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Three questions….to Jacques Gaillot
 
 

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Three questions….to Jacques Gaillot

Eight months ago the UNO launched an appeal for the famine in Nigeria. The international community reacts only now. Should we conclude to a general selfishness?
 
First I am asking what is the responsibility of the Nigeria government in its economic and political choices, in its delay to alert the international community because this famine could have been predicted. Why access to health care is not free for those who are the poorest?

famine au Niger The President of Nigeria recently stated:" There is no famine in Nigeria, only a food crisis" Did he visit the area where the drama is happening to evaluate the importance of the catastrophe? The Catholic Church, although in low minority, is well involved in social action, did it give the alarm?
This being said, many nations turned a deaf ear to this catastrophe. But if Nigeria had reacted earlier, probably the international community would have reacted more quickly.
 
 
It looks as if the international generosity would presently be activated after an "emotional chock" produced by images (ex. the tsunami). Another way to say, the victims of conflicts or catastrophes who are not shown on the television have no chance to be massively helped. Do we need to change our system of international help? Can we imagine a cheque with no specification for the humanitarian organizations to invest this money coming from gifts in real priorities that are not always well covered by the media?
 
If a disaster is not reported by television, it does not make big news. We need to see the images of the disaster to feel concerned and to know why and for whom we are giving money. More so this region of the Sahel is not known by the public. Nobody goes on vacation over there! Fortunately the NGO are already there before every body with the usual generosity of their givers.
I have difficulty to see a cheque with no specification; one would fear that the given money would not be well used.

Today there is enough food on the planet to feed every body. But still there are famines. These last years the population of the Sahel have been suffering from hunger. 

nourriture pour tout le monde

 
Then rather than asking each time for the generosity of citizens, we would be better to make more effective existing international organizations as PAM (World Food Programme from UNO) to avert these dramas.

England has to face a new type of terrorism, the authors of which are born in this country, British citizens, and children of immigrants of the second generation. How will the western democracies be able to face this new threat?
 
We are not finished with terrorism! It has imposed itself upon us and for a long time, the threat will not be decreasing.
We begin to understand that the Islamic terrorism has the Western world as an enemy, for its laicism, its democratic values, its freedom of manners, its woman's rights and its materialism. It is the fight against modernity, the jihad against the Western world.
 
mieux vivre It is a challenge for us to live more intensely the values of the modernity: the liberties, the human rights, the justice, and the democracy…
It is an invitation to revise our models of integration of immigrants and to understand more about Islam.
 

We have to be in solidarity with those who resist to a radical Islamism in their own country or in our own. I am thinking about the Iranian resistants.
We have to ask our governments not to comply with these Islamic regimes.
(Interviewed by Olivier Galzi)