Sir, – The position of the United Nations regarding the Horn of Africa drought and famine crisis, particularly in respect of Somalia, is becoming increasingly confused.
Spokespeople for the parent body and its agencies seem on occasion to come quite close to contradicting one another.
On September 8th, the UN’s humanitarian co-ordinator for Somalia, Mark Bowden, said providing armed protection to aid deliveries in Somalia could place the relief effort in jeopardy.
He was responding to a call from Ethiopian prime minister Meles Zenawi for the establishment of UN-protected humanitarian corridors to allow aid be delivered to al-Shabaab-held areas.
Yet Mr Bowden’s statement was almost simultaneous to the UN declaring a sixth region of Somalia to be in famine, scaling up the projected death toll to 750,000 people within the next four months, and bemoaning the fact that most of the worst-affected people (around three million) cannot be reached because they are located in areas under the control of al-Shabaab.
The second statement is clearly intimating that unless the threat to aid agencies from this terrorist group is nullified, the famine in Somalia is set to get much worse, which is almost the polar opposite of Mr Bowden’s contention that an intervention to achieve this would place the current relief effort in jeopardy.
Logic dictates that the only way of removing the threat from al-Shabaab – and ensuring that other violent groups do not rush to fill the vacuum – is by the deployment of a sufficient number of properly trained and equipped UN-mandated peacekeepers to provide safe corridors for the delivery of aid. Those of us who have advocated this from the outset have been roundly criticised for making such a suggestion.
Given that the situation in Somalia is continuing to deteriorate, and that by its statements it clearly understands what the problems are, surely it is time for the UN to advocate a rational alternative to peacekeepers, rather than doing little more than merely issuing reports and conflicting statements. – Yours, etc,