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Hamilton’s African community is trying to figure out the best way to get aid for famine relief through militants to the millions of starving people who need it.
The fledgling African Canadian Network of Hamilton (ACHO) was to meet late Friday to discuss the issue, said Habiba Ibrahim, the organization’s representative on women’s affairs.
The Somali community’s fundraising efforts are centralized in Toronto, where donations have already started, but ACHO wants to do something in Hamilton.
The problem with sending aid is the extreme difficulty in getting
Hamilton’s African community is trying to figure out the best way to get aid for famine relief through militants to the millions of starving people who need it.
The fledgling African Canadian Network of Hamilton (ACHO) was to meet late Friday to discuss the issue, said Habiba Ibrahim, the organization’s representative on women’s affairs.
The Somali community’s fundraising efforts are centralized in Toronto, where donations have already started, but ACHO wants to do something in Hamilton.
The problem with sending aid is the extreme difficulty in getting donations of food, supplies or money past militants and into the hands of the most vulnerable: children, women and the elderly, Ibrahim said.
“It is all a mess,” Ibrahim said of the famine crisis in Somalia, which has been embroiled in a civil war for 20 years. “Unless you can find a way to get through the crazies there, it is difficult to organize aid.
“The famine is a man-made calamity because of the war … (and) there are too many different factions and warlords to go through. It is hard to penetrate those people.”
The United Nations has issued an emergency appeal for aid after officially declaring a famine in Somalia and the Horn of Africa — the continent’s eastern projection that includes Kenya and Ethiopia — and where an estimated 11 million people are suffering.
The Canadian government has announced $50 million for famine relief and is also matching donations from Canadians.
In Mogadishu, Somalia’s capital, the al-Qaeda-linked militant group al-Shabab said it will not allow aid organizations it has already banned to return to southern Somalia.
Somalia’s prolonged drought devolved into famine in part because neither its government nor many aid agencies can fully operate in areas of southern Somalia controlled by al-Shabab.
Hamilton’s Canadian Red Cross branch is getting a few “walk-in” donations per day for famine relief, but local donations are hard to gauge because many people give online, said spokesperson Tanya Elliott. Donations nationwide are $550,000 so far.
Hawa Driie, a Somalian refugee who lives in Hamilton, said she will do anything to help and is hopeful major aid agencies will be able to get through.
World Vision, which has raised $1.1 million so far, is in northern Somalia, Kenya and Ethiopia, said spokesperson Caroline Riseboro. If it’s still blocked from the south, it will funnel aid through a partner agency there, she said.
Driie’s family — a brother, sisters and aunts, have received a little help, but “every day it’s getting worse.”
Like Ibrahim, Driie blames the war and “no legitimate, accountable government to allow the aid through.”
Driie, a high school teacher in Somalia before coming to Canada 18 years ago, is incensed countries sell guns to militants “as the whole world watches.”
Instead of aid, there are guns — worth millions.
“That’s what’s killing me,” she said. “You see a 10-year-old who can get a machine gun, but can’t get a clean cup of water.”
Source: TheSpec.com
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