Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-04-12-Speech-3-162"
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"I am grateful for the opportunity to speak in this debate – grateful but sad that the debate is necessary at all. I am standing in for my colleague, Commissioner Nielson, who would have liked to have been able to respond himself.
We are facing a major problem posed by the lack of adequate port facilities for food-aid deliveries, not least because of the non-availability of the Eritrean ports at Assab and Massawa, which means that only Djibouti and to a lesser extent Berbera can be used. Djibouti is expected to be congested with the arrival of 600 000 metric tonnes over the next three months. We are looking urgently for alternatives, including better use of the Port of Berbera through rapid improvements to the road from Berbera into Ethiopia. We are also considering using the Port of Sudan. Road improvements are under way on the Sudanese side and roads on the Ethiopian side are reported to be quite good.
As my friend said in opening this debate, of course there are problems because of the conflict zone and I just want to repeat what I said at the outset. I have had to speak in too many debates like this dealing with the consequences of crises like this, in the Great Lakes, in Ethiopia, in the Sudan and now in Ethiopia again. I repeat, we are better at delivering assistance now than we were a decade ago, but it is intensely frustrating that all the assistance should be required in the first place. It is intensely frustrating that as millions starve, governments spend small fortunes on guns and weaponry to wage war against each other when the only war they should be waging is a war against starvation, a war for food security, a war against poverty and environmental degradation, a war in which we are morally bound to help them. It follows therefore that as we combat the hunger, we should also lend our full support to those who fight for peace. We give our whole-hearted backing to the efforts of all of those, including the OAU and the European Presidency’s Special Envoy, Ambassador Serri, who worked for a peaceful settlement to regional conflicts. They will have our unstinting assistance. I am afraid that I should add that experience suggests that they need our prayers as well.
For me there is an awful sense of
or perhaps I should say
about this debate today. Over a decade ago, from 1986 to 1989, I was my country’s development minister. I know that there are a number of honourable Members in this House who have done the same job for their own countries. I was speaking in similar debates then, tackling similar crises in the Horn of Africa. I am afraid the story is grimly familiar: there are military conflicts, there is environmental degradation, there is drought, and sometimes there have been – and this was especially true in the past – extremely ill-judged policies. It is a lethal mix. It is capable of producing hunger and misery on a massive scale. We face the same old frustrations, as I said in the Chamber yesterday.
Despite all the problems we will, in the end get help to the starving, never quite as fast as we would like, but faster than used to be the case. So we improve our capacity to deal with the humanitarian problems in spite of the difficulties. But alas we are still incapable of preventing the humanitarian problems arising in the first place – very often problems with largely political causes. That is the frustration.
Let me set out for honourable Members what we are doing to alleviate the present crisis. There are currently two Commission teams in Ethiopia: one from ECHO and one from the Food Security Unit of our Directorate-General for Development. They will be making recommendations on our future efforts. The Ethiopian Government has asked for 821 000 tonnes of food aid, 25% more than in recent years. This amount is nearly covered by existing pledges by the international community. The Commission has programmed the delivery of 283 000 tonnes and we are about to take decisions on delivering an additional quantity of up to 260 000 tonnes.
Let me also correct an inaccuracy that is circulating as a result of an Oxfam statement which claimed that the Commission provided only 50 000 tonnes to Ethiopia last year. The real figure is more than three times that.
The deliveries this year come on top of a quarter of a century in which the Commission has been involved in providing food assistance to Ethiopia. During that time nearly 40% of our total aid to Ethiopia has been in food assistance or food security programmes: some EUR 875 million’s worth, EUR 250 million in the last four years alone. That is the background. It is important to be aware of it.
There have been a number of allegations about an inadequate European response to the crisis. There is an admirable letter in the London newspaper
by the honourable Member, Mrs Kinnock, who knows a very great deal about the Horn of Africa, in which she sets out the real facts. I hope that letter gets wider circulation. One of the things that she said in her letter – and I guess she speaks with almost more authority on this subject than anyone else – is: “The European Union, together with Member States, remains the biggest donor of food aid to Ethiopia”. She then argues: “This is not ‘visible’ since it is directed through the government, the World Food Programme, the Red Cross, NGOs and others.” It is important to remember that point.
What matters most is not to rake over these old controversies. What matters most is what we are doing right now to get help to the starving. I want to remind Parliament that total Commission food aid, now being off-loaded, shipped or procured, amounts to over 282 million metric tonnes. An EC food aid shipment of 30 000 tonnes channelled through the World Food Programme arrived in Djibouti port last weekend. A further shipment of over 16 000 tonnes through EuronAid is due to arrive on Sunday.
This will be followed by further shipments through Djibouti and Berbera in view of the limited port-handling capacity. Total shipments from all donors expected to be offloaded between now and July amount to 504 000 metric tonnes. This quantity should be sufficient to meet immediate needs. Total donor pledges, as I said earlier, are over 800 000 metric tonnes. So that is what we are doing. We will continue to devote our full attention to this crisis until it is over, and our people in ECHO on the ground will continue to work tirelessly to get help to where it is needed."@en1
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