14, 2000 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00020 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6602 67167.TXT HINTREL1 PsN: HINTREL1
17

ernment?’’ She said ‘‘Yes, they are giving us wheat. My babies can’t

eat wheat.

The supplemental feeding center was understaffed; it had insufficient food commodities; they were feeding at half the recommended

level for the children.

Upon my departure from Gode that day, I ordered a United

States-funded civilian airlift of the proper types of food, F–75 formula, Corn-Soy-blend (CSB) mix and high-protein biscuits to be

landed in Gode. They arrived within a week.

We visited a small town near Gode, just to get a sense of what

was happening in the more rural areas. There were similar circumstances. I know our time is limited, and so I won’t try to give

you every anecdote that I ran across, other than to say that, in this

town, we actually saw dead camels to illustrate again the tremendous losses in the only asset that these people have.

From Gode, we went to the north to the area around Lalibela.

This is the area which was the epicenter of the 1984 famine in

which over 1 million people starved to death. From there we took

about a 2-hour drive out to a place called Wadhwan. What we saw

along that drive were conditions that were considerably better than

what we had seen in the south, but certainly marginal.

One of the things we came across was a group of people who

were selling their livestock at a spontaneous market. When you

talk to farmers about why they are selling their oxen when their

ox is the only animal they have to plow the fields, they tell you it

is so that they can get a little bit of money and hopefully make it

through the period until the major rains. You say, ‘‘Well, then,

what are you going to do with no oxen?’’ They report that they are

going to lease their land to someone who has animals.

Now, I am from Texas. My family is from the south. My grandfather was a sharecropper. What I learned was that sharecroppers,

people who farm the land for someone else, were the poor people

in the society and the wealthier people were those who owned the

land. It is the reverse situation in this part of Ethiopia. The person

who has the animal is wealthy; the person who has the land—it

is a reverse kind of a lease environment.

The situation up there was not as bad as in the south, but what

we found was that, in the area that we were, virtually everyone

was receiving food assistance, and everyone was dependent on food

assistance.

There are two rains in this part of the world. The ‘‘meher’’ or the

long rains, and the so-called ‘‘belg’’ rain, or the short rain, which

was supposed to have occurred immediately prior to our arrival in

the area, had not occurred. Therefore, the belg crop upon which

these people in the north are largely dependent had not occurred;

there was no crop.

I went to, as you can see over on the monitor to my left, a site

where the government was distributing United States-contributed

grain to a crowd of about 2,000 people. With an interpreter, I

talked to that group of people, and as I talked with them, I discovered that this distribution, this once-a-month distribution, was all

they had to eat unless they slaughtered their livestock, which some

of them were doing. But as you can see, this is a healthier group

of people than what we saw in Gode. Nonetheless, not only was

18

this the only distribution they were receiving, but they were at

half-rations of distributed food, that is, U.S. food distributed

through the Ethiopia Emergency Committee. These were people

who were not in an immediate, prefamine condition, but these are

people whose existence was very marginal, and if they had any

interruption in the supply of food aid, they would quickly find

themselves in prefamine conditions.

I went to Kenya, I did not get into the northern region where the

drought has had a similar effect as in southern Ethiopia, but I did

have an opportunity to meet with a number of people from southern Sudan. The one piece of good news in the trip is that Sudan

this year has had one of the best harvests in recent times. In fact,

the need for food assistance, although still there in Sudan, is less

than it has been in subsequent years, and that is a good thing in

that those commodities are badly needed in other places.

I went from Kenya to Baidoa in Somalia. Just a brief aside, Mr.

Chairman. It was a rather remarkable visit. I was greeted in terms

of my representation of the United States, like a hero. People said

to me, ‘‘We will never forget here in Baidoa what the United States

of America did when you led the intervention to prevent the famine

back in the early 1990’s.’’

The governor of the area said to me, ‘‘You should consider this

your second home. We know you have been told it is unsafe here.’’

I was the first American official in southern Somalia since the

withdrawal of the peacekeepers. He said, ‘‘I know you have been

told it is unsafe; this part of Somalia is the safest place in the

world for you.’’ He also said, ‘‘First George Bush came and now you

have come.’’ I said, ‘‘There is a bit of a difference in our pay scale.’’

We found the people in Baidoa, that was the city of death in the

Somali famine, to be in remarkably good shape now. There was

water in the stream in the town, people were watering their animals, the animals looked healthy, the children looked healthy. I

was very favorably impressed with the condition of the people

there.

In a nearby rural village, the people still were in pretty good

shape, but obviously their condition was more marginal. Again,

pastoralists in this area are dependent upon their flocks and their

herds. The animals did look good, but they were good because of

a UNICEF-funded water project that produced water.

We then went to Djibouti. Djibouti, of course, is the area and the

port through which our logistics are having to operate. We visited

the port, we talked to logistics people. I think I got a reasonable

assessment of the capacity of that port at the time I was there, and

I will be glad to answer questions about that.

I think the best way to describe it is that theoretically, the port

of Djibouti will handle the commodities that we need to move into

the region during the next few months. But I emphasize ‘‘theoretically,’’ because our experience is that in a humanitarian relief operation, nothing works at 90 percent capacity. That would be required for the port of Djibouti to successfully handle all of the materials coming in.

In Somalia, I did not get to Berbera, but I have sent an assessment team there. That port can handle a little bit of the overflow

that might be required out of Djibouti. The capacities will be

19

roughly 150,000 to 180,000 metric tons and 25,000 to 30,000 metric

tons out of Berbera.

Finally, I went to Eritrea. Eritrea had had a bit more rain, a bit

more of a harvest, than anywhere in Ethiopia at that time. But at

the same time, they do have drought conditions along the coast,

and there are approximately half a million people who have been

war-affected prior to the most recent conflict and who have moved

into internally displaced person camps.

The observation I had there was that the Eritrean Government

had done a remarkably good job from a humanitarian perspective

in terms of taking care of the people in those camps. I saw people

in those camps who had been displaced from their homes for 22

months and who were in the second location to which they had

been moved. Yet the camp had an operating school and an operating clinic. The children, although they might have respiratory

troubles and reported diarrheal troubles, looked well-nourished.

They certainly were active and running around and wanted to

come and see us and talk with us. There were complaints in these

camps about the quality of the food, but not the quantity of the

food. They wanted more spices, and I told them we didn’t do spices,

although I am from Texas where we have quite a propensity for

that kind of thing.

To back up just a step, my impression of the government’s response in Ethiopia was also favorable. These people had drawn

down their grain reserves in an effort to help their own people.

They had gone into the open market and bought 100,000 metric

tons of grain from the equatorial area of Eritrea, the eastern area

of Ethiopia, which this year had a grain surplus, more than what

was needed to feed its own population. I would like to think that

that is at least partially the result of good international assistance

spearheaded by USAID in the development arena, encouraging

these folks to develop a market economy. You have to remember

that just a very few years ago Ethiopia and Eritrea were a Marxist,

centralized economy.

After my trip to the Horn, I went from the Horn to Europe. I

know that Congress, as we are, is always concerned about the

United States not sharing an oversupply or an overcapacity of the

burden. At that point in time, there were no European pledges that

had been made for assistance to the Horn of Africa.

While in Europe, I met with the European Union representatives, both of their counterparts to the Food for Peace office and to

our Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance. Both of them indicated

that they would be responsive.

You know, you take so many trips that you feel you can’t measure the productivity. But in that trip, after my departure, I was

pleased to find that the Europeans upped their pledge to 432,000

metric tons of food. I visited briefly in France with the foreign minister’s humanitarian coordinator. A week after I returned from

talking with him, the French airlifted the same kind of commodities into southern Ethiopia that we had previously airlifted, and

the French announced the availability of the use of their military

facilities in Djibouti as logistical assistance to the international humanitarian relief operation.

20

I think my time has expired, Mr. Chairman, but I just wanted

to give you some reflection of the human side of what we saw

there, as opposed to just the numbers that we usually talk about.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Parmer appears in the appendix.]

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Parmer, for giving

us a good overview.

When you returned from your recent trip, you stated that without the use of the port of Assab in Eritrea, you didn’t think that

famine could be averted in that part of the world. Given the renewed warfare, do you have any more current assessment with regard to that?

Mr. PARMER. I think the operative word is ‘‘guarantee.’’ As I said,

theoretically, the two ports that are available to us, the port in

Djibouti and the port in Berbera, provide enough theoretical capacity to meet the need, and we are working very hard to enhance the

capacity of those ports. We have contributed $600,000 to the World

Food Program ports’ renewal operation for the improvement operation in Djibouti.

But I would not retract the statement I made. If we had that

third alternative, I think we could guarantee that sufficient commodities could be delivered to help the people. I think we can get

there without it. I don’t want to be too negative, because I think

we can use the existing facilities, but it is more difficult.

Chairman GILMAN. Mr. Parmer, how much are the French contributing to the port renovation in Djibouti, and how much are we

contributing?

Mr. PARMER. We have contributed just over $600,000. I don’t

know the amount of the French contribution. Let me see if one of

my colleagues does.

I will have to get that for you, Mr. Chairman.

[The information referred to appears in the appendix.]

Chairman GILMAN. What is our total contribution, to date, with

regard to Ethiopia and Eritrea?

Mr. PARMER. The total contribution, to date, for Ethiopia is almost a quarter of a billion dollars. I would say our pledge and contribution—that is, what we are committed to do, as well as what

has actually arrived—I would estimate another $50 million for Eritrea. That may be a tad high.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you.

Ms. Lee.

Ms. LEE. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you, Mr. Parmer, for your testimony and for everything

that you are doing to help in this major crisis on the continent.

I am reminded today, and I am sure we all remember our friend

and colleague, Congressman Mickey Leland, a good friend. Also,

Joyce Williams and his delegation, who were actually killed in

Ethiopia during a plane crash in the late 1980’s; and their mission

during that time was to take food to feed starving children in Ethiopia. Their unfortunate and untimely deaths focused this country’s

attention on the plight of hunger and starvation in the Horn of Africa.

I want to ask you a couple of things with regard to our sustained

effort during that time in terms of humanitarian assistance. What

21

has USAID, in terms of the amount of money, done for the last 10

or 15 years? Has it been constant, consistent? Has it gone up or

down? What has our contribution level been and how has it fluctuated?

Mr. PARMER. If I could differentiate between emergency humanitarian support and development assistance, our development assistance has been relatively constant. Our humanitarian assistance, of course, goes up and down, based on the circumstances that

we find.

This is a very poor country that is chronically drought-affected.

So in a year like 1998, when they had a reasonably good harvest,

you might not need as much assistance. But in a year like this, or

1994 where we had drought conditions, the humanitarian assistance goes way up.

Ms. LEE. The famine early warning system, when was that set

up? I know it is supposed to provide early warning of a drought.

It is my understanding that reports were issued in June or July

1999 indicating that a drought condition was upon us.

How do we—how did we respond to that? Was it in an expeditious fashion? Did we wait a while? What did we do?

Mr. PARMER. The answer to your first question is that the famine

early warning system was created after the 1984 drought, and I

think we could pretty well demonstrate that it has been responsible

for—not for there not being any more droughts, but for there not

being any more mass famines at the time we saw.

We actually received reports from our USAID mission out there

before the July report came out, that the belg rains, the short season rains, had failed; and in June, a disaster was declared by the

Ambassador, and we began trying to respond. In July, we contributed 28,000 metric tons of emergency food through the World Food

Program. We did an initial assessment in Ethiopia and Djibouti. In

August, we contributed another 21,000 metric tons of food through

the World Food Program, and also contributed $400,000 to procure

the special kinds of foods that are necessary for malnourished children. It is always the weakest people in a community that suffer

the most from one of these crises.

We went on then to provide additional funding to Save the Children, to UNICEF; and again, in August, another 15,000 metric ton

of foods went to Catholic Relief Services. Finally, in September,

57,000 metric tons were provided. So we moved forward, and I

think that is the reason that, at this point, the drought-related

deaths can be measured maybe in the hundreds.

Now, that sounds terrible to say that hundreds of deaths represent any kind of victory, but in a country where we saw over a

million people starve to death in 1984, that is victory. This is a

place that is chronically food-insecure. People die every year from

malnutrition and malnutrition-related illnesses. But I think our response was prompt. We could not predict the extent of the problem

that occurred when the belg rains fell again this spring. The numbers had been inclining upward, but they suddenly took off on a

very steep curve.

But again, I think we are ahead of it to the extent of preventing

the kind of catastrophe that they have seen over there in the past.

22

Ms. LEE. How has the war impacted, delayed or hampered our

efforts and the efforts of other donors?

Mr. PARMER. So far, the first thing I want to make clear is that

the United States never made a linkage between the behavior of

Ethiopia and Eritrea in their conflict and our commitment to provide humanitarian assistance to people who otherwise have gone

without. So there was no delay, at least on the part of the U.S.

Government, that was related to political or policy issues.

The worst part, the epicenter of the near-famine that we are facing over there, is in the south, and the war is in the north. So at

this point, the war has not physically impaired our ability to deliver goods. Now, what we worry about is the availability of sufficient trucking capacity to move the stuff to where it is needed.

I met with Prime Minister Meles in Ethiopia and expressed that

concern to him. He told me directly that that would not occur. The

words he used were, ‘‘We are not going to let 1984 happen again.

We look upon that as our holocaust, and I will not allow trucks to

be diverted from the humanitarian effort to support whatever military operation might be going on. In fact,’’ said he, ‘‘I would do the

opposite if I had to. I would divert military trucks to carry humanitarian food.’’

Now, I say that at the same time that I talked to our Ambassador in Djibouti the day before yesterday, and there weren’t any

trucks in Djibouti. I understand our Ambassador in Ethiopia has

talked to Prime Minister Meles, and he has indicated that he

would immediately see to the problem. I got a report just before I

came over that indicated that truck availability was opening up

again.

Ms. LEE. Thank you very much.

Chairman GILMAN. The gentlewoman’s time has expired. Thank

you, Ms. Lee.

Mr. Tancredo.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. You mentioned, Mr.

Parmer, that we have provided a quarter-billion dollars in emergency aid in Ethiopia. How much do you think we would have to

give in order that they would not—is there any way that we can

buy them out of doing what they are doing I suppose is the bottom

line?

Mr. PARMER. You mean from the point of view of their conflict,

Congressman?

Mr. TANCREDO. That’s right, yes.

Mr. PARMER. I am in the humanitarian response business. I

think maybe that is a question that should be better addressed—

would be better addressed to my colleagues at the State Department.

Mr. TANCREDO. I know you have a baccalaureate in political

science. Maybe I will test that instead.

Mr. PARMER. I think my view would be what I expressed earlier,

and that is, that it should remain the policy of the United States

not to link humanitarian assistance with politics, whether to encourage a country to do things that we want them to do or discourage them from things we don’t want them to do. We are really not

in the business of helping countries; we are in the business of helping people.

23

I mean, I know the discomfort that we all feel when we provide

humanitarian assistance to a people who are fighting a war. We

think to ourselves, why should we be providing assistance when

they are expending resources on something else? But the kid I saw

in that Somali mother’s arms in southern Ethiopia didn’t know

whether his country was at war or not, the mother didn’t care

whether her country was at war or not, and she wasn’t going to get

any food if the United States of America and France, it turned out,

hadn’t airlifted food into Gode.

So it is not an easy situation.

Mr. TANCREDO. Of course not, and the question was at least partially rhetorical, I suppose.

But it is intriguing in a way, because we look at the extent to

which we go—commendably, I think—to provide that kind of relief

in this situation, making sure that both sides are not—making sure

that our ability to provide that aid to both sides is not impeded by

the conflict. Then it is impossible for me to ignore a situation over

which you have no control, but in a way just thinking aloud about

Sudan and our inability or lack of desire to provide that same degree of support for people there. I mean, you have problems with—

logistical problems with people blocking the aid effort.

But nonetheless, all that aside, the recent demonstrations outside the embassy, to what extent—and again, I am drawing on

your political science degrees and background perhaps more than

anything else——

Mr. PARMER. That was a long time ago.

Mr. TANCREDO. I saw it. I picked it out in your background.

What was the basis for those? What do you think prompted that

kind of response outside of our Embassy?

Mr. PARMER. My guess would be that the demonstrations of that

type probably did not just occur spontaneously and that the Government of Ethiopia was unhappy with the positions that we were

taking in the United Nations. That is one of the things I learned

over there, and that is, that both sides can be very unhappy with

you at the same time.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you.

Mr. PARMER. I might add, though, that we are providing this

year 125,000 metric tons of food assistance for Sudan, and as I said

earlier, fortunately, the one piece of really good, positive news I got

out of my trip over there was the report from southern Sudan that

they had had a pretty good harvest and that they were in need of

less food assistance than they have been in prior years.

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you very much for your testimony. I have

no other questions.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Tancredo.

Did you have a further question? Ms. Lee.

Ms. LEE. Very quickly, you didn’t mention Italy in terms of it

being a donor country. Just knowing a bit about the history, can

you talk about that a little bit in terms of what their role is, or

has been, or is not?

Mr. PARMER. Somewhere in these papers I have a list of the donations by country. Since I don’t know exactly how to put my

hands on it, Ms. Lee, perhaps I could send that to you.

24

But I will say that I did meet with officials of the Italian Government, when I was in Rome to talk with Ms. Bertini and the World

Food Program people. The Italian Government officials indicated

that they not only had made contributions, in particular, to Eritrea

which, as you know, was a long-time colony of Italy, ever since

1900, but also that they intended to make additional contributions.

I can get you the exact numbers.

[The information referred to appears in the appendix.]

Ms. LEE. Thank you.

Chairman GILMAN. Thank you, Mr. Parmer. We thank you for

being here today.

We will, before proceeding with our next panel, I had to forgo my

opening statement while Ms. Bertini was waiting to go on. I just

would like to make a few opening remarks with regard to this

hearing.

Thursday last week, shortly after midnight, Ethiopian troops

launched a major military offensive against Eritrea, and according

to the sketchy reports we have received, wave after wave of Ethiopian infantry threw themselves against fortified Eritrean positions.

Eventually, they were successful at breaking through the Eritrean

defenses, and the Ethiopian armed forces have now penetrated far

into Eritrean territory and appear to be trying to outflank the main

body of Eritrean troops on the border.

We do not know yet what the death toll of this latest round of

fighting will be, but it will likely be tens of thousands. Notwithstanding the Organization of African Unity peace proposal that has

been on the table for over a year and which both countries claim

to accept, it is apparent that Ethiopia has been planning this attack for a long period of time.

I have suspected for some time that Ethiopia’s leadership favored

a military solution to the conflict, and in January I wrote in the

Washington Post that, ‘‘Ethiopia appears prepared to reignite their

war. It has become clear that Ethiopia is hostile to the peace agreement and is stalling for time to recruit and train tens of thousands

of additional troops.’’

After that article appeared, I received hundreds of angry letters.

The Ethiopian Foreign Minister himself launched a very personal,

public attack against me. Great pains were taken to point out that

Ethiopia had not rejected the peace plan and that its objections

were merely technical. Again and again, I was told that Ethiopia

had no intention of restarting the war.

For example, the Ethiopian ambassador wrote, ‘‘First and foremost, my government is committed to ending the war through negotiations. We have, without condition, supported the OAU framework as a tool for ending the war and will continue to do so.’’

For the sake of the thousands who have died over this past week

and the thousands more who will likely perish in this senseless

war, we sincerely wish that my suspicions had been wrong.

The war is inextricably linked to the famine, which is the focus

of our hearing today, and in southeastern Ethiopian parts of the

central islands, food shortages have reached a critical stage. Eight

million of Ethiopia’s 60 million citizens are now at risk of starvation. Nearly 1 billion metric tons of food are going to be required,

and our nation is prepared to supply a portion of it.

25

The cycle of famine in Ethiopia will not be broken, however, as

long as the government continues to spend a third of its budget on

its military. The International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that Ethiopia spent $467 million on the military just last

year, a dramatic increase over previous years.Economic development efforts have been put on hold while scarce resources are committed to their war effort.

Let us be very plain. What is taking place in Ethiopia today is

a man-made disaster. Without the war, there would not be a famine on this scale. The decisions of the Governments of Ethiopia and

Eritrea have directly contributed to the dire conditions of their populations. This is the same pattern we saw in the early 1980’s when

the horrific Dergue regime under Mengestu used famine to make

war on its own people. How regrettable that the current Governments of Eritrea and Ethiopia, which had valiantly fought against

the Dergue, now share this aspect with it.

We thank our witness for joining us today, and we look forward

to the testimony of our other witnesses.

Thank you again, Mr. Parmer. We appreciate your patience.

Mr. PARMER. Thank you.

Chairman GILMAN. We will now call our next panel.

Our next panel includes two distinguished witnesses, Dr. Stephen Morrison, who is no stranger to our Committee, having

served as a staff member of the African Affairs Subcommittee from

1987 to 1991.

Welcome, Dr. Morrison.

After launching USAID’s Office of Transition Initiatives, Dr.

Morrison joined the State Department’s policy planning staff and

recently assumed the directorship of the African Studies Program

at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Joining him is Mr. Gary Shaye, Vice President of International

Programs at Save the Children. In a 25-year record of service with

that distinguished organization, Mr. Shaye has served in the Dominican Republic, in Nepal and Bhutan. His current responsibilities include Save the Children’s operations in some 46 countries.

Thank you both for being with us today.

Chairman GILMAN. Dr. Morrison, you may summarize your statement, and your full statement will be made a part of the record.

The same for Mr. Shaye.

I am going to ask Mr. Tancredo if he would chair this panel,

since I have to go on to another meeting.

Mr. TANCREDO. Please proceed.

STATEMENT OF J. STEPHEN MORRISON, Ph.D., DIRECTOR, AFRICAN STUDIES PROGRAM, CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

Dr. MORRISON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am very pleased to

be here today. I was asked to prepare some comments yesterday on

the broader political and military context in which this famine is

unfolding. I will do my best and attempt to be brief in a situation

which is highly fluid, highly uncertain, and highly dangerous today

in the evolving war between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Before I begin, I would like to put our session here in a bit of

context. Seventeen years ago, when the 1983–1984 famine was first

26

beginning to break, we had no AID mission in Addis. The issue of

effective humanitarian relief in the Horn of Africa had not surfaced

in several years, over a decade.

It was a very divisive issue within Congress at that time. Within

16 months, there had been one very important bipartisan congressional delegation drawn from this Committee that resulted in a $1

billion supplemental that was also put forward with very strong bipartisan support. That was an essential event in building the bipartisan coalition around effective humanitarian assistance globally. It was rooted in that phenomenon and in that motion.

I believe that the leadership here in Congress remains critical,

and I think there is much that you should be quite proud of. Many

of the principles, practices and the norms of humanitarian assistance were forged in that period and applied globally.

I think we also, as this famine unfolds in Ethiopia and Eritrea

against a backdrop of war, we have several very important advantages or assets that we need to continue to remind ourselves of.

First, I have mentioned the bipartisan coalition in support of effective humanitarian action. Second is the administration itself.

USAID, both here in Washington and through the leadership of the

Bureau of Humanitarian Response and our missions in both

Asmara and Addis are extremely capable and focused on this, and

I think they deserve to be commended for what has been done so

far. This is a very professionalized operation, it is very quick off the

mark, and it has been very effective for this cycle of famine. The

Eritrean and Ethiopian Governments both have capacities they did

not have 17 years ago, and the regional infrastructure, as weakened and difficult as it is, still permits some quick action.

Now I would just like to quickly turn to a few comments. First

of all, we should keep clear, as we look at the war and the question

of how the war impacts the humanitarian situation, we should

keep clear that the responsibility for this intense, expansive war

that resumed last Friday and that now reaches into Eritrea’s interior—that the responsibility rests with the two adversaries and

them alone. We and other external players, such as the OAU and

the U.N. Security Council, are not the cause of this protracted 2-

year crisis, now compounded by famine that threatens to escalate

and endure in ways that will gravely weaken each State and damage the already frail surrounding region. Each side at varying

points has attempted to lay blame upon outsiders for their failure

to resolve the regional border dispute. We should disregard these

diversions and focus clearly upon the base calculations of the two

parties.

Indeed, the administration deserves special credit, I believe, for

the sustained creative efforts that have been made by Special

Envoy Anthony Lake, Assistant Secretary Rice, and NSE Director

Gayle Smith, along with their Algerian counterparts acting on behalf of the OAU. This has been an exceptional instance of diplomatic investment. This has amounted to a full court press over a

period of well over 2 years now; it is an enormous, continual and

diversified investment. It has not worked, admittedly, but I think

we should keep ourselves very aware of what this investment, the

scale and the scope and the integrity of it, is.

27

These outside interventions have revealed the grave limits to

high-level diplomacy, and they have raised very troubling questions

about what strategies and approaches can work in circumstances

in which the parties themselves are so resistant to a negotiated

settlement. We are at risk right now of drawing a conclusion that

we should not make this kind of investment in this type of crisis

zone. I would argue against that. The fact that we have not had

success up to now does not mean that this type of serious, diplomatic, bilateral and multilateral investment cannot work elsewhere

and cannot work again in the future in terms of the Ethiopian and

Eritrean crisis.

Our efforts diplomatically have put forward a very important

paradox in terms of the Ethiopia-Eritrea conflict. These two adversaries are in essential agreement on a framework to the border war

that began in May 1998. But the closer that these parties came to

final closure over this dispute over a barren stretch of ground, the

harder it seemed for them to finally sign off on that agreement.

The adversaries appear even more starkly incapable of having the

will and the capacity to close this deal.

This has led people to begin questioning what is the nature of

this conflict. It has led to the conclusion that this is, in fact—what

had originally been understood as a border dispute is, in fact,

something larger. It is a war between two highly interdependent

states. It is a war that has all of the complex motivations and volatile emotions and deep hostilities that that implies.

We have to begin to ask, where does this new phase of warfare

lead? What is at stake in terms of U.S. interests? Wyhat are the

policies we should pursue?

I would argue that based on past history, sadly, there is a very

high probability that this war will drag on and transmute along

new fronts. Ambitions of each side are highly uncertain, but they

reach well beyond the trench lines and disputed ground around

Badme, Zalambessa and Assab.

There will be a strong impulse, I would also argue, in the coming

months to make use of air power, particularly on the Ethiopian

side, where there has been a massive investment in air capacity

and where Ethiopia now enjoys considerable superiority. I want to

remind you that just 2 years ago this month, both sides, as this

dispute broke, engaged in aerial bombardments of civilian populations.

This fight that is under way right now is consciously over something much larger. It is rooted in national honor, historical grievances, and the blow-back from the separation 7 years ago this

month between Ethiopia and Eritrea into two separate nations. It

is about—this war is about two nations who have altogether lost

trust in one another and have lost any vision of how they are going

to relate to one another in peace.

It will be very difficult to move back from where we are today

to the earlier focus upon a border dispute along a line of ground

in a barren part of Ethiopia and Eritrea. The game has changed.

We are going to need to look at this problem in a much different

way.

Disturbingly, this expansive war has certain echoes with the

1970’s and 1980’s. Worsening conflict is unfolding parallel with

28

deepening famine. An international arms bazaar continues apace

today as we speak. Fortunately, we had the Security Council pass

the embargo last night. This bazaar, this arms bazaar has enabled

and consolidated hard-line interests on both sides and it has fed

the dilution of military triumph.

When both sides entered this war last Friday, military commanders on each side were optimistic that they would see results.

Each side entered this conflict confident that they would get what

they wanted. There is something bizarre and odd and deeply disturbing about that.

We have to pay attention here, as we have in Angola and Sierra

Leone and other crisis areas, to the reckless marketing of weapons

to both sides, often by the same vendors. This has fed the worst

tendencies of both sides, and it has certainly not led to deterrents,

it has led to the opposite. The war is reordering the resurrounding

region in very important ways. It distracts and weakens regional

pressure upon Khartoum to respect its human rights, to end its internal wars, and to end its support of international terrorism. It

encourages new vulnerabilities to attack for Djibouti and it encourages arms transfers into already chaotic zones of Somalia.

How should we think about the war’s impact on humanitarian

operations? There has been some comment about Massawa and

Assab, the lack of access to these ports and on limits on trucking.

I want to add a few other points.

The war in the famine zones is geographically segregated. Hugh

Parmer made this point. This is very unfortunate. That means that

most of the relief that is going into Ethiopia or Eritrea is not going

to be subject to the predations of armed units as we have seen in

countless other wars. This is a different type of war, and we are

fortunate there. We will be able, I think, to guard the integrity of

humanitarian operations far more in this instance than in many

others.

The exception, where we need to be thinking about down the

road—the exception is where the war and the humanitarian crisis

will intersect, which is presently in the interior areas of Eritrea.

If fighting persists there and if it results, as would seem to be virtually inevitable, in massive displacement of civilians, we are going

to have an emerging humanitarian crisis in the middle of an armed

conflict as we have seen in the Balkans, in Angola and in Sierra

Leone, and there we will be back into a very difficult and complex

game.

I want to add also, there are hundreds of thousands of displaced

Ethiopians in Northern Tigray along the border areas. As the war

has resumed, one should be asking, to what degree this population

has been redisplaced and access to them disturbed?

If war persists and intensifies, we can anticipate further forced

expulsions in both Addis and Asmara of Eritrean and Ethiopian

nationals respectively. We should be very vigilant on human rights

grounds to this phenomenon. Close to 100,000 have already been

expelled forcibly.

The railroad and road channels from Djibouti are the path along

which both the humanitarian assistance and the armaments flow.

There is a close overlap. It is very difficult to disentangle arms and

humanitarian relief along the road and rail links leading from

29

Djibouti into Ethiopia. I would argue that this makes for a very alluring target on military grounds.

I have spoken to some of our officials here to try and get some

estimate of how real is the risk of attack upon that line if this war

intensifies, but I think it is a real threat and we need to look more

closely at it. Mention has been made of the prospect of aerial bombing of civilian targets. If it moves into urban environments like

Asmara or northern Ethiopian urban environments, you could

cause very serious damage to those populations in a very short

time. If Assab comes under siege as many have argued it might

and it suffers extensive damage to its port and other infrastructure, that will have long-term consequences for the annual fertilizer, fuel and grain shipments into Ethiopia.

I want to make one final comment, which is that Somaliland,

which has provided the port of Berbera, which for years was a refueling station and air base for the United States during the cold

war, Somaliland is a state-led port of relative stability that has

begun to function and has been searching for the opportunities to

engage donors and others in support of their efforts, with minimal

success up to now. Paradoxically, this famine is bringing resources

and engagement there. One hopes that this will result in a positive

change and reinforcement of positive efforts that are under way in

Somaliland.

Last, final comments on where do we go with policy? I think our

interests in this conflict are to adopt a measured detachment from

each of the adversaries. To address the grave humanitarian demands, while seeking to contain the spread of this war and eventually diffuse it. At some point in time, we are going to have to get

the parties focused back upon their vision of living peacefully with

one another, but that is a remote—a remote option at the moment.

A resolution of this war will not likely be achieved in the near

term. It requires a strategy of 1 to 2 years, and it requires a very

heavy emphasis on building transatlantic alliances. We need to

today intensify our consultations with our European partners and

devise mechanisms for moving ahead. At the moment, we do not

have effective transatlantic mechanisms.

We have mentioned the arms embargo. We need to begin taking

a very serious look at our multilateral and bilateral assistance.

[The prepared statement of Dr. Morrison appears in the appendix.]

Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Dr. Morrison. The bells of course indicate that we have a vote.

Mr. Shaye, if you have your testimony and can give it within the

timeframe, we should be able to handle it.

STATEMENT OF GARY SHAYE, VICE PRESIDENT,

INTERNATIONAL PROGRAMS, SAVE THE CHILDREN, USA

Mr. SHAYE. Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee and distinguished guests. Thank you for inviting Save the

Children to speak with you about the current crisis in Ethiopia and

share with you the work that we are doing to respond to the critical needs of children in this emergency. I am hoping that while I

am speaking, you will get some video footage of Denan, which is

an area just north of the Gode area.

30

I would like to begin by thanking the government for being so

proactive and responsive to this emergency. This assistance has

been provided by the U.S. Government, not only to the U.N. agencies such as the World Food Program, but has also been provided

to nongovernmental organizations like Save the Children that are

working on the ground in Ethiopia. We have been really fortunate

to have had a really close working relationship with USAID, Food

for Peace, and OFDA. I think I can speak for all of the NGO’s, we

would not be in a position to respond to this crisis without that

timely support.

The U.S. Government should also be applauded for moving

quickly and for providing a significant portion of the international

assistance for this emergency. We are off to a good start, yet there

is still a lot to do. I would also like to recognize the U.S. Government’s understanding of the regional nature of this emergency and

the need to continue to support emergency development and political initiatives throughout the region. It is clear that this famine,

like all famines, finds its roots in complex regional, political and

economic issues that require a multifaceted and long-term approach.

Save the Children began its work in Ethiopia in response to the

1984 famine. Over the last 16 years, we have implemented a wide

range of activities to help vulnerable children and their families

combat hunger, obtain community-based health services, have access to clean water and attend school. Our programs focus on geographic areas and target populations that have been under served.

This includes the pastoral peoples in the east and south of Ethiopia.

When droughts and famines begin, it is the children who are the

most severely affected and whose health begins to deteriorate first.

That is why in November 1999, Save the Children agreed with the

Ethiopian Government authorities to initiate drought relief activities in the Gode zone of Ethiopia.

At this time the situation in Gode of Ethiopia is one of the most

severe of anywhere in Ethiopia. An estimated child mortality rate

of 1.5 of 10,000 per day has been observed. Currently, we are working with 163 severely malnourished children who are at our therapeutic feeding center and 6,000 moderately malnourished children

who are in our supplementary feeding program and are fed daily

with their mothers. Since the opening of these centers in February,

admissions of malnourished children to these feeding centers are

double our original projections.

The good news I can report is that during the past month, we

have seen a decrease in the number of infant and child deaths in

Gode. However, the death rates in the region are still too high. We

estimate that both feeding centers could double again and there is

a clear need to open additional centers.

Other efforts that Save the Children is conducting in the region,

including the preparation and initiation of food distributions for

some 135,000 children and family members in the Liben, Afdheer,

and Borena regions were also involved in the transportation of

water by trucks to over 100,000 residents of the Gode zone, however, there are still villages that don’t have access to water. We are

vaccinating livestock herds to prevent deaths and improve the food

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security of pastoralist families and their children who rely on livestock for milk and income.

These efforts address only a small fraction of the suffering. The

relief efforts on the ground need to be expanded and combined with

political initiatives to fully address the problems that are currently

affecting over 8 million Ethiopians.

The efforts of Congress are needed to assist in this emergency.

The American people don’t want us to let the women and children

of Ethiopia die, regardless of the political turmoil of the governments in the region. The United States is a leader in responding

to humanitarian crises, and the American people are known for

their generosity and compassion. The faster we respond now, the

greater the chance that children and their families will survive.

What should Congress do? As stated previously, the U.S. Government’s initial efforts to deal with this emergency have been exemplary. We are here today to ask Congress to continue to ensure

that the agencies of the U.S. Government have adequate resources

to respond to the underlying economic and social fragility in the region for years to come, recognize how important it is that the regional approach to this emergency is not forgotten, and that continued assistance is targeted to the rehabilitation and development

stage, not only in Ethiopia, but throughout the region, to help mitigate the effects of potential future crises.

When I was in Ethiopia in September, I was in the Negali area,

and I was out to see some of our programs that are supported

through the Food for Peace office. A number of the projects that we

are involved with involve the construction of reservoirs. They are

constructed using food for work, but what they do is they enable

the people to conserve water for many additional months throughout the year. There were areas as large as two football fields that

had been dug 10 to 15 feet in the ground that were used as rain

catchment areas. These are the types of interventions, relatively

low-cost interventions, that help people cope with the droughts in

those areas.

We should also acknowledge that the influence of the U.S. Congress is needed to ensure that the Government of Ethiopia maintains its commitment to the long-term task of reducing famine vulnerability.

Mr. TANCREDO. Please wrap it up.

Mr. SHAYE. Just, finally, I get calls from our staff from places

like Afghanistan, Sudan and Angola. They are all places with complicated politics and conflict. The calls are about, what can agencies

like Save the Children do to address the humanitarian crisis?

While we certainly understand that there is a conflict going on, it

is really important for this Committee not to lose sight of the

woman sitting in Gode with her child. The conflict is a long way

from where she is, and she is looking to groups like Save the Children and others for the assistance she needs.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Shaye appears in the appendix.]

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Mr. TANCREDO. Thank you, Mr. Shaye.

Thank you, Dr. Morrison for your testimony. I appreciate it. I appreciate the fact that you would stick around with us here. I assure

you that the testimony will be carefully reviewed.

We don’t have time for questions, so we will have to bring it to

closure. Thank you, gentlemen.

[Whereupon, at 1 p.m., the Committee was adjourned.]

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A P P E N D I X

MAY 18, 2000

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