Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2005-09-08-Speech-4-131"
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"en.20050908.18.4-131"2
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".
Mr President, Commissioner, on 28 August, Mr Annan declared: ‘We are all responsible for the famine in Niger.’ Must we do the same? In actual fact, I myself sent a letter to you in April in which I questioned you about the threat of famine in Niger. I also seize this opportunity to thank you for your response. Yet there we have it, we always have to wait to see horrific images on our screens before we intervene.
Indeed, only in June, the government of Niger, which has long denied the scale of the crisis, refused the free distribution of emergency food rations, in order, it said, to avoid destabilising the market, when we know full well that the poorest people were unable to obtain and afford these reasonably priced, subsidised food products.
We therefore keep coming back to the same question: what are we doing for this dying, declining Africa? Admittedly, the world has finally turned its attention to the fate of Niger. Aid is finally there. The donors realised that this crisis was a real famine, affecting a third of the population of Niger, or 3.6 million people, which is a huge number. What we can still call for in our resolution is for aid reserved for these populations to be equal to demand and, of course, to reach the most vulnerable people without exception. Yet on that subject too, I am not telling you anything you do not already know.
I am referring in particular to the nomadic populations, for example, who are not necessarily on the lists of the World Food Programme and who have lost almost all of their livestock, which is itself also dying of hunger. Consequently, a number of suicides have been recorded among the Fulani, a proud people who cannot bear to beg. This famine also reminds us that we must conduct a real development aid policy.
Commissioner, I am very well aware that you can back up words with figures and actions. Therefore, what sustainable development project is the Commission implementing for Niger? For Africa? What about support for agricultural exports? All these questions will constantly be asked, but I believe that, one of these days, they really will have to be resolved at European Union level."@en1
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