Are we getting used to famine?

Last week the SHO, the Dutch Cooperating Aid Organizations, opened up the special bank account number 555 donation line for the emerging drought and famine in the Horn of Africa. So far, the total aid raised amounts to 2,5 million Euros. Dutch Development Cooperation Minister, Ben Knapen, who is leaving for Kenya today, considers this to be a modest amount after a week of fundraising.

Giro 555 always brought large amounts of donations: in 2010, after last year's floods in Pakistan, 27 million Euros were collected, and after the earthquake in Haiti, also in 2010, even 111 million. The severity of the drought in the Horn of Africa is just as needy, so why do the Dutch donate less?
A disaster that is not yet a disaster
“We don’t agree with mister Knapen’s worries,” says Marinus Verweij, action chairman of the Cooperating Aid Organizations. “We are very satisfied with the revenue so far. 555 opened just a week ago…but of course we hope to raise more. A lot of money is needed to handle this problem.”
The famine in the Horn of Africa seems to have only recently come to our attention, but it is a problem that has developed significantly over the past two years. After the UN Commissioner for Refugees described Somalia as ‘the worst humanitarian disaster of this year’ it didn’t take long for the press and aid organizations to ring the alarm bells.

However, according the official terms of FEWSNET (Famine Early Warning System Network) and FSNAU (Food Security and Nutrition Analysis Unit in Somalia), the famine in the Horn of Africa is not yet officially labeled as a famine or catastrophe, but it is at the second to worst stage: humanitarian emergency. To prevent the situation from getting worse, aid agencies are coming together en masse to help.
Used to famine
The Ethiopian famine in the mid-80s drew far more attention. Major events were organized like the international concert Live Aid and the television show Één voor Afrika (One for Africa) in The Netherlands. Such actions don’t seem to come.

“We cannot yet compare the current circumstances to the one in the mid-80s around the same area,” explains Verweij. “At that time, the situation had already developed into a phase of mortality. Today’s situation is very critical, but due to the early alerts we try to avoid moving on to a real stage of famine.”
Thea Hilhorst, Professor of humanitarian aid and reconstruction at Wageningen University has a different theory: “People are used to famine.” says Hilhorst. “Obviously people recognize the problem, but to most of them it has become normal, it’s what they have heard before, it’s Africa.”
Nevertheless, when the conditions become very bad and they are confronted with poignant images, they take it more seriously.” Still, the Dutch population donates considerably less to the Horn of Africa than they did for the earthquake victims in Haiti. “That is because that catastrophe was exceptional” explains Hilhorst. “People are more able to identify with this particular calamity because it was acute; the whole country had collapsed in just one day.”
Man-made disaster
Besides the absence of two rainy seasons which led to one of the most serious droughts in decades, the political condition in Somalia also plays its parts. This is due to power struggles in the country, along with the prevailing power of the Islamist group Al-Shebaab, which banned all aid agencies two years although they have recently withdrawn this prohibition.
Students working under Dr Hanna Zagefka, lecturer in Social Psychology from Royal Holloway University in London, conducted a study researching the factors that determine why and how much people donate after catastrophes.

They concluded that people are more willing to donate money to victims of natural rather than man-made disasters. This is: ‘In line with the just world belief hypothesis, people tend to blame victims wherever possible, and humanly caused events present more opportunities for victim blame’.
A bottomless pit?
“We all think about development aid as a bottomless pit,” says Hilhorst. “But I don’t think that’s the case. Great results have been achieved with structural development...though it’s true that when we finally find solutions to a problem, a new one comes up. We should speak about a number of pits, that disappear and reappear.”
“The fact is that there is a crisis occurring at the moment,” adds Verweij of the Cooperating Aid Organizations. “So the most important thing for now is to provide aid as soon as possible. We have the advantage that there are several projects already running that we can intensify. We don’t start from scratch.”