Two headlines on today's BBC News Africa page struck me as a cruel hypocrisy; the first, "Ethiopia Appeals for Urgent Aid;" the second, "Images Back Ethiopia Abuse Claim."
The first article, self-evidently deals with the current humanitarian crisis in the country; there is an urgent appeal for food aid to feed millions on the cusp of starvation in the Horn of Africa. This is a story that is continually repeated, a cry for help, a government throwing up its hands in impotence. While far desirable to a government such as Burma's which faces humanitarian crisis and does nothing, either domestically or internationally, to alleviate the suffering of its citizens, it is still a strong pronouncement of a country that is extremely far from the point of self-sufficiency, in even the most basic essence of the word. In the individual case of Ethiopia, a nation saturated with Aid agencies from throughout the developed world, and independent and "free from tyranny" from almost two decades, it is an indefensible scenario of ineptitude and malevolence.
The second article deals with the Ethiopian Army's cruel human rights abuses in the Ogdagen Desert region of eastern Ethiopian, in land that is historically Somali, and currently inhabited by Somali descendants. According to Human Rights Watch, "(there is) evidence of extrajudicial detentions and killings, beatings and rapes in military custody, forced displacement of the rural population and the collective punishment of communities suspected of helping or sympathising with the Ogaden National Liberation Front (ONLF) rebels."
A government that respects the human dignity of its people is a government that does not worry about internal security issues arising from militant dissent. A government that is stable and viable for the future does not rape, kill, and burn its own citizens ; it does not supress, it supports, regardless of ethnic background. And a government that can take the time, resources, and organization to destroy, but cannot muster the same to create, is tyrannical.
The simple and troubling fact is this; Ethiopia has the money to support a vast standing army that is fighting on three fronts at the current moment in time; yet, Ethiopia has no ability to feed its people at risk of starvation. This is a disquieting fact that has repeatedly played its hand throughout the history of the African continent. Regimes have no problem funding and finding guns; but when it comes to food and basic necessities for life, the cup is empty.
What role should the international community play in these situations? As a human mandate, we must help the people in need; they are the innocent victims of famine and drought and do not deserve death. However, governments will never gain a sense of civic responsibility if their shortcomings are always filled, no questions asked, by international aid. This is a fine line to walk, morally and politically; the answer, elusive.
After centuries of advanced human development, it is a cruel scar on the face of humanity that we still value guns over food, fighting over peace, in so many regions of the world. There is no true human advancement if some are left behind; we must progress as one, and we also will fail as one.
