Georgina Newman: Drought decimates desperately poor

Look at your thumb - it is about the same circumference as 21-month-old Salima's arms. They dangle weakly by her side. Her spine and ribs protrude through her skin. She only has the energy to feed from her mother's withered breast for a few seconds before her head lolls back over her shoulders, her eyes flickering.

Her 28-year-old mother, Indo, has walked solidly for two days carrying her baby through Niger's burned dry villages. She has taken her baby to a therapeutic feeding centre in Maradi, southern Niger, to try to coax her back to life.

Salima is the youngest and the weakest of Indo's five children. "I have left my other children at home with my mother," she says. "My mother is old and weak but she will have to take care of them. I don't know how long we will have to be here. I think Salima is very sick."

It is not Salima's first time to Maradi. Indo brought her here six months ago in February when Salima was even weaker than she is now.

"It has been two years since we have been able to grow anything," says Indo. "It is because there has been no rain. We have no food any more. The only thing I can give her is some millet porridge, maybe one or two times a day. There is no milk. It is not enough. I'm scared for Salima," she says, her voice trembling.

The pot-bellied child with spider thin legs has become the tragic symbol of Africa and is again being played out on our screens. It takes heart-breaking images of emaciated children, fed through tubes taped to their faces, to stir us into action. But for many of the children we see it is too late.

It was an emergency waiting to happen and for the starving children you watch on your television screens it needn't have happened.

The United Nations appealed for funds last November. None was forthcoming. Then it appealed again in February. But the world was gripped by tsunami fever and only a million dollars was raised.

As always, it seems too little too late and it is the innocent children who bare the brunt of our complacency.

Thankfully help is now arriving. The heavyweight aid agencies, such as Unicef, which set up the feeding station in Maradi, have rolled out their appeals. The New Zealand Government has donated half a million dollars to the United Nations and Kiwis, as usual, are digging deep to donate.

But it is not a case of problem solved. There is still a huge gap between what has been raised and what is still needed. The United Nations Fund for Children estimates it needs another US$14 million ($20.07 million) to stem the tide of death.

And even if enough money is gathered what is to stop this from happening again next year, or the next?

It is time to get real. We can't keep putting out fires or, to use another tired metaphor, close the stable door after the horse has bolted. Aid agencies are tired of asking for money and I'm sure you are tired of giving, but no one is quite as tired as the mother who has to bury another child for the want of a little food.

So what is to be done? In the year that heard Bob Geldolf's rallying cry to "Make Poverty History in Africa" we can start by putting our money where our mouths are - or more pertinently, where their mouths are.

If humanitarian agencies warn of impending disasters, then governments must help immediately. It is not acceptable to wait for cameras to film the next batch of dying children before they are moved to act. And today there are more Nigers waiting to happen. Governments of rich countries need to act now to avert a food crisis in Mali, Mauritania and regions of Sudan.

The sad irony for Niger is it has done all the right things. It has a democratically elected government, unlike Zimbabwe. It is at peace, unlike Sudan, and, unlike many African countries, it has received substantial debt relief from the latest G8 summit by jumping the innumerable hoops the IMF bank lays out.

Niger's problem is simply that it is desperately poor. In fact, it is the second-poorest country on Earth. When droughts come, as they have in the past two years, it has nothing to fall back on. On top of the drought a locust plague of biblical proportions devoured up to 100 per cent of crops in some regions.

To make poverty history we not only have to drop the debt of poor countries, but give more and better-targeted aid and finally rewrite the rule book on unfair trade between the poor and the rich.

It is not only about money, although that is essential. It is also about using our voices and votes, not just our wallets, to make a permanent change for the poorest of the poor.

* Georgina Newman is communications manager for Unicef NZ.