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IRELAND IS TO donate an additional €1m in emergency funding to help alleviate the current humanitarian crisis in the Horn of Africa.
Junior Minister for Trade and Development, Jan O’Sullivan, has stated that the aid will bring to €5.6m the total given by the Irish State to the East Africa area since the beginning of the year.
The area – including countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia – has been hit by the worst drought in six decades. Concern aid worker Jennifer O’Gorman, from Bray, Co Wicklow, is on the ground in a camp in Moghadishu, Somalia. She wrote in TheJournal.ie yesterday that some of the children in the camp are so weak from malnutrition that they can’t move, and so dehydrated that they can’t cry. She wrote:
All around I see people like this, people suffering hunger and mental trauma in equal measure, listless and desperate for help. It’s hard not to be affected by these scenes, but I somehow manage to contain myself because I know Concern and just a few other agencies are here now. But the scale of this unfolding catastrophe is enormous and so much more help is needed.
Jan O’Sullivan said Irish people had been moved by the plight of people who are “literally starving”. The junior minister discussed the crisis with her EU counterparts during a meeting in Poland yesterday. The €1m extra funding from Ireland is to be divided into €750,000 for the World Food Programme’s distribution of high-nutrition food to small children and pregnant women; and €250,000 is to go to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees to provide shelter, healthcare, water and sanitation.
O’Sullivan said:
Today’s announcement brings to €5.6m the Government’s funding to Concern, Trocaire, Goal and World Vision for emergency food, water, sanitation and healthcare, and to the United Nations agencies in the region so far this year. Only by working together in a strategic and effective manner will the international community, aid agencies and the Governments of the region be able to respond fully to this devastating crisis.
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I do have sympathy with the people affected by this drought, but you have to wonder why Ethiopia is spending €100m on 200 tanks while its people are suffering like this
There buying them as they are building a the biggest dam in Africa on the Blue Nile much to the dislike of Egypt, which has more than once said it would go to war if the flow of the Nile is reduce because of Ethiopian power & irrigation projects.
Because it’s run by corrupt despots. Throwing money at these countries isn’t the solution, education followed ousting the leaders and putting a democracy in place is. Easier said than done though.
It’s an unjust world we live in.
dont get me wrong, i feel sorry for these people but i dont think we have “additional” money to send over there when we are closing A&E wards here.
As an alternative, everyone could buy one less pint this week and use that money, that’s a few million right there. But we all know that’s not going to happen either
so what your saying is take even more money out of the economy? if everyone in the country drank one less pint a week it would cause job losses and less tax revenue to support our own country, just so we can send it all abroad.
How on earth can this country afford to be giving money away?
It’s not our money, it’s the IMFs! (they don’t know that we’re not gonna pay it all back ssshhhh)
Seriously though what’s another 6 million to pay back? It doesn’t even scratch the surface of the interest.
Seeing and hearing about people in these countries really puts our “problems” into perspective. We’re far from utopia, and we do have our issues with poverty here, but it’s a different world over there.
I think we can & should help these people out as best we can. To stand by & let people suffer in the name of austerity so the bankers & IMF/ECB can have it instead is not an option.
One million is barely a bonus for one banker. At least in aid it will help reduce the suffering of many.
One less pack of cigarettes from those on the dole would cover much more than this aid package – and I’d much rather see our limitedresources spent on feeding the hungry rather than on fake tan and going-out pyjamas for the unemployed.
That is ridicuous, why are we giving so much money away to this? That’s 5.6 million that could be used to provide special needs assistance in schools or keep the a&e open in roscommon hospital. Not a cent of that is reaching those poor people.
Totally agree, what about the aid we also give to Africans here claiming asylum. As we seen earlier using forged documents and other scams. These funds could be better spent on our own people. I believe we should end foreign aid completely until we are in a position where we can afford it.
have your say