...What is the most practical assistance Australia can contribute to the crisis which has again developed in the Horn of Africa. Should we play the “blame game” as populations perish from hunger? Or do we open the gate wider to refugees from the area.

...What is the genuine level of sympathy in Australia towards these people? Do we simply add money to the crisis and resist increased genuine refugee immigration from the area.

...How should Australians deal with the spectacle of hunger and suffering from this area of the globe which lurches in a perpetual crisis.

It eventually hit Bob Geldorf, what part of the problem was, when
he went back 20 years later, after his first attempt with Live Aid.
There were now twice as many people!

Somalia has one of the highest fertility rates on the planet at
over 6 children per woman. Ship in all the food you want, you will
land up with an ever larger problem. Until we start to address this
fundamental issue, there is little hope for this part of the planet.

Sad but true.

...But…Twenty years of civil war and anarchy are now combining as the perfect storm with the worst drought in sixty years. So Yabby, other factors are at play here. For a population reliant on, and an economy built on animals as representing everything necessary for survival; when animals are unable to survive, accordingly, neither do people attached to that economy survive without urgent foreign aid. I would suggest that population of any size is in jeopardy under such conditions.

...Of course one option is for the world to sit back and watch as Ethiopia mutates into a scorched desert of white and bleached bones of millions starved and dead from thirst, glistening in the sun. That is one option. Blame it on overpopulation if you wish.

DD, I think that you will find that every aid agency on the planet
will rush there. It is where all these billions in foreign aid
go. Mind you helping Somalia is not so easy, as Somali pirates will
hijack much of that aid and flog it on the open market.

Personally, you are of course free to sell all your belongings
and send the money to Africa, to save the starving babies.

So what do you care about more? A computer to fool around on OLO,
or those starving babies? We shall see the result.

Reality does not go away, when we close our eyes and wish it would.

To Yabby...

...I agree with your sentiment on the apparent hopelessness of the situation in Ethiopia. Just setting aside the emotive questions of personal support to hopeless causes (which Ethiopia is), and the long list of dictatorships which have become the only healthy growth industry through decades of perfecting the art of butchery, North Africa has produced; where did these avoidable situations leave the populations of tribesmen? Well the answer which constantly raises its head, is hungry and thirsty; and homeless, (if you wish to add that one in): And as nature contrives with the dictators to extend the misery to a scene from hell, contained in desperate camps of fleeing refugees covering fifty square kilometres, as is Dadaab in NE Kenya; mostly Ethiopians; a concluding future of hopelessness.

...Can we ignore their plight, and accept their condition is a result of their own making, one which they must pay with the token of hunger, the ultimate price of the lives of themselves and their families, by simply curling up and dying: A new paradigm for the West; we simply ignore human suffering by inuring ourselves to the pain and suffering of others and calm our disturbed conscience, by the self-justified argument that we are not to blame for the calamities of others: A calamity of their own making, listed under the heading of personal responsibility.

...This is a free and open discussion Yabby, we could go there, and maybe the argument is justified to actually ignore them to the end. After-all, whose responsibility are they?

Its not all gloom and doom, DD. I note in today's press that the
Australian Govt had already sent 40 million $ to assist with the
crisis, so we are doing our share. But I also noted an article
which reminded me that when the West tried to assist the starving
in Somalia in the early 90s, their troops and aid were attacked by
the local militia. So they pulled out, fair enough, Somalia is
a failed state.

I was once privy to a conversation between an Ethiopian and an
Eritrean, where one reminded the other how their nation had become
experts at dangling starving babies in front of Western tv cameras,
lo and behold, over the horizon boatloads of food would turn up.
It had become a huge business for them.

You may well find my comments heartless, but I have learned not
to have sleepless nights about the things which I cannot change.
At the end of the day, people have to want to help themselves.
I am all for assisting the third world with family planning, with
micro credit, with lobbying for peasants to have land title, for
things which help them help themselves.

But for the West to keep shipping more food which creates more people,
which increases the problem of drought and living within
a given environment, is really not going to solve anything, heartless
at is sounds.

I agree Yabby. We can't keep throwing food and money into a bottomless pit. The only hope is to assist the people to grow their own food and start their own small businesses etc.

However, corruption is rife in those countries, and any aid or assistance is taken by well-off or violent people just because they can.

I don't know what will happen, but I guess all the aide agencies just have their hands full trying to save lives, let alone trying to help them to help themselves.

It is all too hard for me!

Australian Govt had already sent 40 million $ to assist...
Yabby,
Is there any indication in what form this money was spent ? I'd support it if it were sterilisation equipment with many wheelbarrows & shovels thrown in. I refuse to support out of control breeding with only further starvation on the horizon.

The main cause is the rapidly rising population in the region.
Take Ethiopia as an example. In 1984 there were food shortages and the
population was around 40 million.In response to this Bob Geldof organised giant musicalconcerts in America and Europe which brought in vast amounts of money to feed the hungry.By doing this he saved many lives. Now 27 years later food is again so short that NGO's are issuing a disaster appeal. The population has grown from 40 to 80 million but of this important fact they say nothing. It is blindingly obvious that the rising population is an important factor in causing the disaster. However much money they raise and spend on emergency food aid and improving the agriculture in Ethiopia there will continue to be food shortages because there will be more mouths to feed. I believe they are deceiving donors by concealing this fact
If you feed the the hungry but do not provide family planning clinics giving mothers the CHOICE about the size of their families, you will only increase the number of hungry people in the next generation.

A few years back I watched a documentary on ABC, or SBS, in praise of one of these NGOs that save the world.

In this area they brought in a $200,000 boring rig, & dug a hole. They struck water at 15 ft, & continued to 25 ft, declaring this would never run dry.

They lined the hole, & installed a pump, then after much cheering for the camera by the smiling populous, our heroes climbed onto their white chargers, [Toyotas I think], & drove off to save the world somewhere else.

I thought at the time, "what a waste of time & effort". If these people are so bone idle that they will not dig a well for themselves, they are not worth saving. This is a perfect instance where the Darwin Principal should apply.

Hard? Perhaps, but I dug a well on the outskirts of Bathurst NSW, when I was 10 years old. If we wanted water, we dug a well. No one cried if we did not have water, & neither they should have.

My father had dug one, when he needed water to build our house. However in that post WW11 period, he could not get anything to line the walls, & it collapsed after a few years.

He finally managed to get a few 3 Ft lengths of 3 FT diameter cement pipe, & I was the only one small enough to dig inside that space.

I am horrified that some misguided bleeding hearts want to bring these waste of space, drop kicks here.

I agree with most posters thus far. Just an ever escalating problem unless serious birth control measures are undertaken.

All I can add is again repeat that Iran lowered their birthrate fro 6.5 per woman to less than 2 per woman, thus proving it can be done without draconian methods. Here is a wikipedia link and there are others if one cares to google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_planning_in_Iran

It certainly needs a concerted education programme by government and support from religous leaders, but it can be done.

What a wonderfull dream not to see anymore pictures of starving babies ever again. But a long way to achieving that.

Without birth control, if we keep feeding them they will keep breeding.

It is obvious the land cannot support the people.
So they must die.
The kindest thing we could do for them would be to send troops in to
shoot them all and put them out of their misery.
Thats what the cattlemen in the Northern Territory are considering
to do.
Are cattle more important than people ?

The whole of Nth Africa is in an overpopulation drive. It is their
own resposibility. Just like populations of other animals when there
is a surge in population they either find space or die where they are.

Mother nature does not negotiate.

What puzzles me is that western man, basically Euro man arrived on
this continent and with an axe and a shovel built this country in
just over 200 years.
Some of these starving people have lived in the area for thousands
of years. Why are they so stuck in their misery ?

Is it religion ? Is it intellectual capacity ?

Whatever it is, I don't think the rest of us will be able to support
them in the low energy future that we face.
As the current food shortage gets worse you may be asked to go hungry
or eat less to enable supplies to be sent to them.

...Well the problem of discussion on the topic exposes itself to possible feelings of guilt. I don’t think one needs to apologise for offering an opinion if indeed, to some, the opinion may sound heartless. What I intended to encourage with this topic was an opportunity outside of any need for PC., to offer a view on a very old and troublesome subject of African starvation. A never ending vista of starving African women and children, which has spanned endless years, presenting itself through our media, is difficult to swallow. Is there no end to the repetition of horror from starvation in Africa? I am there too. I am over it!

...What seems inexcusable is the lack of progress in alleviating the continuum. The consensus here is towards lack of birth control as the major cause; but is it that simple? As was aptly pointed out, before Bob Geldorfs intervention twenty seven years ago, the population was half todays count; but even at that level, starvation was the norm. So is the problem really like overstocking the paddock with cattle? I think the worst drought in sixty years is a factor; but only another factor of three major factors: They are (as stated) the prolonged drought; a civil war that has raged in the country for twenty years, contributing twenty years of political instability and offering a lack of opportunity for normal organised Government interventions into population control and other factors of women and childrens health issues: And thirdly, the nomadic lifestyles of the predominantly rural economy attaching security of survival to the welfare of animal herds.

...Before constructive discussion can continue on remedial action towards a solution to African starvation, the causes of this must be acknowledged as being more universal than overpopulation. There are a raft of countries on the globe with much higher density populations than Ethiopia not exhibiting starvation as a consequence.

I've often wondered how long the starvation problem in Africa is going to go on. Back in the 60's, somebody within our school organisation had the brilliant idea that the starving Africans (can't remember which lot) needed lots of milk for their starving babies so every day we had to bring in a few cent which was collectively added to a money pile and each week the organiser bought up as many cans of powdered milk as the money allowed.

This went on all year until at last, the storage room was chock-a-block with cans of powdered milk. If a bomb had of gone off in there, the result would have smothered half of Victoria. Eventually, the cans of milk were sent to the wharves and loaded onto a ship which sailed for Africa.

The months went by as we eagerly awaited news and a pat on the back for our efforts, but when it finally came the result wasn't an inspiration for me to continue my "humanitarian" ways. Apparently there had been some dispute resulting in the milk not being unloaded, so the ship put out to sea and dumped the entire consignment into the ocean.

So Aime,

…Obviously, the outcome of your efforts at school were disappointing . But in todays light for example, are you willing to offer any comment on the way we in the West should respond to the current (but not new) food crisis in Ethiopia and Somalia.

Diver Dan,

You are assuming that the drought and the "failed state" problem are the primary causes of the misery in the Horn of Africa, but overpopulation leads to food shortages leads to failed states. Lester Brown discusses this in his May 2009 article in Scientific American. That is behind a pay wall, but here are some excerpts

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2009/05/01/204017/lester-brown-scientific-american-food-shortages-there-is-no-bo/

Droughts are hardly unknown in Somalia and Ethiopia. The way that Malthusian collapses work is that people scrape by for quite a while as the population grows, but living standards decline, the carrying capacity is reduced by overgrazing and other assaults on the environment as people try to maintain living standards or just survive, and safety margins get thinner and thinner. Then something really bad happens, and the whole thing collapses. People (mostly) didn't die in the Irish Potato Famine because the potatoes were wiped out by a crop disease. Peasant farmers frequently have to cope with crop failures. Those Irish famine victims starved because a great many people were living on plots of land that were too small to feed a family on anything but potatoes.

Population density means little without considering the quality of the land, the availability and reliability of fresh water, and whether people have alternative means of making a living, such as trading industrial goods for food.

Sometimes a country can be scared straight after a collapse. According to a series of articles in the Guardian and more recently an article in Nature, the current government in Rwanda has been struggling valiantly to raise the status of women, find alternatives to subsistence farming, and make contraceptives available to the whole population, including long-term injectable contraceptives that women can access in secret.

DD, the problem with Western food aid is that in the end it can become
a way for those in the third world, to make their living.

I once watched a documentary from Chad, where the bloke had two wives
with 11 kids between them. He felt entitled to food aid, as there
was a drought and his kids were hungry. No doubt it was provided.

The thing is, I could not afford to feed two wives and 11 children
either. I have to plan for drought, its part of living off the land
and a quite natural occurance.

So I guess there is a philosophical question here. In nature, every
creature needs to make a living somehow and its up to the parents
to feed their offspring. Are you suggesting that Africans should
create unlimited offspring and that we will feed them all, when
they run into trouble doing what they should be doing?

We limit our children to what we can afford. My point is that
Africans should be given the same option, ie family planning, but
if they create unlimited children, its not my job to feed them all.
Otherwise next time, there will just be even more to feed, as their
environment becomes even more unsustainable for the ever growing
population

"So Aime,
are you willing to offer any comment on the way we in the West should respond to the current (but not new) food crisis in Ethiopia and Somalia."

Well, I'm not much good at this type of thing but I'll give it a shot.....

Many minds far greater than mine have tried to find an answer to this one and failed miserably. I'm afraid I can do no better! The problems facing those people are long and varied. Perhaps there are no answer but only endless questions such as........

Why do these people continue to have so many children? Surely they must concede that there will never be enough food to support their ever expanding families?

Why do they have so many children in good times only to see them die in bad times? That happens in the animal kingdom, yet these people are human beings and not animals, so why do they tend to follow the animal code of life?

Is it a cultural or religious issue?

Would they continue to have more children than they can comfortably afford to feed if the women had access to family planning including contraceptives?

Would they be better off if valuable resources were discovered on their soil?

The point of my last question is that unless somebody from an advanced culture sees that land as being valuable, then it's highly unlikely that anybody or Nation will intervene to get rid of the warlords that ruin that part of Africa. Also, to bring everyone in those Nations up to a level of well-being that we take for granted would mean that there would not be enough resources left for the wealthy to enjoy and we can't have that now can we?

Perhaps there's enough food and resources to feed the entire world equally, but who's going to convince the rich, big business and Governments that they'll have to vastly reduce their standard of living so that poor Africans can obtain quality of life?

Dear Aime,

I admire your big heart and passion, i really do. It seems to me despite what you say- quote"" Well, I'm not much good at this type of thing but I'll give it a shot.""On the contrary your doing a great job making people think and maybe feel a bit guilty.

I am with hasbeen Yabby &Bazz however- . Who was that Australian PM that was very popular until he said we shouldnt interfere with nature referring to aid for Indonesia back around i think the 1940s? Does anybody remember.Seems to me he was pretty dam right.

Amie, even if we started all over again- took food 80% wouldnt reach them. & if it did we would have even more next time. If you want to lobby for birth control plenty would *support it.+ We shouldnt give them anything until they agree religion or not. You must also consider animals were not meant to be used as pawns as they are anywhere on earth even in Africa.

...Sadly, I must depart the thread for a few days. The responses have been interesting but by no means surprising. If a fix was possible, this event would not reoccur on such a regular basis.

...My real question is, how do we view the inevitable suffering and death dispassionately? It is not human to do so. Sorry, but to me this is a haunting event that I cannot see past.

...It is always painful to watch, and I have often thought of the similarities between us and the early settlers that bore witness to the mass extinction of the Australian native under the circumstances of disease. What can we do?

It is very sad Diver Dan, but I have decided what I will do.
When the Red Cross or whoever calls at the door for a donation I will refuse and tell them why.
I believe we are being cruel by extending their starvation and then
repeating it again and again.

They have large families so that there are children to support them
in their old age.
We do not use children for that purpose, we have a pension scheme.
However you have to build your economy first, but you must not keep
trying in a desert.

Aime,

You seem to have bought the argument that there are plenty of resources to go around, if only they were distributed more fairly. This might have been true in the 1930s or even the 1950s. However, it would now take the resources of three Earths to give everyone in even the existing global population a modest Western European standard of living. See this graph from New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/data/images/archive/2624/26243101.jpg

According to the tables in the Global Footprint Network 2010 Atlas, the top billion in the richest countries are responsible for about 38% of total consumption. It is easy to see that the average global citizen would still be poor, even if all the resources were shared equally. Additionally, any benefit would be strictly temporary, because the global population is continuing to grow at about 80 million a year.

http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/ecological_footprint_atlas_2010

Divergence, for a moment there I was trying to be compassionate and yes, as for resources, I was clutching at straws as far as equal distribution goes for in reality I'm only two aware that we, as human beings, have a very poor distribution of assets and wealth and the divide between rich and poor is getting worse by the day.

Consumer Nations are rapidly stripping our once beautiful world of resources that took billions of years for the earth to accumulate and you're quite right Divergence, there is no longer enough to go around. So despite the good intentions of the original author of this post, there is no way the rich, or even the lesser people of the developed world will give up what they have just so as a few million starving Africans can break free of the bonds of eternal woe.

I feel as helpless as anyone else, but I think we must also face the reality that there will never be enough for all and as the world's population rapidly races into overshoot, we should stop and reflect on the fact that we too might soon end up just like those starving people of Africa.

Aime

Truer words never said & thats where Australia is headed sadly

Take care your a very nice young lad

Lady !

I do beg your pardon.

1) Further to Yabby’s post, here’s another in a similar vein

“Frances approached a refugee advocate to discuss her alarm over population growth in Pakistan, where in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake she'd witnessed something that disturbs her still. She'd helped a woman give birth to her 17th child by a husband with several other wives. But there was no more room in the tent. So the mother married off a 15 year-old daughter to accommodate the infant. A week later, Frances saw the new bride. "It was the sight of a girl who had been raped. I've been haunted by the look of this girl, her bloodshot eyes, ever since." When Frances raised her sense of helplessness with the refugee advocate, he put his hands over his ears.”
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/features/rocking-the-boat/story-e6frg8h6-1226088726434

2) And, I am puzzled as to why Aime would use the term “Consumer Nations”, since all nations are consumer nations. (unless, and maybe here I am being a little uncharitable,she implying only the rich consume!)

Immigration improves ALL societies ALL of the time doesn't it?
Surely failed states like Ethiopia could just be dispersed across the continent, that'd be fair wouldn't it?
Eliminate borders in Africa, if it's good for the White Europeans,North Americans and Australians and to have no say in who lives next door it's good enough for Kenyans and Sudanese as well.
Malawi and Tanzania are fertile but underpopulated, let's insist that they make their populations 10%-20% non Botswani and non Malawian.
Let's make them give the immigrants jobs,welfare, medical care and schooling.
Let's call them racists and international pariahs if they dare to object,they'll also need "hate speech laws" and anti Racism training in their schools plus social workers and human rights tribunals to enforce the rules.
They'd surely jump at the chance to host millions of outsiders, after all we're "all the same" aren't we?