By Gustavo Capdevila
GENEVA, Jul 17 2003 (IPS)

Politics and the media spotlight have contributed toward shifting humanitarian aid to “high profile” disaster areas at the expense of more “invisible” suffering, charges the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in its annual World Disasters Report, released here Thursday.

“The countries targeted in the war on terror have attracted unprecedented levels of humanitarian and reconstruction aid. Other arguably more pressing crises languished in the shadows,” says Abbas Gullet, the Federation’s disaster management director.

Billing itself as the world’s largest humanitarian organisation, the Federation provides assistance without regard to nationality, race, creed, social class or political opinion. The focus of this year’s report is the ethics of humanitarian aid.

The humanitarian ethic means saving the lives of those most in need and at the same time respecting the dignity of each individual who has fallen victim to armed conflict, famine, disease or natural disasters, says the report.

Alleviating suffering and respecting dignity are two principles that are the basis of the code of conduct for humanitarian assistance adhered to by more than 200 organisations worldwide.

But the Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies notes that compliance with these principles has been uneven.

This is not a new phenomenon, admits Jonathan Walter, editor of the report. “But we believe that the war on terror is exaggerating this trend.”

The largest volumes of aid are channelled to the countries that have been targeted in the U.S.-led war on terror, while those who suffer the consequences of armed conflict, disease and natural disaster in other countries go ignored, says the Federation.

The report underscores the situation in Africa, thrashed by drought, flood, armed conflict and infectious diseases. HIV/AIDS alone cost the continent some 6,500 human lives per day.

In the 10 years since the launch of the humanitarian assistance code of conduct, the record has been “quite poor,” said Walter. “In the past few years, at least, aid was focussed on high profile disasters in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Iraq,” he noted.

The report editor cited the example of Iraq: “Two weeks after the fall of Saddam Hussein the U.S. Department of Defence reported that it had raised 1.7 billion dollars for relief” for the people in that country.

While the Federation recognises that such aid should be appreciated, “in that same month, the United Nations emergency appeal to feed 40 million people starving in 22 countries across Africa was one billion dollars short.”

In Angola there are four million people who rely on food aid in order to survive. In September 2002, the Federation issued an urgent call to provide assistance for 100,000 of these people most in need.

Four months later, just four percent of the requested funding had arrived, said Walter. The same situation is repeated in other parts of Africa and in the rest of the world, he lamented.

The prolonged crisis in Afghanistan, resulting from the strife begun with the war against the Taliban and from drought, forced millions of people to abandon their homes.

Humanitarian aid to Afghanistan averaged some 100 million dollars a year in the 1990s, but reached 300 million dollars annually after the war waged there by the United States, following the Sep. 11, 2001 terror attacks in New York and Washington, in retaliation for the Taliban having given refuge to the perpetrators.

Afghanistan, with a population of some 22 million, saw the number of people in need of assistance rise from 3.5 million to nine million after the U.S.-led war. The number of aid organisations operating in that country shot up from 46 in 1999 to 350 in 2002.

“All of these NGOs (non-governmental organisations) need money to start their operations, to buy computers, to rent offices, to pay personnel. Is this the best use of humanitarian aid?” wonders Walter.

The strong presence of these foreign employers has triggered wage inflation. Afghan drivers working for embassies or international agencies receive monthly salaries of some 500 dollars, while a local doctor earns around 45 dollars a month, he notes.

And the influx of the foreign humanitarian groups “has caused rents to soar,” Walter said. One Afghan NGO that rents spaces to attend to the needs of street children lost four of its centres when the rent went up from a 100 dollars to 4,000 dollars a month.

“HIV/AIDS is another disaster which when not forgotten has been neglected over the years,” says the editor of the Federation’s report.

The HIV/AIDS death toll “is equivalent to 155 fully loaded passenger jets crashing every day of the year. And yet the headlines are focused on American and British soldiers being killed in Iraq.”

UNAIDS (Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS) last year received three billion dollars to fight the disease, “half what it neededà By 2007 it will need 15 billion dollars a year” to fight the pandemic.

Given these precedents, Juan Manuel Suárez del Toro, president of the International Federation of Red Cross-Red Crescent Societies reiterated an idea that should be obvious: “If the aid community and donors are committed to providing aid on an impartial basis they must act on their principles and intervene where the needs are most acute.”

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