Donor fatigue has become a regrettable feature of contemporary society in developed states, whether in the domestic or the international setting. It is part of a wave of self-absorption and the eclipse of community that has attracted increasing public comment and may be discerned in increasing levels of inequality - even in the midst of economic growth and surplus budgets. The urgent appeal from the United Nations secretary general, Mr Kofi Annan, for a more generous response to the funding of programmes for a number of the poorest states in Africa is a stark reminder of what is at stake.
He spoke after a donor conference managed to raise only 352 million dollars out of a necessary 796 million to fund emergency UN aid for these states, all of them afflicted by civil wars or other conflicts affecting some 12 million people in all. The money is necessary to fulfil programmes already entered into by the world organisation and its aid agencies. Among the states are Angola, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Guinea-Bissau, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia and Eritrea. If the money is not forthcoming existing schemes will have to be scaled back, leaving these people even more helpless in the face of state collapse and often vicious conflicts on the ground.
This is, unfortunately, part of a wider pattern that has seen levels of international development aid decline in recent years. On this occasion, several of them have used the excuse that they have had to economise on money for Africa because of new commitments made to reconstruction in Kosovo. The European Commission has made a similar argument recently. This is quite unacceptable. The Kosovo conflict is a grave issue of security for European states but it is self-contained and part of the general process of European integration whose costs must be borne by the most developed states on the continent. It cannot be used as an excuse to cut back on other aid budgets.
According to the UNDP's Human Development Report 1999, these African states are among the poorest of the poor. The report concentrates on the effects of globalisation, which, it argues, is more than the flow of money and commodities, but a growing interdependence of the world's people through "shrinking space, shrinking time and disappearing borders". But markets have been allowed to dominate the process and the benefits and opportunities have not been shared equitably.
It would be difficult to find a better example of such selfishness than this failure to find the money for 12 million Africans in distress. Finding the necessary funds should become a rallying point for all who care for the continent's welfare and seek to reverse these unacceptable priorities in aid distribution.