PNG drought-is

the world listening?

Aid agencies accustomed to dealing with humanitarian emergencies across the world are now rating Papua New Guinea’s drought as ‘very significant’ on a global scale yet by mid-January it had still received hardly any media cover age outside the region and contributions from international donors (other than Australia) have been small.

Why is the world not heeding PNG’s plea’s for help? The first signs of the brewing disaster began to filter out of PNG in July and August when it became clear that lack of rain and frosts in the highlands had killed subsistence crops. By late September, the Australian government aid agency, AusAlD, was sufficiently wor ried to go onto a full-scale emergency footing. Within days it had responded to PNG’s requests for advisors to assist with the first detailed assessment of the problem, Australian Defence Force training flights were re-routed to make food drops in Western Province and SAUD2SO,OOO (SUS 151,227) was released to the Australian High Commission in Port Moresby for drought relief.

In Australia, those moves prompted the first flurry of media coverage of the issue, on radio, television and in the newspapers.

That coverage began some stirrings of activity in community organisations, most notably the Returned Servicemen’s League (RSL) whose members remembered what Papua New Guinean’s had done to help them during World War II and were keen to see what they could do in return.

Since then, despite the growing severity of the situation in PNG, coverage of the drought has been sporadic. The ABC, the only media organisation with a full-time correspondent in Port Moresby, has been providing frequent and in-depth coverage, the Special Broadcasting Service has been doing its best on a shoestring budget and Channel Seven has sent a correspondent to PNG. The newspapers have done relatively little and, surprisingly radio, with its ability to ring people on-the-spot at anytime, has emerged as the most important source of information.

Usually, in humanitarian crises it is television coverage that drives community response. Pictures from international agencies roll off daily satellite feeds into television newsrooms and onto the evening bulletin, stirring the heart and opening the purse strings of viewers. For PNG those agency pictures are not available and Australian television networks must send their own correspon dents if they want stories, a costly venture made more so by PNG’s difficult terrain and the fact that those worst affected by the drought live in the most remote areas. In Australia, media cover age of the drought has been complicated by other PNG stories -

such as the astounding claims by Prime Minister Bill Skate and allegations of corruption resulting from video tapes filmed secret ly by one of Skate’s former advisors. Those stories not only pushed the drought off the news agenda but, according to aid agen cies, slowed the flow of donations as people became concerned their money may not reach the people for whom it was intended.

Back in September, the early media coverage of the drought, in Australia, played a crucial role in alerting the world’s media to the growing difficulties in PNG. Most of the world’s major newspa pers and media organisations base their Pacific correspondents in Sydney. Although they are all aware of the deteriorating situation, few have filed major stories and fewer still visited PNG.

Of the six major Japanese news organisations based in Sydney only one, Asahi Simbun (a national newspaper with a circulation of over 10 million a day), has published a story on the drought.

Japan’s public broadcaster NHK has access to all ABC footage but by mid-January it had gone no further than the floor in NHK’s Sydney edit booth.

The Japanese, are not the only media lacking interest in the plight of those affected by the drought in PNG. CNN, renowned for its ability to broadcast from all parts of the globe and crucial for its role as an international opinion leader, has not yet visited drought ravaged areas and the New York Times has also not made mention of the drought. When pressed by Pacific Islands Monthly for their reasons for not covering the drought, some correspon dents were unabashed in saying simply that not enough people had died yet. Others said the fact that the landscape still looked green and that people were not gathered in huge refugee camps (as in Rwanda or Somalia) made the story difficult to convey on film.

Almost all Sydney-based media organisations said there was a lack of interest in the story from their.editors at their home-base.

Even organisations such as the BBC suffered this difficulty.

Recently, a BBC crew went to PNG and produced a series of reports on the drought which, because of lack of editorial interest in London, ran only on the World Service and not in Britain.

Response to the drought has also been slow from international aid donors. Back in October, PNG’s Minister for Provincial and Local Government Affairs, Simon Kaumi, wrote to donors in unequivocal terms. “The extent of this disaster ... is now unparal leled with any other natural calamity since PNG gained its inde pendence in 1975,” he told them. “The cost will be of such mag nitude that it will exceed the nation’s capacity to bear” Kaumi said. The minister went on to ask donors to provide “to their fullest ability” cash, goods in kind and personnel capable of providing technical assistance. By early January, Japan, New Zealand, Fiji, South Korea, the People’s Republic of China, France, the European Union, Britain and the United States had all given some thing but together it added up to only a little over US$2 million. A small effort compared with AUDSI6 million (SUS 9.6 million) put in by Australia and the 19 million Kina (SUS9.S million) by PNG.

By February PNG will have entered what is predicted to be the worst phase of the drought with 45 per cent of the rural population (1.4 million people) with little or no food in their gardens, famine food being stripped from the bush and children and old people dying. If more help does not come soon the scale of the disaster, and the deaths, will escalate rapidly. The international media based in Sydney are planning visits to PNG in February and March. If they had gone earlier, and donors acted faster, it is very likely that the enormity of the tragedy could have been reduced. ■

Jemima Garrett