Nov. 16, 2005 - Issue #526: Sex, Lust & Love
Where’s the love for my Niger?
Local student group hopes to raise funds for aid in the world's poorest
country
Omayra Issa is like plenty of other average Canadians: when she was a child,
her mother drove her to school; now that she’s 20, she’s studying
Business at Faculté St. Jean; she loves her country and is fiercely
proud of its people. But Omayra Issa isn’t your average Canadian, and
in fact, she’s not from Canada at all. She hails from Niger, literally
the poorest country on planet Earth.
The West African state of Niger is in crisis. Last year in this country where
desert possesses two thirds of the land, severe drought and hordes of locusts
afflicted 3.6 million people; food aid has arrived, but only after months of
stomach-bloating, agonizing hunger. While the U.N. warned the world a year
ago, the world refused to listen. It took a BBC video report of skeletal
children with anime eyes to drill wealth from our pockets, giving more in 10
days following the report than in the previous eight months combined. Right
now, the U.N. wants to end large-scale food aid, and Niger’s Prime
Minister Hama Amadou supported the position, describing the donations as
“an affront to the country’s dignity.” He went further,
saying, “We’ve seen how people exploit images to pledge aid that
never arrives to those who really need it.” Omayra Issa agrees.
“Prime Minister Amadou’s reaction was absolutely
legitimate,” she says in an elegant French accent via telephone.
“Every human being that witnesses another human being suffering feels
bad; the [sufferer’s] dignity is affected. This is a country where you
have a population that works extremely hard every day to better their
destiny. Of course, it’s not flattering to see that those efforts are
in vain.”
Issa won’t stand by allowing her homeland to suffer either hunger or
indignity; instead, she volunteers with Edmonton’s Students for
International Development in hopes of improving life for the 2.4 million
people of Niger (among them 800,000 children) who desperately need relief
from hunger. This Friday (November 18), SID is hosting a benefit concert
featuring Isokan Afrika drummers and guitarist Kenya Condo with proceeds
going to the Red Cross to provide relief in West African countries such as
Niger, Mali and Senegal, and southern states like Zimbabwe and Malawi.
If blame for Niger’s misery must be parceled out, some of those parcels
must be airmailed overseas, while others must be sent to the capital city
Niamey. Like many impoverished countries under the pressure of the
International Monetary Fund, Niger has privatized its healthcare system. That
means that in the poorest country on the planet with one of the world’s
highest maternal death rates, a mother must scrape together $14 U.S. to get a
doctor to look at her baby. Result? Almost no children get seen by doctors.
UNICEF has stepped up with food, but its “success” underscores
the national defeat: 200,000 children have been treated in so-called
nutritional recovery centres. Despite UNICEF’s intervention, according
to the BBC’s Hilary Andersson, large numbers of young children are
dying at such centres, and Medecins Sans Frontières report that
upwards of 40 people a day are dying in just one area they analyzed.
Undeterred by Prime Minister Amadou’s concern that his country will
become reliant on aid, MSF warns that the U.N. must not stop food delivery
when almost one million people have not yet been fed.
How will these problems be overcome in the long-run, when the last bags of
grain have been delivered and the final vials of serum have been injected?
“It is important,” says Issa, “that we have a political and
economical elite that can be socially conscious. The fact that the
international community had not responded at all to the human alarm that was
pronounced from Niger and many other African countries [until the BBC report]
is devastating in the 21st century. Maybe that would be understandable five
centuries ago, because we would say, ‘Oh, well, communication was not
that good and the information will take two years to get to the
people.’ But it is very disturbing that people do not respond to or
will ignore what happens in other parts of the world.”
Issa and her family feel the pain of being so far from their homeland during
a crisis of this magnitude. “It hurts a lot to witness this very
dramatic situation at a long distance,” she says. “We left our
country three years ago.... We just hope that the situation will get
better.”
There is, indeed, hope for Niger. While still high, cereal prices have been
lowering into the range of affordability, and fewer people are selling off
their livestock and other possessions, suggesting greater stability and hope
on the local level. And the U.N. Population Fund has provided about $50,000
for a reproductive services initiative with an additional $25,000 coming from
Rotary International, all of which are bringing food, anti-malarial supplies
and safe child-delivery services to people who need them desperately. Issa
hopes that the Friday fundraiser will also contribute to the solution.
“We’re hoping that people will come to the concert and enjoy the
music and the food,” she says, “but they will [also be able to
say], ‘Hey! We do care about countries in Africa who are not living in
the same conditions we are, and we want to make a difference in the world we
live in.” V
Live Africa Concert
Presented by Students for International Development • Convocation
Hall, U of A • Fri, Nov 18 (7 pm) • $10 per person, $7
students
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