Sir, - Experienced aid workers on the ground in Southern Sudan believe that as many as half a million people, most of them women and children, will perish during the famine, currently devastating Southern Sudan. Think of it for a moment, one half of a million people dying - all because the international community doesn't care.
Not a million years ago, the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union turned the world almost upside down in their efforts to free two whales, trapped in an ice pack in the Arctic Circle. No cost was spared; no task too much for the Super Powers as they vied for the attention of the world. By comparison the response of the major powers to the tragedy in Southern Sudan is pathetic.
But then, those of us who have worked in the Third World area for the past 20 years or so realise that the lives of desperately poor black people simply don't count. They are not on any agenda when the men and women who shape the future of the world convene. They are deemed superfluous to requirements.
Surely here is an opportunity for a concerned Irish politician to step out of the pack and demand that the world listens to the cries of the starving. - Yours, etc., John O' Shea, GOAL,
P.O. Box 19, Dun Laoghaire.