Pull Quote: ‘I would like you to imagine the enormous tragedy that has befallen the people of Somalia. We have people in Guyana who go hungry at times. But we live in a world where the situation never becomes so desperate  that people starve to death,where there is no other option, but for people to just lie down and die. We understandably are outraged when the reckless action of some driver results in the death of  10 people—imagine 3,000 times that number,not people,but small children going through the excruciating pain that  is a death from hunger.’
THE FAMINE in Somalia.  How does one conceive of disaster in such proportions?  The most startling figure to come out of the tragedy is a stark and simple one – an estimated 29,000 children under the age of five have died as a result of the famine.  But even that eventually registers just as a statistic once the initial shock of the largeness of the number and the age of the victims has passed.

I remember, a year ago television news reports repeatedly playing the shot of the two or three men struggling heroically to save a woman from being washed away in the floods in Pakistan, and then the constantly updated information on how devastating the flooding was becoming.

Like everyone who was part of the global audience watching that disaster unfold, one of the first things I felt was this powerlessness, the inability to do anything in the face of such overwhelming tragedy.  What compounded this sense of hopelessness was, shortly after, watching a story on UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon going out, more or less cap in hand, and begging for money to aid in rebuilding the water-logged country.

Today, with the worsening situation in Somalia, things do not seem to have changed significantly if at all.
“The crisis,” says Fran Equiza, the regional director of the British aid agency Oxfam, “has been building for several months, but the response from international donors and regional governments has been mostly slow, inadequate and complacent.  There has been a catastrophic breakdown of the world’s collective responsibility to act.”

I remember vaguely 20 years ago, even granted that I was less in tune with world events then, much more seemed to be done when the African nation was going through a similar crisis. In 1992, the UN-led Operation Provide Relief helped to stem a famine that claimed some 300,000 people in the year or so it lasted.  Today, 10 times that number –  some 3.2 million people – are in need of “immediate life-saving relief”, according to the UN.

I would like you to imagine the enormous tragedy that has befallen the people of Somalia.  We have people in Guyana who go hungry at times.  But we live in a world where the situation never becomes so desperate that people starve to death, where there is no other option,but for people to just lie down and die.  We understandably are outraged when the reckless action of some driver results in the death of 10 people – imagine 3000 times that number, not people, but small children going through the excruciation pain that is a death from hunger.

As I did in my article on the flooding in Pakistan, I will point out the Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon’s tenure has been preceded by and has encompassed extremes of natural disasters, from the tsunami that swept over Asia, to Hurricane Ivan, to Katrina, the Haiti and Chile earthquakes, the flooding in Pakistan and now the famine in Somalia.  Whereas the chief concerns of his predecessors Boutros Boutros-Ghali and Kofi Annan were man-made conflicts – Iraq, the Balkans, Rwanda, Afghanistan and Iraq, again – it is clear that the greatest threat to the UN fulfilling its mandate, particularly the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals, is the increasing prevalence of environmental/natural catastrophes.

My take on why the UN – the collective international community – has failed the dead and dying in Somalia, is that the organisation’s perspective remains artificially skewed towards the narrow interests of its most powerful members, particularly the permanent membership of the Security Council, as opposed to the greater good. 

Put plainly, the natural disasters that have been buffeting, and rocking, and flooding, this planet have an ultimate effect on every issue that is of concern to the UN – security, economic stability, women’s development, child welfare, disease control. Reprioritizing its mandates to reflect the fact that its natural disaster and emergency response policy has a bearing upon virtually every other mandate area , therefore, should really be something that the UN needs to be engaging in at present.  Yet more money continues to be poured into military endeavours than is put into humanitarian relief, both actual and potential.

Considering the cap-in-hand that the organization has to take in the wake of what it now calls the worst humanitarian disaster in sixty years, the best bet in the interim may be an emergency fund in which the UN plays a lead partnership role, but which exists outside of its organizational structure, and in which a substantial amount of easily accessible money is placed to deal with extreme natural disasters, with eligibility defined by a pre-established set of criteria.

I believe that wealthy countries cannot escape their moral commitment to Somalia.  The $220 million dollars that Britain has spent in Iraq could cover most of the $300 million the UN estimates is needed to save the starving, and could have easily saved the 30,000 infants lost.  The $3 trillion- and this is a hard figure to comprehend for the vast majority of people on earth- that the US has spent on its Iraqi adventure would easily give Somalians and the rest of the starving of the world the food that they could live off of for half a century.

While completing this article today, I was provided information on Canada’s pro-active role in supporting the people of Somalia. What is admirable is that the NGOs involved are not sending huge batches of personnel to provided so-called technical and other support , but providing funds and material directly to organizations that they assisted in establishing over the last three decades, thus keeping the overheads to a bear minimum. Thus, ensuring that most of  the aid provided (over 90%) goes to the suffering people.

In concluding, whatever the solution, and this column with its limited space and expertise in such matters is not in a position to offer one, I don’t believe that the next disaster should find us scrambling to find funds to support the dying.  My heart goes out to the people of Somalia, and I pray that the harsh lesson this tragedy has taught us is a wakeup call for the conscience of the powerful of the world.