[dehai-news] (TO) British minister withholds aid as Ethiopia hides famine victims


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From: Biniam Haile \(SWE\) (eritrea.lave@comhem.se)
Date: Fri Oct 17 2008 - 07:40:31 EDT


British minister withholds aid as Ethiopia hides famine victims
 
Catherine Philp in Kebri Dehar, The Times
 
October 18, 2008
 
Britain is to withhold future aid commitments to Ethiopia over concerns
that its Government is obstructing efforts to help millions at risk of
famine in the drought-stricken Somali region in the east of the country.

 
Douglas Alexander, the Minister for International Development, flew to
Ethiopia on Thursday with a proposal committing millions in funds to the
vast African nation over several years.
 
After visiting the Somali region and hearing the testimony of aid
organisations as well as evidence of attempts by the authorities to hide
the scale of the crisis, Mr Alexander told the Ethiopian Prime Minister,
Meles Zenawi, that he had reconsidered. “In light of our continued
concerns, I said I was now not prepared to make a multi-annual
commitment,” Mr Alexander said.
 
At the moment Britain gives Ethiopia £130 million a year in aid.
 
He characterised the Government's reaction to the crisis as “deny and
delay,” fuelled in part by Ethiopia's extreme sensitivity to its global
image as a famine-stricken nation, which the Government views as an
impediment to foreign investment.
 
Mr Alexander saw the sensitivity at first-hand on his trip to Somali
when he was taken to the infant malnutrition ward in Kebri Dehar
hospital to see seriously ill mothers and babies being treated.
 
Aid workers were surprised to find that the most severely malnourished
babies and their mothers had vanished from the ward where they had been
for several days, leaving only one mother and her fast-recovering child.

 
The health worker who had taken them to the hospital expressed fears
that the children had been spirited away before the minister's arrival
to avoid “embarrassing” press pictures of starving Ethiopian babies.
 
“I come here every day and they are always here,” the health worker
said. “I don't know where they are now.”
 
“They've hidden them,” an international aid worker with a lot of
experience in the region said.
 
“The Government doesn't want to acknowledge this crisis because it's bad
for their image. It's not the image of Ethiopia they want to project. It
doesn't encourage investment.”
 
Mr Alexander raised the incident later in his meeting with Mr Zenawi.
“If it's true that they moved severely malnourished children, that is
unconscionable,” he said. Mr Zenawi promised to investigate, calling the
incident “despicable”.
 
In Kebri Dehar, Mr Alexander also heard concerns from local and
international aid workers that the Ethiopian Government was actively
frustrating efforts to reach the worst-affected areas of the region,
using the insurgency as an excuse - an allegation that Mr Zenawi denied.

 
Aid agencies are unable to conduct surveys into the scale of need in the
region because they require government permission and military escorts,
which the Government is failing to provide.
 
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article4965305.ece

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