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CounterPunch
September
30, 2002
Theme Song for
21st Century Famines:
"We
Own the World, We Ignore the Children"
by
ZEYNEP TOUFE
"The situation in Zimbabwe hit you
guys hard, I suppose" said my neighbor to the young woman
who had just sauntered out of the customs area at the airport.
She was from Malawi, he was trying to make small talk about the
famine ravaging her country. She was resignedly nodding till
he mentioned Zimbabwe.
With a puzzled look, she squinted in
his direction: "What?"
As usual, we hear a lot about the side
issue and almost nothing about the fundamental questions: hence
the puzzling remark.
She probably didn't know that a good
chunk of the media coverage in the United States regarding the
famine that threatens six Southern African states and 12 million
people concentrated on the fact that Zimbabwe's government is
trying to oust couple thousand white farmers from the most of
the productive lands, most of which they control as a legacy
of the white supremacist colonial rule. The truth is that this
is but a side issue; the evictions haven't helped the harvest;
however, the hard reality is that rainfalls are down 75 percent
in Zimbabwe. And Zimbabwe is but one country threatened by the
famine.
While it is true that this famine, as
with most famines, is the result of a combination of bad weather
and bad policies, the real tragic story is that both the bad
policy and the bad weather were severely exacerbated by the rich
world.
That would be us.
It often seems that God perennially deals
a bad hand to Africa. Remember Ethiopia in the eighties? The
massive famine that came at the end of an almost ten year drought,
the images of starving, wide-eyed, swollen-bellied children with
the accompanying tune of "We are the World, We Are the Children"?
The song should be remade: "We Own
the World, We Ignore the Children."
It's turning out that the Africa's 'bad
luck' is us.
Some scientists now believe that the
Ethiopian drought in the eighties may have been triggered
by "tiny particles of sulfur dioxide spewed by factories
and power plants thousands of miles away in North America, Europe
and Asia."
In other words, pollution from industrial
nations.
The current drought cycle is also quite
likely aggravated by global warming and the general change in
climate patterns due to human activities. In the report released
last year by United Nations Environment Program, "Climate
Change 2001: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability," UNEP
scientists predicted that, in terms of droughts, southern Africa
would be one of the hardest hit areas from global warming and
industrial pollution. The report talked of a 'century of hunger'
and predicted that 'lack of rain, warmer temperatures and increases
in evaporation could reduce yields by a third or more in these
areas.'
Africa's share of the global population
is 14 percent but it's responsible for only 3.2 percent of global
CO2 emission.
It gets worse.
Probably unbeknownst to my neighbor in
the airport, Malawi, under the 'advice' of IMF, World Bank and
other international lenders and donors, was forced to cut fertilizer
and maize subsidies to its millions of subsistence farmers. The
lack of subsidies made it hard for poor farmers to buy fertilizer
and seeds -- and subsistence farmers constitute almost 70 percent
of Malawi's population. Meanwhile, back at the ranch in the rich
world, farmers are heavily subsidized. The 2002 Farm Bill in
the United States will provide $190 billion in new subsidy money
over the next 10 years to US farmers, which constitute only two
percent of the population -- and most of that money will go to
the wealthy, corporate agribusinesses. European Union too heavily
subsidizes its own farmers.
None of that for Malawi.
And, as Challis McDonough of Voice Of
America reported, most farmers in Malawi could not borrow the
money to buy fertilizer and seed since the interest rate on loans
from commercial banks were incredibly high, about 55 percent.
My neighbor in the airport waiting lounge
was probably also not aware that just two year ago, Malawi had
a bumper crop and wanted to keep a chunk of in its strategic
grain reserves to guard against famines.
The insolence.
Countries such as Malawi do not get to
make their own policy, with the best interests of their people
in mind.. This little country with an annual per capita income
less than $200 and a life expectancy of 38 (yes, thirty eight,
3-8 as in two times nineteen) already owes $1.5 billion, about
90 percent of its GDP, to various financiers.
Malawi's President Muluzi gave an interview
he gave to BBC on April 9th, 2002. In the interview, Muluzi explained
that the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank "insisted
that, since Malawi had a surplus [of maize] and the (government's)
National Food Reserve Agency had this huge loan, they had to
sell the maize to repay the commercial banks." The 'huge
loan' had been taken to establish the reserve. Its repayment
meant that the maize in the reserve was sold off. Why was this
done at all, you might ask. I didn't do the research, I don't
know. However, I do know that a familiar pattern is well established
with IMF bail-outs and loans and Heavily Indebted Poor Country
initiatives and what not -- quite likely, some
bank in New York, Paris, London Zurich or Tokyo made some
money from the transaction itself with commission, interest,
consulting fees...
So, onward, they starve.
This is the weekend of IMF / World Bank
protests in DC. One of the key demands is 'to cancel all impoverished
country debt to the World Bank and IMF.' IMF and the World Bank
as well as most governments of the rich world are opposed to
what they call debt forgiveness, mostly claiming that it breeds
irresponsibility. They have come up with various schemes that
are supposed to provide some debt relief while providing accountability
-- most of these schemes have so far required that these countries
take on fresh debt.
I, too have a proposal about debt forgiveness:
let's cancel the debt and hope they find it in their hearts to
forgive us.
Zeynep Toufe
is a doctoral student in Austin, Texas. She can be reached at
zeynep@tao.ca
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