i think this quote sums it up: “How is it we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa we would never accept in any other part of the world? …] They are struggling against starvation, and I can assure you these 40 million Africans, most of them women and children, would find it an immeasurable blessing to have a month’s worth of food.”
40 million starving ‘as world watches Iraq’, Rory Carroll
9 April 2003, The Guardian
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Eritrea’s plight hit by Iraq war, Jonah Fisher, BBC, 9 April 2003
Kelemtina Koshi is one of the 2,000 villagers in Binbina in western Eritrea who for the second month running are having to survive on drastically reduced rations.
She has 10 children. Last year she received 150kg of grain a month for her family but that figure has now fallen to just 10 kg. In a good year she grows enough sorghum to feed her family and still has enough to sell at market. But last year’s harvest produced nothing, so this year she has sold all her livestock just to buy supplies. “We eat until the food runs out,” she said. “After that we either have to cancel the meal or search for some leaves (traditionally eaten by her tribe - the Kunama). There used to be leaves, but now even those have gone, we are in big trouble.”
Just over 100 km away in the children’s ward at Keren Hospital the effects of the shortages are clear. Salihaddin Idris is a year and a half old and weighs just 5 kg. “This swelling you see, this is quashiokor, due to energy loss.” his doctor explained. “Look at his buttocks, we call this “baggy pant” because his buttock is very thin. He’s got oral lesions in his mouth and his hair is very thin. These are all signs of severe malnutrition.”
Salihaddin is lucky. He’s being nursed back to health through a special feeding programme. Many of the drought affected families won’t have their rations cut any further. The aid will simply stop. International agencies are having to prioritise who gets assistance in order to make their dwindling supplies last longer. The failure of last year’s rains helped create a situation where 70% of Eritrea’s population, that’s 2.3 million people, are said to be vulnerable.
It’s not just about rain though.
War with Ethiopia left hundred of thousands of people displaced from their homes, living in camps. An army which some estimate at 10% of the total population, sit and wait. Waiting for the completion of the border demarcation process with Ethiopia, and a final peace which could bring demobilisation, and a return to their land.
In autumn last year, Eritrea appealed for $105 million dollars in humanitarian assistance. So far only a quarter of that has been promised, a response rate far below those for similar appeals in Southern Africa and neighbouring Ethiopia. For the Eritrean Government it is further proof that they’re being punished by the donor community.
Leading human rights groups have regularly criticised the country’s record since the private press was shut in 2001 and leading journalists and politicians imprisoned for criticising the government of President Isaias Afewerki. “It pains me that the response to Ethiopia is around 58-60% of their appeal and the response to Eritrea in the 20s,” said the government’s leading economist Dr Woldai Futur. “It bothers me. But when our partners say they are not linking politics and food assistance - it is not for us to say they are linking.”
**Whatever the truth, war in Iraq has only made things worse. Shipping costs to Eritrea’s ports on the Red Sea have risen steeply and delivery times slowed.
Money which in another year might have headed for Eritrea waits for a resolution in the Middle East.**
