Oggi tra i giornali italiani se n'è accorta Liberazione. I giornali a grande diffusione tacciono, i mostri sacri del Live 8 pure.

questo il parto del Corriere:
http://www.corriere.it/ultima_ora/agrnews.jsp?id=%7BAAB81FAB-13A7-4F8F-8FCC-A5DAF5931C8C%7D
qui in italiano:
http://italy.indymedia.org/news/2005/07/835572.php

World 'ignores' Niger food crisis
Mother and baby in Niger feeding centre
The food crisis has been predicted for almost a year
The United Nations top aid official has accused the international community of neglecting the food crisis in Niger.

Some 150,000 children will die soon without aid, out of 2.5m who need food, said Jan Egeland.

"Niger is the example of a neglected emergency, where early warnings went unheeded," he told the BBC.

Six weeks ago, the UN's Niger appeal had not received a single pledge. However, the government has also sought to play down the scale of the crisis.

It has refused demands to distribute free food and has been criticised for not doing more to prepare for the food shortages.

The crisis was widely predicted after last year's poor harvests, following poor rains and locust invasions.

'Too late'

"The world wakes up when we see images on the TV and when we see children dying," Mr Egeland told the BBC's World Today programme.

"We have received more pledges in the past week than we have in six months. But it is too late for some of these children."


Europeans eat ice cream for $10bn a year and Americans spend $35bn on their pets each year
UN's Jan Egeland
Aid workers in Niger say that children are dying every day in feeding centres in the south of one of the world's poorest countries, much of which lies in the Sahara desert.

They say that up to a quarter of Niger's 12m people need food aid.

The UN has now received just a third of the $30m it had asked for, Mr Egeland said.

The UN under secretary general for humanitarian affairs also said that beyond immediate food aid, the world should help Niger improve its agricultural methods to avoid future food crises - but this programme had received even fewer pledges.

He said the $30m requested for both short - and long-term aid "was nothing".

"Europeans eat ice cream for $10bn a year and Americans spend $35bn on their pets each year."

_41318905_nigerchild_afp300.jpg, image/jpeg, 300x220

Niger scorns 'free food' demands
Mobile clinic in the village of Maradounfa
Some children have died from starvation
The Niger government has said it would be "foolish" to distribute free food, as demanded by some 2,000 protesters on Thursday in the capital, Niamey.

More than 3.5m people need food aid after poor rains and a locust invasion, and some accuse the government of ignoring the crisis.

But a government spokesman Mohamed Ben Omar said that its food stocks could not be handed out for free.

The UN says it has not had a single pledge for money for its Niger appeal.

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has called for $16.2m to buy food for those suffering from recurring drought and a locust infestation.

Some 150,000 young children are said to be severely malnourished already.

'Hungry'

"What civil society is asking is poorly conceived and irrational. The state of Niger cannot engage in such a foolish adventure," Mr Omar told the AFP news agency.

He said Niger's emergency food stocks had been built up carefully and would need to be replaced if they were given out.

On Thursday, some 2,000 people marched through the capital, Niamey, demanding immediate food aid.

One of the rally's organisers, Amadou Bello, said rice and millet was needed now because international aid would take too long to arrive.

Obvious

"We are hungry" and "Give us food", they shouted in front of parliament.

The organisers of the march, the Democratic Co-ordination of Niger Civil Society (CDSN), accuse the government of not doing enough to prepare for the "hungry season" which was bound to follow a poor rainy season last year.

The rainy season finished last October and it was obvious that supplies would not last through until the next harvest, they say.

Some children have already starved to death.

di questo è giusto ringraziare secoli di colonialismo stragista europeo e il fantastico neoliberismo di matrice USA; il sistema li condanna, il nostro life style miete vite umane; o cambiamo noi (il che sembra irrealistico) oppure muoiono loro

Niger's president in famine zone



Mother and baby in Niger feeding centre

Scenes from Niger
Niger's President Mamadou Tanja has visited the country's south, where severe food shortages are affecting at least 2.5 million people.

His government has been defending its handling of the crisis, saying its appeals for international assistance in November went unanswered.

The UN says 150,000 children could die following last year's disastrous crop.

The charity Oxfam said families were feeding their children grass and leaves from trees to keep them alive.

A government official told the BBC: "We have made an appeal since November and told the international community... We did not have any response."

Some reports had suggested Niger was slow to call for help compared to other countries in the region which also experienced drought and plagues of locusts eating their crops.

Tortured bodies

The BBC's Hilary Andersson in southern Niger says fewer than one in 10 of the starving even make it to the few feeding centres in the region.


Niger is the example of a neglected emergency, where early warnings went unheeded
Jan Egeland

Many display extremely slow reactions caused by the body's metabolism slowing down dramatically, while others are tortured by infections in their mouths and lungs that they can no longer fight.

"Niger is the example of a neglected emergency, where early warnings went unheeded," Mr Egeland told the BBC.

The UN's Niger appeal in May initially failed to attract a single pledge. But the government there has also sought to play down the scale of the crisis.

It has refused demands to distribute free food and has been criticised for not doing more to prepare for the food shortages.

'Too late'

The crisis was widely predicted after last year's poor harvests, following poor rains and locust invasions.

The UN's top aid official Jan Egeland has accused the international community of reacting slowly to the crisis in Niger.


Europeans eat ice cream for $10bn a year and Americans spend $35bn on their pets each year
UN's Jan Egeland

Food crisis timeline
"The world wakes up when we see images on the TV and when we see children dying," Mr Egeland told the BBC's World Today programme.

"We have received more pledges in the past week than we have in six months. But it is too late for some of these children."

The slow response has greatly increased the cost of dealing with the crisis, aid workers say.

"The funding needs are sky-rocketing because it's a matter of saving lives," UN World Food Programme Niger representative Gian Carlo Cirri said.

"The pity is we designed a preventative strategy early enough, but we didn't have the chance to implement it."

Aid shortfall

Aid workers in Niger say that up to a quarter of Niger's 12 million people need food aid.

The UN has now received just a third of the $30m it had asked for, Mr Egeland said.

The UN under-secretary general for humanitarian affairs also said that beyond immediate food aid, the world should help Niger improve its agricultural methods to avoid future food crises - but this programme had received even fewer pledges.

He said the $30m requested for both short - and long-term aid "was nothing".

"Europeans eat ice cream for $10bn a year and Americans spend $35bn on their pets each year."

il diario di un operatore della Croce Rossa, si puo' seguire qui:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/4720453.stm

Niger diary I: Arriving on the ground
Mark Snelling is a member of the British Red Cross Society's Emergency Response Unit in Niger.

Red Cross worker Mark Snelling
Mark Snelling says there is no time to lose if lives are to be saved

He has been keeping a diary for the BBC News website.

In the first entry he describes the team's journey to provide essential logistical support to the Red Cross relief response in the West African country, where up to 2.5 million people are now in urgent need of food.

Sunday 24 July

It's been an extraordinary few days. I get into work at British Red Cross headquarters on Thursday, preoccupied with the second wave of attempted bomb attacks in London.

My mind is not on unfolding emergencies elsewhere in the world. Then, quite unexpectedly, I'm asked if I'll go with the Emergency Response Unit to Niger.

The next few days are a frenetic round of briefings, vaccination appointments, personnel admin and shopping for supplies. And then we are off.


British Red Cross vehicles
This is an emergency that we and many others are responding to, right here and right now. The wider questions will have to wait

Q&A: Food crises and aid

The charter aircraft waiting for us at Bristol airport is an impressive old workhorse, an Antonov-12 built in 1968, complete with Ukrainian crew.

They busy themselves with prepping the plane as we get our two Landcruisers, packed with communications and administration equipment, up the ramp.

Five hours later, we land at a remote airfield in northern Algeria to refuel, something of a change from the chilly drizzle of Bristol.

As the doors open, the hot air hits us like a jet. It's 49C. The local security officials are anxious that we don't get out of the plane, but after some negotiation, they allow us to use the toilets.

What should have been a two-hour stopover turns into five. At this temperature, the pilots explain, it is simply too hot to start the engines.

We get under way only after the local fire brigade douses the engines and propellers several times with water.

At 0400 local time, we finally arrive. Niamey airport is closed, but a sleepy customs official processes our passports.

It feels like we've been travelling for days, but there's only time for a couple of hours' sleep before work needs to start.

Monday 25 July

We get into our makeshift operations base on Monday morning, a conference room in the offices of the Niger Red Cross.

We meet our local colleagues, together with international delegates from the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, who have already been here for two weeks doing the initial assessments.

Mothers and their undernourished children at a feeding centre run by MSF in Tahoua, northern Niger.
Locusts and a drought have meant that harvests have failed in Niger

They explain that a seed distribution is already under way to catch the end of the planting season.

As for the main operation, we have to move, and we have to move fast.

We know that if we don't prepare well, we will not be doing justice to the desperate needs here. But we also know that the clock is ticking. It's a fine line to tread.

Langdon Greenhalgh, the Federation team leader here, puts it well. "It's a question of building the ship and sailing it at the same time."

Our French Red Cross colleagues explain their plan for Zinder and Agadez, the districts where they are operating. The priority is to establish logistical bases from which they can run supplementary feeding centres.


"Why didn't the help get there sooner?" asks one journalist. There is no single easy answer

Food crisis timeline

It is agreed that we will adopt the same model for Tahoua and Maradi, which will be the focus of the British Red Cross. A plan is taking shape.

I go back to the airport with Peter Pearce, the British team leader, and Eric Rossi, a French Red Cross logistician attached to our six-person unit.

After quite a wait, our papers are processed and we get our vehicles and equipment out.

The next hours are spent getting the base up and running. Satellite phones are set up, computers and printers hooked up, local mobiles purchased.

Calls start pouring in from international media. Interviews range from the supportive to the slightly hostile.

"Why didn't the help get there sooner?" asks one journalist. There is no single easy answer.

One could say that government and UN strategies didn't work as well as they might have done; international donors were slow to respond despite aid agency warnings; it is also the case that it was hard to assess that a chronically deficient food situation was turning acute.

Of one thing I'm certain. It's easy to say that we should 'Make Poverty History'. It sounds good.

But there are huge changes that need to be made on every level - political, economic and humanitarian - before that can happen.

For the time being, though, this is an emergency that we and many others are responding to, right here and right now. The wider questions will have to wait.

Tuesday 26 July

Eric leaves this morning for Tahoua to get the rapid assessment done ahead of setting up the supplementary feeding centre there.

There is good news from the World Food Programme.

Some 4,000 tonnes of cereal and oils will be arriving next week. So we need to be ready to distribute.


NIGER IN FACTS AND FIGURES
Landlocked country in West Africa
One of poorest nations in world
Population of 11.5m
60% of population live on $1 a day
50% of population under 15
82% of population depend on subsistence farming
Source: UNDP

The Red Cross in Geneva has also found a European supplier to provide enough Unimix - an enriched flour that makes a kind of porridge - to distribute in Tahoua and Maradi.

Over the next six months, that will go to vulnerable children under five who need supplementary nutrition.

Their families will also receive a ration of rice, lentils and oil so that they do not end up dividing up what the child receives between themselves.

Neil Brown, another of our logisticians, is heading out to Maradi tomorrow morning and we're expecting another logistics co-ordinator and a nutritionist to arrive in Niamey today.

We've moved fast to get this far, and it's satisfying to see things fall into place. There's no time to lose.

morti.jpg, image/jpeg, 290x200

Questa luminosa struttra d'assistenza, in prima pagina sul Washington Post, è in realtà l'unica per 500.000 persone disperse in un'area vastissima, dei quali circa 50.000, e non 5, sono bambini che -adesso- sono messi come i -fortunati- ritratti nelle foto.

Negli articoli finora apparsi sulla stampa anglosassona, -nessuno- ha denunciato il crollo degli aiuti umanitari da parte dei paesi ricchi negli anni scorsi, l'unico commento è all'avarizia che mostrano nell'affrontare l'emergenza, e viene dall'Onu, nessuno politico al governo nei paesi ricchi ha mosso un dito; il nostro paese ha, con gli Stati Uniti, il record dei fondi promessi e mai consegnati; solo stupide parole prive di senso, bugie, prese in giro.