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World is stingy - Oxfam
25/02/2005 07:56 - (SA)
London - A wealth of donations from across the globe that followed the tsunami disaster in Asia shows how "stingy" people really are in the face of the world's 15 other major crises, the charity Oxfam said on Friday.
The international community has raised a mere 4% of a $3.2bn appeal launched by the United Nations last year to fund these forgotten emergencies, which are largely in Africa and affect 29 million people, it said.
In contrast, it managed to meet 97% of the funding costs requested for victims of the Indian Ocean tsunami, which is believed to have killed more than 290 000 people in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and other countries, said Oxfam spokesperson Sam Barrett.
"The tsunami has shown that when the world wants to deal with a humanitarian crisis it can mobilise massive resources and save lives," Barbara Stocking, director of Oxfam Great Britain, said in a statement.
"So far the global response to the world's other emergencies has been stingy in comparison. The aid agenda should be set according to need and not according to media coverage," she said.
The comments came as wealthy countries wound up a two-day meeting in Switzerland to discuss aid spending plans for 2005.
Underscoring the difference in donations to the Indian Ocean disaster that struck two months ago and ongoing emergencies elsewhere, Oxfam revealed that each individual affected by the tsunami had received $500, whereas each person touched by a war in Uganda had only been granted $0.50.
'Particularly slow'
Oxfam had hoped that the donor community's attitude towards funding would change as a result of the staggering response to the tsunami, said Barrett.
But, judging by the evidence to-date, "this year has been particularly slow and we are concerned that donors may be unable to meet their commitments to these emergencies," he said.
A mere 0.8% of about $158m requested by the United Nations for Uganda has been pledged and just 0.4% of an appeal to save the lives of 1.2 million people in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo.
Even for Sudan, a country that is often in the headlines, the United Nations has only received 5% of a $1.5bn appeal, Oxfam said.
"This is an habitual problem whereby donors continue to fail to meet the needs of the UN to help the poorest people in the world," said Barrett.
"There needs to be a completely different approach to the way that people give aid for humanitarian need rather than political interest," he told AFP.
Oxfam, an international agency, is lobbying major donors such as France, Germany, the United States and Britain at the meeting in Montreux, to fund the forgotten crises, he said.
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