From Africa Recovery, New Releases, May 2003

Despite Iraq crisis, keep eyes on Africa, leaders urge

By Gumisai Mutume

African leaders are pressing the international community to not let the enormous challenges of post-war reconstruction in Iraq again relegate their continent's needs to the "back burner," as South African President Thabo Mbeki characterizes the problem.

"Clearly the attention is now on Iraq," Lesotho's Finance Minister Timothy Thahane observed during the annual Spring Meetings of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington, DC, in April. "Yesterday it was on Kosovo and Eastern Europe."

Although Iraq was not formally on the agenda, it dominated the discussions in Washington, as the US pressed the two institutions to resume operating in that country as soon as possible. In response, African finance ministers urged donors not to divert resources from the humanitarian, social and economic crises confronting Africa.

Yet "the risk is there," agreed the World Bank's chief economist, Mr. Nicholas Stern. Although the Iraq crisis has a potential to divert attention and money away from the Bank's broader efforts to fight poverty, he added, "it is our job to stay the course."

Double standards

Strong criticisms of donor responses have come from Executive Director James Morris of the UN's World Food Programme (WFP). At a UN Security Council meeting in April, Mr. Morris accused international donors of applying double standards. Why do "we routinely accept a level of suffering and hopelessness in Africa we would never accept in any other part of the world?" he asked.

Photo : ©WFP / Brenda Barton

Some 40 million people in Africa urgently need humanitarian assistance this year, at a total cost of $1.8 bn. Relief pledges so far still fall $1 bn short of that amount, and Mr. Morris is pressing donors to cover the gap.

The WFP reports that global food aid already had been falling. Last year it dipped to less than 10 mn metric tonnes, from 15 mn in 1999. This has translated into massive relief shortages in developing countries. This year, for example, Mauritania, Cape Verde, Gambia, Senegal and Mali only have 40 per cent of their external food aid requirements.

Mr. Morris' appeal for more resources for Africa comes at a time when the international community has mandated the agency to launch a $1.3 bn dollar humanitarian food operation in Iraq ­ expected to become the largest for any single country in the agency's history. And that is only part of the UN's total appeal for $2.2 bn in immediate emergency assistance for Iraq.

Mr. Ian Wallace of the relief organization Tearfund International hopes that the money for Iraq will be additional aid, not resources diverted from other crises. "There are no easy answers when large scale disasters coincide," he notes. But because of "the political profile of Iraq and widespread media attention it receives," Mr. Wallace added, there is danger that other crises will be forgotten.

Political will

Some critics point out that the problem is not just one of limited resources amid multiple crises, but also of political will. "The speed with which political will and resources are mobilized to invade and bomb and possibly reconstruct Iraq are in stark contrast to the willingness of the rich countries to tackle poverty in Africa," says Oxfam International's advocacy director, Mr. Phil Twyford.

For instance, in April the US Congress approved a $79 bn emergency spending package for the initial costs of the Iraq war and reconstruction. Such an amount would be adequate to finance HIV/AIDS prevention and treatment programmes in low- and middle-income countries for about 10 years, based on UN estimates of the total costs. Yet the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has raised only $2 bn since the initiative's creation in 2001.

Criticism of apparent differential treatment of Iraq also extends to debt relief. There are growing calls by the US government for the cancellation of Iraq's external debt, estimated at between $62 bn and $130 bn. "The Iraqi people cannot bear the burden of current debt levels," noted US Treasury Secretary John Snow in April, urging the industrialized countries to write off the debt.

"It seems that after the US prosecutes a nearly unilateral war to take over a devastated, indebted country, it suddenly sees the logic of eliminating illegitimate debts," says Ms. Njoki Njoroge Njehu, of the non-governmental network 50 Years Is Enough. She says creditor nations should also cancel the debt of Africa's poorest countries.

Some developed countries share that view. "Certainly Iraq needs our attention," noted French Finance Minister Francis Mer. "But so does Niger," he said, citing just one of many impoverished African countries that are unable to get out from under their debt burdens.

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