Tsunami Leaves other Causes High and Dry

On January 27th, a month and a day after the massive tsunami wave that obliterated coastlines throughout 12 countries in Asia and Africa, the Canadian Red Cross announced that it was winding down its fundraising campaign and closing off new fundraising initiatives for the disaster. The reason? In a rare occurrence for a non-profit humanitarian aid group, it actually had enough money.

“We followed suit of the International Red Cross, which had raised about $1.4 billion Canadian worldwide,” explains Suzanne Charest, communications officer at the organization’s national office in Ottawa. “In terms of our assessment on the ground, in the countries affected, the Canadian Red Cross will provide support for up to ten years. There’s certainly enough funding for that.”

Nevertheless, the fact that the International Red Cross, the American Red Cross, the Canadian Red Cross and others had ended their fundraising appeal hasn’t stopped continuing fundraising events from going forward – like the plea during the televised 2005 Grammys, held on February 13, which came complete with a group rendition of the Beatles’ “Across the Universe” featuring Stevie Wonder, Norah Jones, Brian Wilson, Alicia Keys, Green Day's Billy Joe Armstrong, Tim McGraw, Scott Weiland, Aerosmith's Steven Tyler and, of course, Bono.

At the show's conclusion, an audio recording of the song became available via Apple's iTunes music store, (where it is still available) with proceeds to benefit the UNICEF tsunami fund. UNICEF, for its part, now has a message on its website stating: “In the spirit of your generous response to the tsunami disaster, consider helping children in 33 countries where crisis threatens lives far from the spotlight.”

Throughout the month of February and even in March, there were still numerous tsunami fundraising events going on at churches, schools and community centres throughout BC – including an art show at the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design on March 12th with partial proceeds going to tsunami relief, and a benefit concert March 5 at the Coquitlam Cornerstone Adventist Church.

‘Tsunami relief burnout’

This flow of humanitarian support for the victims of the horrific disaster is admirable and encouraging. But with aid organizations essentially saying “Enough, already!”, I have to admit to feeling a sense of tsunami relief burnout. This isn’t simply compassion fatigue, though. The weariness with which I greet any new announcements of tsunami benefits stems from a concern that other pressing humanitarian issues have been all but obscured by the awesome and terrifying display of nature that devastated Asia.

The thing is, what happened in south Asia was basically unpreventable. Of course, a warning system would have saved countless lives, but the event itself could never have been stopped. Meanwhile, there are appalling examples of conflict, disease and famine worldwide that can be addressed – human problems with a human solution. And yet they remain largely ignored.

Take the situation in the Sudan region of Darfur, where government-backed Arab militias, accused of killing and looting rampages, have driven more than one million black Africans from their homes in Darfur. There are currently over 1.8 internally displaced persons in the region, and the resulting chaos and conditions in refugee camps have resulted in a staggering death toll.

The "crude mortality rate" that is usually used to define a humanitarian crisis is one death per 10 000 people per day. The World Health Organization’s latest mortality estimates for the internally displaced persons were 1.5 per 10,000 per day in North Darfur and 2.9 per 10,000 per day in West Darfur. On March 14, the UN announced a death toll in Darfur of more than 180,000 in the past year and a half. That’s 10,000 people a month for the last 18 months. The announcement barely made the news, and as of February 2005, the UN World Food Program had received only 55 per cent of the $350 million that it appealed for last year to provide food rations, clean water, sanitation and other relief supplies.

Mourning Mr. Singo Or take sub-Saharan Africa, where there were 2.3 million AIDS-related deaths in 2004 alone, and where, as Julio Montaner, clinical director of the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS once told me: “The twin towers are falling every day, and nobody takes much time to notice that.”

Having spent time in Namibia as a volunteer teacher from 1997-1998, the issue of HIV/AIDS in Africa is one dear to my heart. I have personally mourned the losses of former colleagues and friends to a disease whose name is never spoken out loud.

There was Mr. Singo, for example, the assistant principal and math teacher of the school in which I taught. A cheerful, generous and charismatic man, he died two years after I had returned to Canada. He and his wife had watched five of their children fail to live past their first year, and I now wonder whether his wife and only surviving son, with whom I’ve lost touch, are still living. There was a baby born to Miriam, the biology teacher, who was ill from the moment she took her first breath. The baby died shortly after I returned to Canada. And there is Lusia, a former student of mine with whom I am still in touch, who recently watched her elder sister die. According to Oxfam, a quarter of every new university class in South Africa will be dead before they graduate.

Where are the fundraisers?

The scope of these humanitarian crises, and there are plenty more of them, are often beyond comprehension. But where are the fundraisers for AIDS orphans? Where are the benefit concerts, the church raffle sales, the Grammy award pleas for help in Darfur? When such events or fundraising drives to occur, they’re isolated events far from the glare of media attention.

Perhaps if the media were to drive home the urgency of Darfur, for instance, or the ongoing HIV/AIDS epidemic which is now spreading from Africa to Asia and Latin America, the public might again be mobilized. But Stephen Ward, associate professor of journalism with the UBC School of Journalism specializing in ethics, is not very hopeful on that front.

“News media, to some extent, are not very good at covering issues and ongoing trends. They are much more geared up to getting spot news, right on the spot. What do we need?” Ward asks. “Do we need a tsunami to sweep over Africa before we care about AIDS? In many ways I’m glad compassion was aroused, [but] I’m also worried that we don’t arouse an ongoing compassion for many parts of this world.”

Ward looks at the public response to the tsunami, and muses: “Imagine what we could do if we the media actually aroused ongoing concern for other parts of the world on an ongoing basis? But we’re not willing to spend the money to do that. We are only willing to spend money to cover these events when they involve dramatic stories that fit into our news agenda.”

George Chandler, a Vancouver-based communications officer for the Canadian Red Cross’ BC/Yukon office, observing the stark contrast in public support for tsunami victims versus other humanitarian crises, notes that natural disasters are more clear-cut in the minds of potential donors.

“In natural disasters, there’s really no bad guy. It’s not confusing,” he says. “Every other situation around conflict, for instance, is confusing. You can believe a war is a liberation or an invasion. It depends on your perspective. You can call someone ‘insurgents’ or you can call them ‘freedom fighters’ or you can call them ‘murderers’ ... But [with] the tsunami, [it] was absolutely clear that people were being affected by something not of their own choosing or their own volition, and I think that’s a key factor. Natural disasters, for that reason, are often easier to raise money for than systemic poverty or political instability or conflict.”

Beyond tsunami, Canada falls short

Granted, the public can only do so much when faced with a myriad of urgent crises from across the world. But what it can do, says Mark Fried, spokesperson for Oxfam Canada, is put greater pressure on the government to hold up its pact to provide humanitarian aid when needed.

Fried says the Canadian government has fallen far short of meeting its 1969 stated goal of committing 0.70 percent of the country’s gross national income [GNI] on official development assistance [ODA]. In fact, Canada has never met that goal – the closest it ever came was 0.53 in 1975. In latest figures, from 2003, Canada allocated only 0.24 percent of its GNI to ODA. Recent budget increases announced will bring us to only 0.32% by 2010.

“We’d like the public to be pressuring governments to increase foreign aid,” says Fried. “We’d like to see the Prime Minister set the target of reaching 0.7% of national income that was originally set by Lester Pearson.”

It’s easy to become jaded when confronted with the reality of the humanitarian crises erupting all over our globe. But if the tsunami disaster taught us anything, it’s that the public does have an enormous capacity for giving, and for pressuring governments to do the same.

The question is, was this just a one-shot deal? For the sake of my former students, like Ashondali, Nailoke, Jesaja, and Ebben, I fervently hope the answer is no.

Vancouver journalist Jessica Werb is a frequent contributor to The Tyee.