tures of starving children. The famine has already taken its place alongside Biafra, Cambodia the boat people as a tragedy which ordinary people respond to generously whilst their governments try to Hass the buck. JOHN RISON and BOB MORGAN examine the dimensions and causes of this 'silent THE SCENES covered by the camera crews do not begin to depict the scale of suffering. Four in ten of Ethiopia's million inhabitants nourished (too few calories). Relief workers expect one million to starve to death this year. Nearly 24¼ million have already left their homes in search of food. Dying relatives are abandoned on the wayside.
Ethiopia is just one of the countries afflicted. Food supplies dangerously low this year in 26 of Alrica s su countries (see lable), 1lcluding the whole of the sub-Saharan regions.
One hundred and fifty Africans face undernourishment or shortage nutriments). Over 200,000 already died Mozambique. Djibouti one third of the livestock has already died. The EEC commissioner for development aid, recently estimated the monthly grain 7,500 tonnes Sold al 17,000 in Mali, 18,000 in Mauritania" 29,000 in Niger Ethiopia.
In Mauritania more than four-fifths of growing land has been reduced desert. Pisaui valetaa potentially straights than Ethiopia, whose aid is at last beginning to flow. Famine The scale of the problem dwarfs that the last major drought, in the Sahel in 1974. killed 'only' some 300,000 people in half dozen countries.
Recentle told timeone or t told a ministers that: 'I think famine that is the worst in memory... despite our best efforts in Marcn or April or next year we lay see hundreds of thousands more dying and millions also in danger' In this context the US boast of an aid programme to 'match or exceed' the Sahel pitifully inadequate. It has so far committed $135m worth of emergency food Ethiopia enough to cover only about four and a half months of the expected grain shortfall. A further $45m has been allocated to Kenya, Mozambique and Mali. I ne aside $102m for the Sahel region this year. The UN Food and Agricultural million essential have Edgar Pisaui in Chad, 55,000 in regards African This James we face a living Ethiopia. been surprised ala long term set government into action.
BUTTEROR
THE POPPERS BL MICT. 4x5 к4 TEADIL 11 8k5 Kel MACT N BELGIUM tions in the wake of media coverage of While the public may have by the famine the powers that be were not. US satellites regularly monitor crop developments throughout the world and the FAO had predicted major food shortfalls in Africa as early as December 1982. Yet Oxfam had to divert tom from its development assistance programme into emergency food aid in an attempt to shame the Thatcher people 000 МОТЕ ТА НА AN ЕСМІС СВІ IT THE PEOPLE BE ETHORA AT MEG: 4-5 kg MAIL IN SELGIUM IF THE TONGPEAN ISONORC CA TO THE PEOPLE OF ETHOPIA NET WEIGHT 4 × 5 Kg MADE IN BELGIUM FRED ARDOF THE EUROPEAN ECI THE PEOPLE OF ETHER WEiGHT, 4 * 5 kg MB 006 NOUNCHOIL to the US's four major allies there: Somalia, Kenya, Liberia and Zaire.
The problem is also far more deep rooted than a natural disaster year, whose victims become pawns in a game of Aid and Imperialism. In a normal year, at least 800 million peo- or about one in six of the planetary population - suffer undernourishment. Tens of millions ground down by malnutrition. Most the underdeveloned countries are worse off today than a decade ago. And will get worse. population is set to double in the next TABLE Severe Food Shortage Ethiopia Angola Kenya Botswana Mozambique Republic Niger Chad Sudan Lesotho Mali quarter century. Most of the growth thousand extra people are born every day in the less developed world.
Africa in straits. Income per head averages only $482 a year, decade ago. Six out of ten Africans go bed hungry every night. million children a year die of malaria.
Africa also has the highest population growth rate in the world. Today 435m people inhabit the continent. МВ 006- THE PEOPLE OF ETIRIPLA AT WEIGHT: 4250 MADE IA Sixteen years on there will probably be 817 million.
Yet today's world is quite capable of providing for Output worldwide averages around $2,500 per person, (about the average living standard in Portugal) resources could, if mobilised, add another $500 a person. diverted into more socially useful avenues. The eighteen most advanced capitalist counties spend at least $200 billion a year on what is euphemistically described in their accounts as 'defence', (adding in the Warsaw pact might take up to •$400bn).
Inadequate Food Supplies Mauritania Morocco Central African Somalia Tanzania Zambia By contrast the 36 poorest countries in the world the four billion plus inhabitants of our planet live - together spend only dire $5 billion a year on health care. These poorest countries three times as military as on health. not a lack of productive capacity. It is the distribution of output.
The average income in the US is forty times greater than that in the 36 poorest countries. Within Brazil the deserts and periphery 1973/74, vast response western incestedes. vice its debts.
Spared America). evervone's needs Profit Resources could also be Many production between them ment. dignation — in which half of adequate.
themselves spend much money on the is not that The problem is ways. It over grain mountains while Africa's such apparently 'natural' facts as the spurt in the third world population growth are a product of developments within the system as a whole. Birth rates have hardly chang ed while life expectancy has increased IVealca science penetrated the third world unevenly, and other forms of basic health care have arrived ahead of effective, acceptable and freely available forms of contraception. In this context the Reagan administrations recent decision to withhold contraceptive aid from any country permitting abortion is one of the most sickening fruits of the rise of the "moral majority'.
The worsening plight of much of the third world over the last decade -of which the current famine in Africa is the highest symptom to date - is far more a product of developments in the metropolitan centres than ir paddy fields of The story begins in the winter of when the price of oil quadrupled within three months. The majority of the third which produces no oil, was instantly hit by escalating fuel import bills. Its was lo seek oans banks, justified on the strength of high export earnings commodity prices had almost doubled over the previous 18 months.
Banks in the advanced countries found themselves flooded with loans from the newly rich oil producers. They were keen to lend these at a profit. Over the next decade third world precedented lever of s8000 billion. the Loans present no immediate problem so long as you can meet the in. terest repayments. But many LEs Developed Countries are no longer able to. Governments in the advanced countries responded to the oil price rise by squeezing credit sharply. This generated a slump in the north, hitting commodity imports and hence reducing LDC export earnings. At the same time it raised interest rates, making it still harder for the south to serHigher interest rates cost the LDCs $20 - 25 billion over the three years 1979-1981. The Organisation of African Unity estimates that the servicing of the continent's $130 billion foreign debts now absorbs 60 per cent of export earnings (as comper cent third countries responded by shifting agricultural domestic sold for dollars. Guinea-Bissau forbade all domestic sale of ground nuts (a traditional basic staple) in the attempt to increase its export earnings and' thereby stave off its international creditors. The nuts are now fed to pigs Western Europe while their producers go hungry Africa's plight is a particularly traumatic example of an aspect of the law of combined and uneven develop Processes whose causes lie in the rythmn of economic development in the metropolitan power-houses of the system often have their most explosive effects in the villages and shanthe hand thingerish ery.
The hand wringing leaders over Ethiopia is pure cant. Whilst aware of the scale of Africa's problems, they did nothing until investigative journalism awoke the inof the electorate. Even then, their response was pitifully inThe US's policy makes mockery of Henry Kissinger's 1974 claim that, 'within a decade no child will go to bed hungry' The real criticism of these people they respond to human disasters in niggardly and self seeking is rather that they preside promote a systenn generates hundreds upon thousands of unnecessary deaths in the pursuit of private profit.
----- pull-quotes -----
TO THE PLOPLE OF ETHOPIA MET WEIGHT: 4 * 5 Me
MADE IN BELGIUM BUTTEROIL