GENEVA (AFP) — The Red Cross on Wednesday revised its emergency appeal for Ethiopia to five million euros (7.9 million dollars) as the situation in the drought-hit south of the country got worse.
"Over the past two months the situation has worsened and living conditions have deteriorated. People have exhausted all their resources and are unable to feed themselves.
"We must step up our response," said Lorenzo Violante, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies' drought operations manager in Addis Ababa.
The funds would go towards helping over 76,000 people, including providing emergency food aid, as well as improving access to water and promoting hygiene, the IFRC said in a statement.
An aid operation had started in May to help 40,000 people in the southern Ethiopian village of Damot Pulasa, but it has now been expanded to help another 36,000 people in neighbouring Damot Gale.
Ethiopia was hit with severe floods last year which destroyed most of the food crops, while this year a drought has worsened the situation, leading to food prices that soared 330 percent.
Over 16,000 children in the two villages are acutely malnourished, said Fasika Kebede, Secretary General of the Ethiopian Red Cross.
"The situation can only deteriorate if we are not able to intervene efficiently," he added.
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Elias: Is this the definition of famine by Red Cross?
"Over the past two months the situation has worsened and living conditions have deteriorated. People have exhausted all their resources and are unable to feed themselves."
August 20th, 2008 at 9:59 am
Bearing this outward symbolic Christian Cross or Muslim Crescent, the Red Cross or the Red Crescent has been seen dragging its feet when it comes to helping the Ethiopian people who are really in need of help.
One of the doctrines of Islam and Christianity concerning charity has always been helping the poor, the hungry, and the sick, but we can hardly see the Red Cross or the Red Crescent doing it on a daily, monthly or yearly basis in some places like in Ethiopia. As there is a red tape in every organization, Christian or Muslim, the Red Cross or the Red Crescent may have a lot of red tapes that the donors do not know, and they must investigate how this big organization operates and how a country must prove to this organization that its people are suffering from hunger and diseases so that it would need help from the Red Cross or the Red Crescent. In other words, how much a person has to suffer in order to qualify to get help from the Red Cross or the Red Crescent? What are the criteria the Red Cross or the Red Crescent follows when it disqualifies some poor Ethiopians from helping, and yet helping other European poor countries? Is the help the Red Cross or the Red Crescent gives to a country based on how much contribution the people of that country gives to the Red Cross or to the Red Crescent?
The Red Cross sometimes may have a good intention to help the war victims of a region, but unfortunately the government of that region may not allow it to help the war victims for a reason that the enemies of the government may indirectly get help from the Red Cross, and that was the reason Meles always gave to the Red Cross when the Red Cross tried to help the people of Ogaden; in such cases, the government is to be blamed not the Red Cross or the Red Crescent.
What ever help the Red Cross or the Red Crescent offers or does not, the people should contribute to such good organization since there is no any other perfect organization that can be fully trusted by all the people.
August 20th, 2008 at 4:10 pm