Catastrophe is looming (From Stroud News and Journal)

Catastrophe is looming

Stroud MP David Drew visited Ethiopia in December to investigate the current famine threat. Here he talks about what he saw and his hopes of avoiding another catastrophe in one of the poorest countries in the world.

I DON'T know how many of you heard Michael Buerk's 'With Great Pleasure' which was broadcast on Radio 4 on Christmas day. As one of the readings he featured a piece which was a witness statement of the Imperial footstool keeper to the late Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia.

Whilst full of irony as to how one of the world's poorest countries could afford such a position it bore out to me what I had myself seen when I visited the country shortly before Christmas.

How can a nation that is so rich in history and culture be continually thrust before us as a place synonymous with crisis and misery?

How can a country which has successfully accommodated Christianity with Islam, have been so regularly racked with conflict and conquest?

Accepting that as unanswerable dilemmas the main reason I went to Ethiopia in December with five other Parliamentarians was to investigate the depth of the current famine threat and to see what capacity existed locally to overcome this.

For this reason alone it was a very important visit, but it did also give us the opportunity of seeing what Ethiopia has become since the victory of the new Government (the Ethiopian Peoples Revolutionary Democratic Front) over the hated Derg regime of Colonel Mengistu in the early 1990s.

Come what may, one is immediately struck by the poverty of the country. Ethiopia remains the fourth poorest country in the world.

The current food crisis threatens to make its international position even worse. Unusually for Africa, rapid population growth of a population of about 70 million currently, which is around three percent per annum has not been accompanied by massive urbanisation.

Addis Ababa the capital is therefore the dominant centre but has only a population of about three million.

This is partly because there has been little Government encouragement and also that Ethiopia is a country of over 80 different ethnic nationalities most of which retain their fiercely independent nature preferring to stay in their homelands. Nevertheless the poverty is ever present and in your face especially when you get outside the capital.

During the course of the week-long visit, the group went to Messio district and the town of Asseb Terife in particular in the area of Western Herrerge, one of the worst hit regions of the current drought and about 200 miles from Addis.

The reason why the country is again back in the limelight is that this year both the short and long rains have failed.

The Ethiopian Government puts this down almost entirely to the growing problems caused by global warming. Agriculture is still almost entirely dependent upon the coming of the rains.

This is disappointing in that the country is not short of water overall. It is the source of the Nile and has many inland lakes. However it falls foul of water politics with Egypt rarely being helpful and it has yet to be able to make any transition towards irrigated agriculture.

What one noticed was that at present the famine remained localised but there was evidence of crop failure in wide areas. Numbers of people threatened varied from two to three million to upwards of 14 million depending upon how much food aid reaches the country over the next three months.

The Ethiopian Government made it clear to us that whilst supplies were just about enough at the current time, unless there was a large upswing soon then the crisis would soon turn into a catastrophe.

In one village we found evidence that supplies per person had actually been cut to conserve food for the future and also because Southern Africa was still a higher priority for the donor community.

Notwithstanding the debate over numbers the clear impression left is that the world community cannot afford to wait to start the shipments of food aid.

Despite some orchestration of what we saw and heard it was impossible to manage the obvious plight of the individuals that we saw and met with.

Thus we are again faced with a 1984/5 scale crisis which is so vivid in many of our minds given the legacy of Band/Live Aid.

We will again need to support the work of the different aid agencies and NGOs as they begin to organise their appeals, but more than anything it is up to the Governments of the developed world to lock in support sooner rather than later.

As happened in the mid 1980s I am sure that Stroud and the other market towns will play their part led by the churches and other community bodies. I hope that when the call comes we will respond out of common kindness and decency as we have done so magnificently in the past.

Dealing with the famine this time must not be the end of our commitment. Despite the main reason for our visit being the food shortages, we were able to witness some of the changes for the better that have taken place and to be able to speculate on what may be possible in the future.

The country was at last at peace. The long-running conflict with its previously controlled territory in Eritrea has ground to a halt. Despite the instability of the countries around Ethiopia the Government remained sound and concentrated upon achieving debt cancellation and bringing in the tools for development.

As already intimated, farming could be revolutionised by use of irrigation and by diversification away from dependence upon coffee and too small a range of crops.

The demand for an end to the subsidised and protectionist farming systems of the west could not have been more heartfelt.

Likewise the Government has plans to expand manufacturing capacity and to extend the service economy especially with regard to tourism given the beauty and rich heritage it possesses.

To do this more than anything it needs to invest in its core public services.

It has only one railway line for example, and reaching the more outlying parts of the country remains difficult because of the inadequacy of the road network.

Education is very primitive with a literacy rate of 28%, one of the world's lowest. We were able to visit a hospital to see the effects of the malnutrition first hand.

However what also impacted was the lack of basic health care, people dying unnecessarily. HIV/Aids whilst not as rampant as elsewhere in Africa was not tested for unless requested by the patient. A stark fact that there are more Ethiopian doctors practising in the USA than there were in Ethiopia reminded us of the continuing effect of the brain-drain.

The country was not without hope however. Whilst the regime in power could hardly be described as democratic - only 12 opposition MPs out of a Parliament of 548 - both the Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, and the Minister of Finance and Economic Development Dr Mula Kesela were impressive individuals.

The PM has developed a particularly good relationship with Clare Short, the International Development Secretary who will be visiting herself in February.

We must and I hope we will listen to their pleas for help in the immediate but this help must also be translated into proper assistance in the future, to make this famine and other such catastrophe's not just avoidable but unacceptable, if this world of ours is not just to talk about fairness and justice but to do something about it.