Earlier this month, President Bush pledged to nearly triple the amount of U.S. aid to countries devastated by the tsunami, bringing the total amount of money earmarked for the troubled region to $950 million. This amount comes on top of the almost half a billion dollars privately pledged by American corporations and individuals, not to mention the nearly $4 billion pledged worldwide by other nations.

These staggering figures are comforting on some level, as they remind us that in an increasingly globalized age, the willingness and ability for people to stretch hands across borders and help their fellow man in times of need is unparalleled.

And Americans, as can be seen by simply counting up the dollars, are among some of the most generous and charitable people in the world.

Which is why, as news of the tsunami fades from our television screens and morning newspapers, it is important that the impulse to help doesn’t disappear as well.

While devastating, the damage done by the tsunami was by no means even the biggest humanitarian crisis of the month, let alone the year, as outside of our television cameras even more horrific events continue to unfold and demand the world’s attention.

A recently released report by the international humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders (also known by its French acronym MSF) highlights a number of these other slow-moving tsunamis of grief.

The annual Top 10 Most Underreported Humanitarian Crises report has come out for 2004, and it reminds us that for some of the poorest and most vulnerable countries on the earth—particularly in Africa—every day brings another disaster.

Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, for example. A decades-long civil war in one of Africa’s poorest nations has killed more than 3 million people and turned the country into a place with almost no economy and even less infrastructure.

Recently, more than 150,000 Congolese refugees—a number rivaling those killed in last month’s tsunami—fled for their lives in the wake of renewed fighting among rebels and government forces. The report notes that “rape is widespread, and political divisions often erupt along ethnic lines, affecting entire areas of a country the size of Western Europe.” And “many Congolese cannot meet even their most basic needs.”

Likewise, a constant threat of hunger and disease is estimated to claim the lives of more than 10 percent of children born each year in Ethiopia, primarily due to severe droughts and infectious diseases such as malaria and HIV/AIDS. Meanwhile, an estimated 5 million of Ethiopia’s 69 million people face chronic food shortages. More than a year after a debilitating 15-year civil war ended, another African country, Liberia, remains in crisis. The MSF report states that little of the country’s infrastructure remains, leaving most people without basic services like water and sanitation, while more than 300,000 refugees wait to return from neighboring countries.

Burundi, Somalia and Uganda fare little better, while other, non-African countries such as North Korea, Colombia and the Chechen Republic face their own versions of humanitarian disaster. The report also makes special mention of widespread tuberculosis, which is estimated to kill one person every 15 seconds and affects more than 8 million annually worldwide.

What is implicit in the report, and what ties together all of these stories under one depressing banner, is that humanitarian aid—from the United States and other countries around the world—is sorely lacking. If increased, it would go a long way toward alleviating suffering in these areas.

According to the U.S. Agency for International Development, the United States gave $26 million in development aid to the Democratic Republic of Congo in fiscal year 2002, up from $8 million in 1999, but less than during the peak years of the mid-1980s when sub-Saharan Africa was a key battleground of the Cold War.

The same story holds true for Liberia ($5.3 million in U.S. aid in 2002), Somalia ($2.8 million in 2002) and Burundi ($4.6 million in 2002), all countries that made the MSF list of underreported humanitarian crises last year.

But perhaps more devastating than the lack of aid is the crushing burden of debt.

According to Oxfam, the UK-based humanitarian agency, the poorest countries in the world, taken together, pay $100 million a day to their creditors, including the United States.
In 2002 alone, these underdeveloped countries paid out $39 billion in debt repayments to some of the world’s richest countries. That’s more than they are able to spend on health care, despite receiving $17 billion in aid for the same period.

Much of this debt comes from past loans and development aid that strangles the budgets of debtor nations, despite widespread belief that debt relief is one of the most effective means available to fight poverty and foster new development among the world’s neediest people.

For countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, buried deep in sub-Saharan Africa, or Colombia, wracked by a decades-long civil war, there are no televised celebrity appeals, charity concerts or official commissions led by ex-presidents like those that sprang up in the wake of the devastating tsunami disaster.

But that doesn’t mean the horrific stories that flow out of these troubled regions should claim any less of a hold on our sympathetic hearts or generous pocketbooks.

After all, it doesn’t take an earthquake or a tsunami before people we don’t know need our help.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 14th, 2005 at 11:48 am and is filed under On Writing.