(1) Jean Ziegler on Ethiopia

Jean Ziegler was born in 1934, in Switzerland.  He was a professor at the University of Geneva and the Sorbonne, and held a seat at the Swiss National Council.  He was appointed as a U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food in 2000.　

In his book "World Hunger Explained to my Son", he describes a refugee camp in Eritrea in Ethiopia (which became an independent nation in 1993) he visited in 1985 as follows;

“In the refugee camp, young Ethiopian nurses were practicing triage. Sounds surreal, doesn’t it? But it’s a true story. Several hundred doctors, nurses, and social workers had no choice but to decide who would live and who would die.

The people struggling into the camp all need special nutritional foods or intensive treatment. But there was only a limited amount of food and medical goods, so they needed to determine who has a chance to survive if they give them the treatment and who isn’t going to survive even if they give it to them.

There were mothers in front of a small brick hut. In their arms were small children enveloped in rags. The rugs rose and fell softly as the children breathed. An epic drama of life and death was unfolding here.

As a nurse turned back the rag a little, a woman sitting next to the nurse examined the child in silence and sometimes gave signs. Then the nurse took the little one from the mother and laid it in a vehicle. It was headed for a hospital, several kilometers from there. This child was going to get treatment. 

Many of the children seemed blind from the lack of vitamin A. It must have caused irreparable damage to the brain too.

 I  had seen this kind of scene many times on TV, and every time I saw it I guess I talked myself into believing, “Death from hunger is a slow death. The debilitation proceeds gradually and then they lose consciousness and die without suffering.”

However, the reality was different! Those faces in the rags I got a glimpse of were so wrinkled because of terrible pain. They were squirming and crying in a low voice.  For those children who were not chosen, just covering their faces was the least the mothers and nurses could do.

There was nothing he could do for the child. The father collapsed in tears but after a while he lifted his son quietly and left the hospital. He had no choice.”