Speech #970009164

Kenya. and Djibouti. Unless the world responds with massive aid. as it did one year ago in Cambodia. millions of East Africans face a bleak and possibly devastating future. Our Hunger Project delegation had come to Somalia to investigate the famine and refugee crisis that has made this country the most glaring example of the chronic hunger that plagues all of Africa. What we encountered was a timebomba dark tragedy in the making. yet one in which there is the shining possibility that. like Cambodia. Somalia can become an example of an international commitment to save an entire people. The refugees we visited were once selfsufficient nomads. ethnic Somalis who have fled their native lands in the Ogaden region of Ethiopia. Their lives there have been disrupted by years of war and constant fighting between Somali rebels and the Ethiopian Army. A decade of severe. punishing drought has added to their plight. killing their livestock and leaving them destitute. Homeless. hungry. diseased. and malnourished. they have made their way across hundreds of miles of desert to Somalia. There. in the Somalis ageold tradition of caring for kinsmen. they have been welcomed. Onehalf million refugees have been taken in by Somali families. some of whom care for as many as 20 people. A million more have settled in 32 governmentestablished refugee camps. where they are totally dependent on outside assistance for their survival. The strain on the nation of Somalia. the eighth poorest country on earth. is nearly unbearable. Somalias meager resources are all but exhausted. And the refugees keep comingat a rate of up to 3.000 a day. In the refugee camps of Somalia. the fundamental fact of life is hungerpainful. gnawing. debilitating hunger. In the camps of Somalia. we came face to face with hungerthe horrible. tangible. daytoday. dayin and dayout reality of hunger. Prolonged hunger decimates a society and unravels the fabric of a culture: productive work becomes impossible. families disintegrate. and the environment is destroyed as the struggle to survive forces people to strip their surroundings of every meager resource. As we walked among the refugees. we confronted hungers devastating effect on human beings. Hunger is more than an empty belly. Hunger hurts. deforms. blinds. and maims.