The following chronical was originally published in Bergens Tidende on april 28th. Entitled “Apologize, Egeland”, it was my response to Jan Egeland’s dead silence concerning his dealings with the Niger 2005 famine scam, a “famine” he was so involved with that he credited himself for having solved the entire issue. With Egeland having recently visited Niger for the first time, still without any reference to the so called famine situation in 2005, I was inspired to translate parts of this piece, in order to make it available to a wider audience.

‘Apologize, Egeland’

by Esther Garvi
Eden Foundation
originally published in Bergens Tidende on April 28th, 2008

The so called famine in Niger 2004-05 took place in a country where I have resided for more than twenty years. Despite claims of good pretenses, a great wrong has been done to a people who have had its leadership publicly discredited on the international scene, its sensitive economy disrupted by an invasion of foreign food distributions and its local food culture ridiculed on international television. An excuse from those responsible would be in order, but now that the tide has turned, the voices of the actors previously so fond of the cameras seem to have gone mute.

During the TV2 debate take took place in Norway on March 4, I was surprised by the level of arrogance shown by the prominent people within the aid industry. I was chocked by the lack of interest towards the recipients of the intended aid, as well as the general lack of understanding for the need of the receiving country. […] Problems are simplified and exaggerated, so that the large aid organizations can offer simple solutions, a so called “quick fix” to global poverty and misery.

No shame

Let us start with Jan Egeland, one of the main protagonists in this controversial event that took place in 2005. During this time, he was the UN Under-Secretary-General and Emergency Relief Coordinator. In May 2005, Egeland described the situation in Niger as “the number one forgotten and neglected emergency in the world” and claimed that 3.6 of the 12 million inhabitants of Niger (that would be a third of the population!) were affected, out of which 2.5 million people needed “urgent life-saving support”. I for one have yet to meet anyone in Niger who knows somebody who died from not having food to eat.

I therefor ask: has the man, who shamelessly took credit for having resolved a famine that never existed, nothing to say to his defense? When confronted with the president of Niger’s statement (who himself red a REAL famine in the 70s and the 80s) of there never being a famine in Niger during 2004-05, Egeland contemptuously retorted that “those are the words of a man who was never starved.” Does Jan Egeland know anything about hunger himself? He who doesn’t seem to know anything about Nigerien culture or traditions, and who has never spent a single day in his life living below one dollar?

The power of the media

In today’s aid business, it would seem that all it takes is the audacity to look the cameras straight in the eyes - you will get away with untruths as long as your intentions are good. Not even MSF can claim to have a clean slate. MSF played its part in creating the Nigerien aid crusade in 2005, through a press release that called for general food distributions throughout the country. This despite their own internal reports stating that the malnutrition rates in the country remained close to those observed in the previous years, but that was not the image they wanted to portray to the public.

Dying children make good PR. But in addition to destroying people’s dignity, the short term aid was harmful to Niger. Free food distributions create dependency and reduce people’s coping mechanisms which they desperately need for the years to come.

Creating dependency

The difficulties in Niger 2004-05 came as no surprise to the local population however, for years of bad rains come with regular intervals. The farmers are used to millet crops failing, and many of them rely on edible trees and bushes to take them through lean times. Hilary Anderson of the BBC referred to these life-savers as “brittle trees” and “poisonous plants”, but the fact remains that annual herbs and edible leaves are an important part of the local Nigerien food culture – with the different areas of Niger having their own preferences.

Copyright Eden Foundation 2005

But who is inspired to labour when there are free things to be received? People in Niger now talk about products that since 2005 are given to keep these little ones malnourished enough to qualify for food aid. How do the donating organizations explain that the food which is distributed under the pretext of battling ‘hunger’ end up on the market instead, where it is exchanged for money - money that is later used to buy new status items such as radios, motor cycles or new living room curtains? How are sacks of rice (which competes with the local food market) supposed to solve a chronic malnutrition problem? And why aren’t the local food and the local knowledge – which actually exist – used when looking for a solution to malnourishment?

Copyright Eden Foundation 2005

Copyright Eden Foundation 2005

Taking credit

In his recent book “A Billion Lives”, a book so appropriately named by a man who does not check his facts and figures, Egeland talks about the success that the UN has seen under his command and names a number of world emergencies where “hundreds of thousands of lives were predicted to be lost.” Egeland writes: “These sombre predictions were all averted, because multilateral action that builds on local capacities is effective.” Well, if the UN has over-dramatized any other “catastrophe” in the same way as they did with Niger, I am not surprised at the success rate Egeland is having in “addressing” catastrophes around the world.

It is not very heroic to stand in front of the cameras and take credit for having discovered or resolved a crisis that never existed in the first place, nor to have stepped into a permanently difficult situation and made people dependent on yourself, although you have no intentions of staying in the long run.

The true heroes in this story however are the men and women of Niger who went into the bush and harvested nutritious fruits and leaves, which they gave to feed their children. Their children weren’t admitted to the health stations in 2005, and as a consequence, these families were not rewarded with extra rations of Western food. Instead, they took responsibility for their own situation and preserved their dignity. It is the future of their children that inspires me to return year after year to the least developed country in the world.

Copyright Eden Foundation 2005

Apologize, Egeland

In his own publication appearing in the USA Today on July the 8th 2005, Egeland writes: “Let us learn from the tragedy in Niger”. This is the one time where I actually agree with Egeland. Yes, let us learn from this major “aid catastrophe”. Let us learn from this outstanding example of media manipulation, aid politics, emotional blackmail, personal megalomania, Western arrogance and the typical human disregard for anything that we are unfamiliar with. I even agree with the BBC when their Developing world correspondent David Loyn refers to the Niger situation with the following maxim: “Success has many fathers, while failure remains an orphan.” There was a time when the handling of the Niger crisis had many fathers, but those previously so engaged voices are now silent, and it would seem that many are hoping that this debate will simply go away… Well, it may take the debate in Norway a week to die down, but it’s going to take Niger generations before the damage done by the recent torrent of wrongly targeted short-term aid can be rectified.

The country deserves an apology.