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Watched the report on Nightline last night and it was so sad...children dying...hungry people forced to eat rats and bug ridden cattle carcus...it is so so sad...they callin Niger one of the poorest countries in the world...but is who turn dem so?

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life.

Learn More about the Devastating Famine in Niger
Millions Face Severe Food Shortages, as Critics Say Calls for Aid Are Being Ignored
Niger

The United Nations first issued an appeal for help for Niger in November, but it received little response. Recently, some shipments of food and other aid have begun to arrive, however. (ABCNEWS.com)

July 26, 2005 — Last year when the United Nations started raising concern about famine in the central African nation of Niger, they predicted devastation if nothing was done.

Despite those warnings, millions in Niger are now facing devastating food shortages due to draught, followed by heavy rains that flooded the nation's farmland. Aid workers in Niger accused donors of failing to respond early to calls for help that began in November. Others accuse Niger President Tandja Mamadou of not acting quickly enough for fear of embarrassing his government. What is the world doing to help?



Tonight "Nightline" shows a stunning report from Niger by the BBC's Hillary Anderson, and Ted Koppel will discuss the issue with Mark Malloch Brown of the U.N. Development Program. He played a key role in the swift response to the tsunami in the Indian Ocean eight months ago. Can the same help be brought to the starving children of Niger?

If you are interested in learning more about making a contribution, please visit the following sites.

OXFAM:

http://www.oxfam.org.uk/

UNITED NATIONS WORLD FOOD PROGRAMMES:

http://www.wfp.org/how_to_help/donat...&sub_section=5

UNICEF:

https://www.unicefusa.org/site/apps/ka/sd/donor.asp?

Please note: These links are provided to help users learn how to help Niger famine victims, but ABC News does not endorse specific charities. Please review them yourself to decide whether to contribute.

Aid Taking Long Time to Reach Niger
Tons of Food and Other Aid Are About to Arrive in Niger, but Help Taking Long Time to Reach Needy
By NAFI DIOUF
The Associated Press

Jul. 26, 2005 - Eight months after the first emergency appeal was launched, the tons of food and other aid are about to arrive in Niger too slow for frustrated aid workers, as well as for many people like Amidou Abou.

Abou couldn't wait any longer. Two goats and a sheep are nearly all that remained of his herd that once numbered 30, and so Abou walked two hours to this town and sold them at a big loss Monday in order to feed his family.

He got only about $13 for a sheep that before drought and locusts struck the west African country of Niger would have brought about $90.

"My child has been hospitalized at the nutritional center. What do you want me to do?" he said before pocketing his money.

"There's nothing to eat because the harvest was not good," Abou said in this town about 700 miles from the capital of Niamey.

Save the Children's first shipment of cooking oil and flour for Niger is expected Wednesday.

It took Oxfam a month to raise $2 million and start distributing food to nomads in the heart of Niger.

"The response was very late and money slow to come," said Hassan Taifour, a Save the Children nutritionist who arrived last week. "We waited until the situation was bad to come here. Now it is a catastrophe."

According to World Food Program officials, 2,100 tons of rice, 500 tons of peas and 80 tons of enriched biscuits will arrive soon.

By the end of the week, WFP also is expected to airlift in generators, tents and cars.

"Things are moving, but very slowly at the moment," said Dr. Mego Terzian, a Doctors Without Borders coordinator in Maradi, about 370 miles east of the capital, Niamey, which is being transformed into a major aid center.

Doctors Without Borders has 500 tons of enriched flour and 100 tons of oil already in stock and in the last week fed 7,000 children in three districts in the Maradi region.

Save the Children expects that once food supplies arrive in Maradi on Wednesday, it will take a week to get people and vehicles in place to start distributing it to an estimated 23,000 people in the outlying districts of Aguie and Tassawa. Recruiting advertisements for local support personnel have just been posted at the town hall.

Oxfam's aid plans include offering $90 for a head of cattle.

"The animals will then be slaughtered and smoked to feed the most vulnerable," Oxfam spokesman Louis Belanger said.

Oxfam also planned to offer 130,000 people food vouchers in exchange for clearing away the dead carcasses of animals that have starved.

"It's difficult to take away an animal from a farmer. ... It's like taking away our house, our bank account," Belanger said.

Last year's invasion of locusts and subsequent drought hit Niger hardest but also created food shortages and hunger in nearby Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania, the United Nations said Monday.

The United Nations first appealed for help for Niger in November and got almost no response. A March appeal for $16 million generated about $1 million. A May 25 plea for $30.7 million has resulted in only $7.6 million about 25 percent of the amount requested, U.N. officials say.

The U.S. Agency for International Development will announce that the United States is giving more than $6 million in additional emergency food aid to help feed people in Niger's drought-ridden south and to set up a program to combat child malnutrition, said Richard Grenell, spokesman for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations.

The United States has provided more than $4.6 million in food assistance to Niger so far this year, Grenell said Monday.

Donations have jumped dramatically in the last week because of increased media attention and TV images of starving children, U.N. humanitarian chief Jan Egeland has said.

John O'Shea, chief executive of the Irish aid agency Goal, said the slow response to the U.N. appeals has raised questions about the effectiveness of the world body when faced with such crises.

"The time has arrived for the U.N. to be brutally honest and inform the international community that only the intervention of sovereign governments on a massive scale will prevent famines," he said in a statement Tuesday. "And that call rests with the Security Council of the United Nations."

"Our people on the ground have been shocked at the absence of urgency," O'Shea added. "It seems only the TV operatives are taking this catastrophe seriously. It seems that the international community has not been shamed by its ineffectiveness in the Rwandan and Darfur theaters of death."

Almost a third of Niger's population of 11.3 million is in crisis, with its children the most vulnerable. Some 800,000 children under 5 are suffering from hunger, including 150,000 faced with severe malnutrition.

When 20-month-old Fardaoussi Saadou was brought Monday to the emergency ward of Maradi Regional Hospital, she weighed about 8 pounds and was hardly breathing. She was 3 1/2 ounces too heavy to be admitted to a Doctors Without Borders unit for the severely malnourished, but at least the hospital gave her oxygen and a saline solution.

"The problem is that when she gets better, what are we going to give her to eat?" said the head pediatric nurse, who gave only her last name, N'Walla. "We just don't have any food here."

A boy suffering from malnutrition gets measured in a make shift hospital in the town of Aguie, 70 kms (43 miles) from Maradi, Niger on Tuesday July 26, 2005. Save the Children's first shipment of oil and flour for Niger is expected on Wednesday. It took Oxfam a month to raise US$2 million (1.66 million) and start distributing food to nomads in the heart of this west African country devastated by drought and locusts.

The white folks are trying to kill us off in Africa so they can't claim it for themselves. They try to fool us with this G* conference but they really don't care. Some of them don't of course.

This just brings tears to my eyes. I am going to look and see where donations can be made...it hurts so much to know these people are suffering and yet, there is more than enough food for me to eat daily. It kills me that we waste so much food in the U.S. and chilidren are dying from starvation. It's so unfair.