Negligent donors let children starve in Niger – MSF
By Matthew Green

AlertNet (by Reuters)
01 Jul 2005

MARADI, Niger, July 1 (Reuters) – International donors, including
the European Union, ignored urgent calls for food aid for Niger,
exposing thousands of children to the risk of dying of hunger, an
official at a medical charity said on Friday.

Medecins sans Frontieres (MSF) said the landlocked West African country
issued a warning in November that the worst drought in years would hit
food supplies for more than 3 million people, but that rich countries
ignored its pleas.

“We have been in an emergency situation for at least three months,
and they haven’t responded,” said Doctor Mego Terzian, who heads
MSF’s feeding scheme in the southern town of Maradi.

The situation in Niger highlights Africa’s plight days ahead of next
week’s Group of Eight industrialised nations summit in Scotland,
where Britain plans to put fighting poverty on the continent at the
top of the agenda.

“It’s clear there have been deaths because there wasn’t an immediate
response,” he told Reuters. “I don’t know what happened. They knew
in October or November that there would be a food crisis, but they
didn’t react.”

When asked which donors he was refering to, Terzian named the European
Union — the biggest donor to Niger — and France, adding that other
countries should also urgently increase aid.

Severe drought and last year’s locust invasion that swept across much
of the Sahel zone south of the Sahara have devastated crops in Niger,
exposing more than a quarter of the population of 12 million people
to a food crisis.

“The problem is that the mobilisation by the international community
has been slow,” said Seidou Bakari, coordinator of the Niger
government’s food crisis unit. “We are doing what we can with what
little we have.”

“WE’RE NOT TO BLAME”

The European Union says it is the biggest single donor to Niger —
providing an average of about 90 million euros ($109 million) a year
in grants of both emergency and development aid. The former colonial
power, France, is the second biggest contributor.

“You can’t accuse us of doing nothing,” said EU spokesman Boubacar
Soumare. “We regularly contribute each year to the emergency food
stocks .. If everyone did the same as we do, then we wouldn’t need
emergency aid.”.

Soumare said the EU had signed a deal two weeks ago to provide 2.5
million euros in food assistance for Niger in 2005, alongside a 1
million euro contribution to the U.N. World Food Programme, which is
more than doubling aid to Niger.

A further 3.5 million euros is slated by the EU for food aid in 2006,
but aid workers fear that unless donors adopt far more ambitious
targets, then many lives will be lost.

MSF is mounting a major feeding operation to save thousands of
malnourished children from dying, but says its clinics may soon be
overwhelmed as hunger worsens in July and August, when rains encourage
malaria and diarrhoea.

Few other relief agencies have started work in Niger, while Paris-based
MSF says subsidised food provided by the government and U.N. World
Food Programme is only reaching a fraction of the needy, and many
cannot afford it.

MSF says that unless donors distribute free food aid now — changing
the current policy of selling it at below-market prices or lending
it for later repayment — death rates could rocket.

Arab states have offered help to Niger, where virtually the entire
population is Muslim. The government says Libya sent 300 tonnes of aid
including mineral water while Saudi Arabia sent 100 tonnes of dates.