 UNITED NATIONS: UN relief coordinator Jan Egeland on Tuesday appealed for millions of dollars in aid from donors to tackle an âacute humanitarian crisisâ in the west African state of Niger where 2.5 million people, including 800,000 children, are facing famine. âWe are having now an acute humanitarian crisis in Niger in which children are dying as we speak,â he told reporters here. He said no statistics were available on the number of deaths so far but noted that 150,000 of the 800,000 children affected were suffering from acute malnutrition and were likely to die soon if untreated. âWe could have prevented this and the world community didnât,â Egeland, the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs, said.
| Probably we could have prevented it. No doubt we could have prevented lots of other self-inflicted tragedies just like it. We didn't, because it was the responsibility of the Niger government to deal with it. They're not a colony anymore. And if they discovered they weren't capable of dealing with it, they had the responsibility to ask for assistance before the problem got out of hand. Instead, they clutch their Islamic honor and dignity and make faces at the infidels. I'm still trying to figure out how they're better off now than they were when they were a colony, even a French colony... |
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