- As the first shipments of emergency aid reached feeding
centres in Niger, accusations are mounting that economic policies imposed
on the country from outside contributed to the food shortages affecting
up to three million people.
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- Some aid specialists blamed the International Monetary
Fund and the European Union. Their economic programmes have contributed
to sharp rises in the prices of staples such as sorghum and millet. Others
said the Niamey government had downplayed the emergency to protect local
food traders who are resistant to free aid because it undermines markets.
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- "Rock concerts are all very well," said one
of the more outspoken aid experts, the former French socialist health minister,
Bernard Kouchner, the founder of Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), who visited
the disaster area last week. "But while the bands were playing people
were dying in Niger because there is never enough planning."
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- The French Foreign Minister, Philippe Douste-Blazy, clearly
deeply moved after a three-day trip from which he returned yesterday, denounced
the "sick avarice of rich countries, the lack of prevention and vision
from the international community".
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- Niger, a large former French colony in the Sahara which
is the world's third-largest uranium producer, has, for climatic and demographic
reasons, one of the most fragile economies in the world. A Muslim country
situated north of Nigeria, it has a population of about 11 million people,
many nomadic herders, and one of the highest birth rates in the world.
-
- Johanne Sekkenes, the mission head of MSF which is mounting
the biggest emergency exercise in its history in Niger, says the current
emergency could have been avoided. "This is not a famine, in the Somalian
way," she said. "The harvest was bad in 2004 and the millet granaries
are empty. Yet there is food on the markets. The trouble is that the price
of the food is beyond anyone's reach.
-
- "Given this situation, it was criminal of the UN
this year to tackle the emergency in a gingerly way, putting 'moderately
priced' cereals on the market. The UN should have immediately organised
free food distribution."
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- Ms Sekkenes said the International Monetary Fund and
the European Union had pressed Niger too hard to implement a structural
adjustment programme. "No sooner had the government been re-elected
[this year] than it was obliged to introduce 19 per cent VAT on basic foodstuffs.
At the same time, as part of the policy, emergency grain reserves were
abolished."
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- International agencies say the price of basic foodstuffs
has risen between 75 and 89 per cent over the past five years. At the same
time, the sale price of livestock - the main income source of the country's
nomadic herders - has fallen by about 25 per cent. Although the food emergency
in Niger has been pending since last autumn when rains ended early and
the towns of Agadez, Maradi, Zinder and Tahoua were hit by successive invasions
of locusts which devoured crops, it took until last week for aid shipments
to begin in earnest.
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- Last autumn, a first call for funds for Niger by the
UN World Food Programme (WFP) met with no pledges. On 8 July, hoping to
capitalise on the African focus of the G8 summit at Gleneagles, the WFP
renewed its call. But of the $30m (£17m) it requested, donors came
up with only one third.
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- Forty-four tons of high-energy biscuits sent by the WFP
arrived at the weekend. France also pledged a ·4.6m (£3.2m)
increase in its food aid contributions. Mr Kouchner said his charity, Reunir,
had taken in more than 64 tons of food aid in three weeks.
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- © 2005 Independent News & Media (UK) Ltd
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- http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article302913.ece
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