Egeland Speaks on Niger's Famine

Listening to National Public Radio (NPR) this morning, Jan Egeland, United Nations Under-Secretary for Humanitarian Affairs, made a heart-breaking appeal for humanitarian aid to Niger. This international appeal for a meager US$16 million to bring relief to 25% of Niger’s population affected by famine, is two weeks and the response his been mute. Not a dime from any governmental entity to bring emergency relief to northern parts of Niger beleaguered by locusts and then flattened by droughts.

Egeland described death by starvation as a slow and painful process, which should elicit greater international benevolence, in comparison to the Tsunami. Despite that "misplaced comparison," the absence of aid seems to lie in geography. Niger is in Africa. Niger is not any global power’s strategic radar sreens (despite Pres. Bush’s claim in his Jan. 28, 2003 State of the Union address that “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”) That country he was falsely referring to was Niger. Niger's inherent weakness and proximity to Libya and Algeria make it a potential outpost for international terrorism (check out the Senate Select Committe on Intelligence questioning of CIA Director, Porter Goss by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-WV on Somalia the last week). Many of the arguments about Somalia will also hold for Niger, except for the fact that Niger is off any radar screens, making it an even more appealing sleeper base for international terrorists. Does that make a case for humanitarian assistance. Definitely. It falls in line with the same imperatives which defined concerted humanitarian relief efforts for Indonesia post-Tsunami. While the timing may the different and the circumstances even more so, I think Niger deserves more than the hollow echoes of silence to a call for humanitarian assistance.

Niger’s is the heart-breaking tale of humanitarian assistance in Africa. What surprises me though is that, despite President Mbeki’s appeals for African solutions to African problems, the African Union has not made the drought in Niger a priority. Neither has the AU called for international attention to the impending refugee crises in Benin. When I thought the Au was supposed to be a more active replacement of the moribund OAU… or was I simply having ill-conceived illusions?