Famine in Ethiopia: Crisis of Many Dimensions

Abstract

devastating famine in Ethiopia, brought jarringly to the attention of the West by a BBC television report in October 1984, produced an immediate and compassionate response from developed nations. Governments provided emergency food relief, and private citizens gave generously to charitable groups working in Africa. Celebrities organized under such auspices as USA for Africa and the Band Trust joined forces to raise money for famine relief in unprecedented amounts. Live Aid concert alone raised more than $50 million to purchase food, medical supplies, and farming equipment for Africa.' result of the benevolent outpouring of financial aid and in kind contributions by the West may well have saved as many as seven million lives. By August 1985, ten months after the start of the Western relief effort, the head of the United States Agency for International Development (A.I.D.), M. Peter McPherson, could report that a majority of the famine victims in Ethiopia were receiving least some food. He characterized the situation in that country as greatly improved and reported that although there were still people dying, the contrast was dramatic. McPherson estimated that food was reaching more than five million of the eight million Ethiopians classified as at risk of starvation. The skeleton-like people, the kids with bloated bellies, you hardly see that now, said the A.I.D. official.2 Eight months later, in April 1986, a U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Immigration and Refugee Policy reported that the mass starvation found in Ethiopia in 1984 had ended thanks to the sustained efforts of international and voluntary agencies. According to this report, assistance from the developed world not only got through to the people in need, but ... it made a difference between life and death for millions. prospects for the Big