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Not-So Natural Disaster - Niger 2005 (Hardcover)
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Not-So Natural Disaster - Niger 2005 (Hardcover)
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Although the term "natural disaster" applies to the December 2004
tsunami, the images of huge devastation that were televised after
the tragedy probably seemed a good deal less "natural" to us than
those of starving African children we saw seven months later, from
Niger. The tsunami was perceived as so "un-natural" that it
provoked an immediate, unprecedented international outpouring of
sympathy. It took many months, by contrast, for the story of a new
famine in the Sahel to make headlines. From the outset its causes
were apparent in media coverage-droughts and locust invasions have
always seemed the everyday lot of people living in this region. The
link between the crisis and its natural causes was so self-evident
that the first news reports tended to omit the point that, in
reality, drought and the locust invasion had overtaken the Sahel
region a year earlier. Nevertheless it became Medecins Sans
Frontieres' aim to see it acknowledged-not in the press, but among
those institutions responsible for food security in Niger-that the
deaths of tens of thousands of children as a result of malnutrition
would not be considered "natural" phenomenon, still less a normal
one. For this reason the 2005 crisis was a unique experience for
the humanitarian organisation. MSF treated more than 60,000
children suffering from severe malnutrition-one of the most
ambitious operations in its history. It also found itself embroiled
in controversy among the various national and international actors
involved in managing the crisis in Niger over the summer of 2005.
At the very moment MSF was straining to mobilise other actors to
intervene in what it judged to be an emergency situation, the NGO
was undergoing heated argument and intense inquiry as to the exact
nature of the situation it was attempting to manage. Public,
operational involvement of this kind--outside the conflict zones
where MSF traditionally and typically intervenes, moreover--called
for some form of reflection. This book makes no claim whatsoever to
be comprehensive, or to provide a final, definitive version of "the
truth" with respect to the 2005 famine in Niger. Instead the
contributors endeavor to shed new light on a multifaceted crisis.
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