Eritrea Today :Agonizing Indices of Misery

When (God forbid) a disaster occurs in a region of a country, concerned authorities declare a ‘State of Emergency’ so that the affected population could receive due attention and the necessary life-saving support from local and/or international sources. There are various types of disasters that cause situations of emergency. These range from immediate killers like earthquakes, floods, or wars to slow killers - slow, but all the same killers! - like acute malnutrition, which is currently afflicting a large percentage of the Eritrean population.

According to normal standards, a given population is described to be in an emergency situation if the level of acute malnutrition among children and other vulnerable groups within that population reaches 15%. But in Eritrea, those percentages, those measurements, those indices don’t matter. In the eyes of the PFDJ government in Eritrea, any misery affecting the mass of the people, the Hafash, is nothing but normal.

A good example is the recent government survey which concluded that the acute malnutrition rate in what it calls ‘Zoba’ Ansaba is 19.1%. The government also released without any shame or qualm that in adjacent Zoba Gash-Barka, the global rate of acute malnutrition is 18.4%. Those percentages are not calculated out of a limited number of vulnerable groups like children or pregnant women but are rates for the entire population in those regions. For instance, if we assume – and we don’t know – that the population of Ansaba is 100,000, then 19,100 persons are in the desperate situation of facing slow death. That means the seriously affected population is very high. In fact, the situation is already disastrous, and is more than a ‘State of Emergency’ whose outcome is well known!! Yet, the ‘government’ of Isayas Afeworki and his PFDJ will not for sure declare any part of the country to be in ‘ a state of emergency’. No, that is not something to make them worry. People will die in their thousands. So what? In fact, it is ‘business as usual’ for fanatic PFDJites inside and outside the country. They would easily say: ‘over 65% of our people always remained undernourished, and they are able to endure continued misery’. That may not be taken as normal reaction, at least for normal Eritreans and the rest of the world.

The UN Secretary General’s Special Envoy for Humanitarian Crisis in the Horn of Africa, Mr. Martti Ahtisaari, was in the region not long ago to make the urgency and emergency in Eritrea to be felt by the international community that has the moral obligation to at least lessen the magnitude of the disaster. The disaster, which is already there, is threatening the lives of up to 2.2 million Eritreans in the foreseeable future. UN sources have reported that food shipment of 61,200 metric tons of wheat from the United States arrived in Eritrea late in October as life-saving measure for the limited period between now and the end of December 2004. But no one knows what will happen to the already emaciated bodies affected by acute malnutrition which is a stage in which the victims hardly survive without supplementary food and special therapeutic feeding with high energy and high protein food supplies.

The regime in Asmara would try to tell and convince some of the victims that it is God, and not PFDJ, that failed them. The callous government functionaries would go on preaching that this is the fourth consecutive year of drought in Eritrea and that nothing can be done about. Yet, Eritreans know that the drought situation would not have been so disastrous if the political, social and economic situation of the country was different than it is under the militarist regime of Isayas Afeworki.

Yes, this nation was coping, and surviving, much more difficult days when its usual survival mechanisms were at hand:

When the bread earners of each family were around to bring something home;

When the borders with fraternal peoples of the region were open for business, trade and work, and

When the international humanitarian community was there and ready to come up to our people at times of hardship.

Today’s Eritrea and today’s Eritreans are deprived not only of their sovereignty as people for which they paid dearly but also of the basic survival mechanisms that they resorted to at times of hardship and natural calamities.

Eritrea’s other misery indices

It is not only in the area of food shortage and malnutrition of its people that Eritrea is holding a high record of infamy in the region and the world at large. We can pick any sector of life and activity, and PFDJ’s Eritrea is there with an ugly image.

Let us, for instance, consider the military sphere in which Eritrea has been holding the record of being the third worst (highest) spender for the army – i.e. 19.8% of its minuscule gross domestic product (GDP), not to mention its being the only country with the highest per capita of armed personnel (45/1000) in the world. Contrast this with Eritrea’s health budget (5.7% of its GDP) that makes it the country with the least number of physicians per capita in the world – i.e. 3 doctors for every 100,000 Eritreans!!! Only Niger in Africa comes nearer Eritrea’s low record with 3.5 doctors for every 100,000 inhabitants.

The latest, and as usual, gloomiest reports from inside Eritrea (i.e. leaving aside for a while the incoming reports of a tragic incident at Adi Abeito the other day) indicate that water and sanitation will be among the major miseries to be suffered by our people at least for the next 7-8 months. Eritrea’s urban water supply was not covering more than 63% of households in the past. Urban sanitation coverage (i.e. with basic toilet facilities) is 13%. UN statistics also put 1% ‘coverage’ for rural sanitation facilities, a record low. But even that figure may be seen as an upward exaggeration by Eritreans who know the grim situation back home.

No statistics would tell the tale, but Eritrea should win another record for being a country with a government and yet with lowest volume ever fuel for basic use. We have been told that Eritrea was only second to Chad for being 96% dependent on traditional fuel (wood). This shows that fuel (petroleum) consumption was not part of the everyday life of the people. Now, even that small quantity of fuel is not available in Isayas’s Eritrea.

Of course education is another sector in which PFDJ’s wicked strategy and glaringly wrong conduct of public affairs is exposed. Suffice it to say here that independent Eritrea is, ironically, going backwards also in this field. Within the last few days, the World Bank announced that it was granting the government US$ 60m for education with the specific objective to “help increase equitable enrolment, especially among girls and neglected groups”. No one took measure of how ‘neglected’ are the neglected groups, but we already know that Eritrea is among the five worst cases in the world both for primary school girls out of school and for female school-life expectancy. In shortage of teachers, Isayas’s Eritrea is one of the worst two countries in the world with over 50 students to 1 teacher!

The regime is not only loath to bring back Eritreans from long-lasting exile but favours to send more out of the country. The sad thing today is that the youth are fleeing Eritrea. Again in this sphere, Eritrea was among the worst five countries exporting refugees. A little over a year ago, Eritrea reportedly fared better only than Burundi. At that time, Eritrea’s per capita refugee outflow was put at 84.4.

Eritrea’s agonizing indices of misery are endless. The only prospect for ending them will come with the removal of the cause of almost all of them – the man-made calamity called PFDJ and its sustainers, top among them, dictator Isayas Afeworki.

Nharnet Team.

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