More than 1 million people in South Sudan have fled their homes at a crucial time of the year: planting season. Famine, aid officials say, could be the result, and the U.N.’s top official for human rights said Wednesday she is appalled by the apparent lack of concern by the country’s two warring leaders that mass hunger looms.
‘If famine does take hold later in the year — and the humanitarian agencies are deeply fearful that it will — responsibility for it will lie squarely with the country’s leaders, who agreed to a cessation of hostilities in January and then failed to observe it themselves,’ said U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Navy Pillay, referring to South Sudan’s president and the former vice president.
(The Associated Press, April 30, 2014)
To be fair, we have floods of Biblical proportions surging through the Deep South, fires from the pits of hell raging through the West, trains carrying crude oil derailing and exploding through the Northeast, and Donald Sterling’s racist outburst still reverberating throughout the country. Therefore, it’s hardly surprising that the American media are ignoring the UN sounding this alarm about yet another famine in Africa.
Indeed, CNN does not even deem this famine important enough to interrupt its 24/7 coverage of UFOs (unidentified floating objects, that is) masquerading as debris from missing flight MH370.
What’s more, every American can fairly ask: why should I care about starving kids in Africa when African leaders are the ones starving them, and their fellow Africans don’t seem to give a damn?
No doubt the prevalence of drought-borne famine gives the impression that Africa is fated to Mother Nature’s neglect … or wrath. But the disillusioning truth is that the administrative incompetence and nefarious devices of African men are far more responsible for chronic starvation on that Dark Continent. It’s bad enough that these genocidal maniacs couldn’t care less about causing starvation, but they have shown no compunction about impeding, or even killing, foreign aid workers trying to deliver relief.
And don’t get me started on countries like Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and others competing to become the Taliban paradise Afghanistan used to be. I mean, what are we to make of a ragtag bunch of wannabe Islamists, calling themselves Boko Haram, kidnapping over 250 “mostly Christian” girls from a school in Nigeria to sell as child brides (in border countries)? This, simply because these ignoramuses think Western education is evil and, moreover, that girls should not be educated.
And what of the Africans who traffic African migrants into Europe, the way South Americans traffic illegal drugs into the United States? At the very least, this conjures up the inconvenient truth that, in far too many cases, Europeans did not enslave Africans so much as buy them from their fellow Africans as “chattel” (aka personal property).
Incidentally, it was a discussion last night on this kidnapping and other self-inflicted wounds now festering all over Africa that led a dear friend to exclaim, “And now another fucking famine?! Nobody cares!” To which I replied, “Then call me nobody.”
Anyway, my Mummy used to guilt me into eating my vegetables by telling me how lucky I was compared to starving children in Africa. And, for some unknown reason, she seemed particularly concerned about starving children in Biafra. The cheeky little bugger that I was, I always told her that I’d be happy to send them my vegetables. But something stuck.
This is why I’ve been doing the equivalent of sending my vegetables to starving children in Africa – ever since the Ethiopian Famine of 1984 sprouted the care my Mummy seeded when I was a child. And over the past decade – beginning with “Despite Live8 and G8, Relief Looms Like a Cruel Mirage to Millions of Africans Dying of Starvation” on July 21, 2005 – I’ve been using this blog to entreat others to do whatever they can to help.
As indicated above, however, even aid workers from organizations like CARE could be forgiven compassion fatigue for Africa, especially in light of sobering truths like this:
Helping Africa is a noble cause, but the campaign has become a theater of the absurd – the blind leading the clueless. The record of Western aid to Africa is one of abysmal failure. More than $500 billion in foreign aid – the equivalent of four Marshall Aid Plans – was pumped into Africa between 1960 and 1997. Instead of increasing development, aid has created dependence.
(CATO Institute, September 14, 2005)
Worse still, according to a BBC Newsnight report on August 5, 2011, even leaders of a country as dependent on aid as Ethiopia invariably use development aid as “a weapon of oppression.”
It’s clearly foolhardy for foreign governments to continue giving aid directly to African governments, only to have local leaders use that aid to line their pockets and oppress their people.
But I am truly humbled by the thousands of foreign aid workers (mostly White Americans) who, despite all of the challenges and frustrations, continue to march to the front lines. They help combat everything from chronic poverty to the vicious cycle of tribal warfare I bemoaned just days ago in “South Sudan Continues Descent into Heart of Darkness,” April 25, 2014.
Accordingly, iPINIONS can never tire of doing what little I can to support them and keep the humanitarian work they do in public consciousness. And, in doing so, I hope you don’t mind my taking a page from my Mummy’s playbook by guilting you into donating (as I do) to their organizations, like UNICEF, USAID, Doctors Without Borders, UN World Food Programme, and CARE.
Related commentaries:
Despite Live8…
South Sudan continues descent…
Legacy Note: With over 5,600 posts spanning 20 years, I am easily the most prolific blogger on the most eclectic array of topics on the web. That makes The iPINIONS Journal an unparalleled archive of informed political and cultural commentary. Visit the ARCHIVES section in the sidebar or search by topic. You won’t find a more consistent, independent voice on world affairs.