So, What's the Hurry?
"This is a much bigger crisis than Ethiopia in 1984. Yet we are seeing the leaders who do not fail to cry 'African solutions for African problems' when it comes to peacekeeping or conflict mediation now completely failing when it comes to a response to the biggest crisis in a generation." Irungu Houghton, Oxfam pan-Africa directorAfrica, helping itself. Or not. The Horn of Africa is in a desperate drought situation, with Ethiopia and Somalia suffering untold mystery. Complicated for Somalians by an Islamist insurgency that has brought violent conflict along with malnutrition to their insufferable world. Compelling tens of thousands of Somalians to flee the war and the starvation in hopes of finding haven in Kenyan refugee camps.
Somalians have lost their worldly wealth in their starving livestock. They are steadily losing a new generation through the untimely deaths of starving infants and children who cannot complete the long journey desperately undertaken by their parents. The United Nations and Oxfam and Save the Children are desperately attempting to get food aid to the starving.
Kenya, where the largest camps are located, does not officially recognize refugees for a three-week bureaucratic period.
New refugees subsist on inadequate rations, or by begging for scraps from other refugees who have begun receiving food and water and shelter through the laggardly Kenyan bureaucracy. The African Union was to have launched a "pledging conference" to raise funds for the 12 million Africans desperately in need of food. But the conference has been postponed for three weeks.
The African Union's 54-member countries do not wish to be hurried into the process of pledging relief for other Africans in dire need. The non-African world has raised over $1-billion in aid, while the African Union with their combined GDP of over $1.9-trillion have less than $1-million in their "special famine fund". Quite the disparity.
And while children are starving, the African Union doesn't want to hurry things along on "too short notice to do something meaningful". They are busy at the moment, with another meeting where high-placed elite delegates are attending workshops at the $1,000-a-ticket conference on "governance, leadership and management" convention at a five-star hotel in Kenya.
While African governments are slow to respond to the Horn of Africa crisis, African citizens are taking the initiative to give to private sector appeals. And a South African mobile telephone network managed to raise more in text message donations in three days than the country's government had given in three weeks
The United Nations has long since warned that the drought has already killed "tens of thousands" in Somalia; the United States clarified that by announcing 29,000 children have died since May.
So what's the hurry?
Labels: Africa, Agriculture, Environment, Societal Failures
posted by Pieface @ Saturday, August 06, 2011
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