On October 30, I noted Bill Gates' statement on why he had changed his mind about the threat of global warming, including his admonition that we need to start focusing on poverty and disease in third world countries. I've lived through this before, including the Live Aid concert in 1985 organized to address a famine in Ethiopia (it didn't solve anything because the Ethiopian elites wanted the famine; and there have long been accusations that some of the funds from the concert were used by the Ethiopian government to buy weapons). Are we going to see a repeat? I thought that after Gates' statement, we would shortly be seeing news stories similar to those rampant in the 1980s. And here we are, from the AP: "Sudan relief operations are on the brink of collapse, UN agency warns." The article relates:
“Despite the rising need, humanitarian operations are now on the brink of collapse,” the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said in a statement. It added: “Warehouses are nearly empty, aid convoys face significant insecurity, and access restrictions continue to prevent the delivery of sufficient aid.”
The IOM said more funding is needed to ease the humanitarian impact of the war between the Sudanese army and its rival, the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces. The agency warned of “an even greater catastrophe” if its appeal went unheeded.
“Our teams are responding, but insecurity and depleted supplies mean we are only reaching a fraction of those in need,” IOM Director General Amy Pope said in a statement.
The primary difference between the 1980s and now is that there will be an underlying threat that if money is not provided, Europe (and to a lessor extent, the U.S.) will see a flood of refugees and illegal migrants. How soon until USAID or something like it is back up and running and fully funded?
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Why should we care if Africans starve? The Jewish NGOs that like to help refugees/migrants should send them to Israel. Israel would certainly benefit from the cultural enrichment Europe and the US have enjoyed with past waves of refugees/migrants.
ReplyDeleteIsrael will never take in non-Jews as refugees. It's baked into their laws. They won't even let Palestinians travel from Gaza to the West Bank except in cases of dire humanitarian reasons, let alone change their domicile from Gaza to the West Bank.
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