Society for Threatened Peoples
In 1968, with other members of the catholic student association Unitas Willigis, Otmar Seul created an Action Committee for Biafra, a breakaway region of Nigeria (“Republic of Biafra”) at war with the military federal government between 1967 and 1970. The Committee's action followed the movement of pro-Biafra initiatives that were emerging at the time in the Federal Republic of Germany. Combining humanitarian assistance with actions raising awareness among the media and political institutions, the activities of the Mainz Committee were supported by associative networks of the academic community, the Churches and by the Biafra-Aktionskomitee in Bonn. They reflect the emergence of a new type of humanitarian aid developed in the 1970s by international NGOs such as the Society for Threatened Peoples ("Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker: GfbV", resulting from "Aktion Biafra Hilfe" in 1970, Hamburg) or "Médecins sans frontières" (1971).