MAKE POVERTY HISTORY - 2005

Niger – by Georgina Newman

Published in NZ Herald 8 August, 2005

Look at your thumb - it's about the same circumference as 21-month old Salima's arm. They dangle weakly by her side, her spine and ribs protrude through her skin. She only has the energy feed from her mother's withered breast for a few seconds before her heads lolls back over her shoulders, her eyes flickering.

Her 28-year-old mother, Indo, has walked for two days solidly carrying her baby through Niger's burnt dry villages. Indo has taken her baby to a UNICEF-supported therapeutic feeding centre in Maradi, southern Niger to try and coax her back to life.

Salima is the youngest and the weakest of Indo's five children. “I have left my other children at home with my mother,” she says. “My mother is old and weak but she will have to take care of them. I don't know how long we'll have to be here. I think Salima is very sick.”

It's not Salima's first time to Maradi. Indo brought her here 6 months ago in February when Salima was even weaker than she is now.

“It's been two years since we've been able to grow anything,” says Indo. “It's because there's been no rain. We have no food any more. The only thing I can give her is some millet porridge, maybe one or two times a day. There's no milk. It's not enough. I'm scared for Salima”, she says, her voice trembling. The pot-bellied child with spider thin legs has become the tragic symbol of Africa and is again being played out on our screens. It takes heart-breaking images of emaciated children, feed through tubes taped to their faces to stir us into action. But for many of the children we see it is too late.

It was an emergency waiting to happen and for the starving children you watch on your television screens it didn't have to have happened. The United Nations appealed for funds last November, none was forth coming, then again in February. But the world was gripped by Tsunami fever and only a million dollars was raised.

As always it seems too little too late and it is the innocent children who bare the brunt of our complacency.

Thankfully help is now arriving. The heavy weight aid agencies have rolled out their appeals. The New Zealand government has donated half a million to the United Nations and kiwis, as usual, are digging deep to donate.

But its not a case of problem solved, there is still a massive gap between what has been raised and what is still needed. The United Nations fund for Children estimate they need another $14 million to stem the tide of death. And even if enough money is gathered what is to stop this from happening again next year or the next?

Well its time to get real. We can't keep putting out fires or to use another tired metaphor close the stable door after the horse has bolted. I'm sure aid agencies are tired of asking for money, I'm sure you are tired of giving, but I bet no one is quite as tired as the mother who has to bury another child for the want of a little food.

So what's to be done? Well in the year that Bob Geldolf's rallying cry to Make Poverty History in Africa we can start by putting our money where our mouths are - or more pertinently where their mouths are.

If humanitarian agencies warn of impending disasters, then governments must help immediately. It is not acceptable to wait for cameras to film the next batch of dying children before they are moved to act. And today there are more Niger's waiting to happen. Governments of rich countries need to act now to avert a food crisis in Mali, Mauritania and regions of Sudan.

The sad irony for Niger is it has done all the right things. It has a democratically elected government unlike Zimbabwe, it is at peace unlike Sudan, and unlike many African countries it has just received substantial debt relief from the latest G8 summit by jumping the innumerable hoops the IMF bank lays out.

Niger's problem is simply that it is desperately poor. In fact it is the second poorest country on earth. When droughts come, as they have in the past two years, it has nothing to fall back on. Also a locus plague of biblical proportions devoured up to 100 per cent of crops in some regions. When natural calamities strike it is rendered powerless.

We need to get serious once and for all we have to make poverty history. This means dropping the debt of poor countries, giving more and better targeted aid and finally the rewriting the rule book on unfair trade between the poor and the rich.

It's not only about money, although that greatly helps, it is also about using our voices and votes not just are wallets to make a permanent change for the poorest of the poor.

*Georgina Newman is communications manager for UNICEF NZ

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