Aid and Controversy
The famine in the mid 1980s brought the situation in Ethiopia to the attention of the world, and inspired charitable drives in western nations, notably by Oxfam and the Live Aid concerts of July 1985. The money they raised was then distributed among NGOs in Ethiopia. A controversy arose when it was revealed that some of these NGOs were under Derg control or influence, and that some Oxfam and Live Aid money had been used to fund the Derg's enforced resettlement programmes, under which millions of people were displaced and between 50,000 and 100,000 killed. Accusations were made in a BBC investigation that rebels had also used millions of pounds of aid to buy arms; these were later fully retracted by the Corporation.
Read more about this topic: Derg
Famous quotes containing the words aid and/or controversy:
“Vanity is a vital aid to nature: completely and absolutely necessary to life. It is one of nature’s ways to bind you to the earth.”
—Elizabeth Smart (1913–1986)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)