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Famine Is a Crime – Blame the Criminal First
July 26, 2011
My Foreign Policy column this week suggests that in the Twenty-First Century, famines can only occur with the active engagement of local leadership – taking away food from producers and/or denying access to agencies delivering emergency relief. In Somalia, the leadership that is denying access is al-Shabab – the group in control of the areas of the country where famine has already begun.
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I don’t mean to let donors off the hook. They should have responded earlier and with greater generosity to a situation that has developed over months, to ensure that the lack of outside assistance would never be the binding constraint to preventing death by starvation. But at the moment that isn’t the biggest constraint. Al-Shabab is the biggest constraint. And its leaders should be held to account.
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One Response to “Famine Is a Crime – Blame the Criminal First”
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July 30th, 2011 at 1:25 am
Although it is not yet officially a famine, the surroundings of the Al Shabab-region don’t do well neither. The Aid agencies were not particularly loud on the looming crisis in the run-up neither. And what with the amounts of flexible funding more and more agencies receive? Are they only for admin?