Disaster Fatigue

Calamities in Bangladesh, Kurdistan and Africa vie for aid-and public attention

Bangladesh needs bailing outagain. The cyclone that tore into the southeastern coast last week was the worst storm to hit the nation in two decades. Winds up to 145 mph drove a 20-foot-high tidal wall of water over a dozen low-lying islands and onto the mainland. When the waters receded, more than 125,000 people were dead and some 9 million left homeless. No one had seen destruction on such a terrifying scale since the 1970 cyclone, and the famine that followed, which killed between 300,000 and 1 million people. The storm's havoc, flooding more than 20,000 square miles, hobbled relief efforts. Six Bangladeshi Air Force helicopters worked dawn to dusk dropping food, water-purification tablets, medicines and rehydration salts. But supplies were reaching only a fraction of the victims. Meanwhile, international aid trickled in. The European Community ponied up $12 million; Japan pledged and the United States released $2 million each and an additional $100,000 to private agencies, many already stretched to the snapping point by efforts to ease catastrophes elsewhere.

Disaster is never far away in the Third World. But it was rare for it to strike three separate regions at once. Concern for the fate of Bangladesh competed last week with fears for the 1.5 million Kurdish refugees displaced in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War (page 42). And both submerged an even deeper dilemma: the plight of sub-Saharan Africa, where 29 million people face death from starvation and civil war in what Save the Children, a relief agency, calls "the worst famine in Africa in living memory." There isn't enough money, manpower or sympathy to go around. "People worldwide must have the feeling of, 'African famine again?"' says Dr. Tatsuo Hayashi of the Japan International Volunteer Center in Tokyo. "Press reports, if ever made, are losing value as news these days."

What accounts for the tepid response? Some factors are perennial: lack of awareness, an absence of national self-interest, a shortage of resources. But needy causes must now reckon with a recent factor: donor fatigue. Besieged by so many appeals, people grow weary of giving, particularly if they've already dug into their pockets for a cause, only to see the trouble continue. Endemic problems, like famine in Sudan and Ethiopia, or seemingly uncontrollable ones, like cyclones and earthquakes, stand little chance of sustained public compassion and support.

But a one-shot catastrophe-Iraqi refugees, say - can rivet a nation's attention and cause an outpouring of support. Once President Bush finally decided to help the Kurds, nothing got in the way. Not the logistical problems of supplying and moving hundreds of thousands of people down from the mountains. Not even the political quagmire of interfering with another country's sovereignty. Never mind that the Kurds had tried and failed to get international support for 70 years. Their abortive uprising against Saddam Hussein earned them their hour on the world's stage. In just two weeks, $188 million in relief poured in from the United States. Guilt had something to do with the largesse; Americans felt remorse that the United States hadn't come to the aid of their rebellion. So did publicity, which galvanized the public and forced the president's hand. Thanks to the news media, the face of grieving Kurdish refugees replaced the beaming smiles of victorious GIs.

Africans haven't been so lucky. Drought and civil war in Sudan, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Liberia and Somalia have created dire food shortages for more than 19 million people, most of them peasants. But for the most part this famine has not captured the attention of the world press. Journalists already visited this tragedy, during the sub-Saharan famine from 1984 to 1985 that took more than a million lives. Rock stars threw benefit concerts to help raise almost $300 million in relief aid. That the problem has returned full force might seem a slap in the face of philanthropy. "Donors are tired of repetitious events, and Sudan and Ethiopia are repetitious," says a CARE official in Nairobi.