Racing to Save the Hungry

Joan Baez sang at benefit concerts in Paris and Washington. Abie Nathan, known for his efforts on behalf of Arab-Jewish amity, sent food packages from Thailand. While governments debated how to cope with Cambodia's crisis, official agencies, religious and private organizations, and concerned individuals were at work to aid the catastrophe's victims.

The largest and most active of the relief organizations involved are the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the United Nations International Children's Fund (UNICEF). Working jointly, along with such related U.N. agencies as the Food and Agriculture Organization and World Food Program, the two groups have so far sent 2,500 tons of food and supplies into Cambodia and undisclosed amounts of aid to refugee camps that they operate in Thailand. As the principal agencies through which governmental contributions are funneled into Cambodia, ICRC and UNICEF have already received pledges totaling $137 million, well above the $111.3 million they estimate is necessary to prevent mass starvation over the next six months. These groups hope to send at least 165,000 tons of food into the region during that period--if they can get the cooperation of the Heng Samrin government in Phnom-Penh.

Cambodian officials have been more cooperative in their dealings with the Oxford Committee for Famine Relief (OXFAM), an England-based organization that is coordinating a relief effort by more than 20 private agencies. An OXFAM barge laden with 1,500 tons of food arrived in the Cambodian port of Kompong Som last month, and two more are on the way. OXFAM has been permitted to station eight full-time staff members inside Cambodia. Robert Hohler, at OXFAM'S Boston-based U.S. branch, attributes the organization's success to its apolitical status.

Says he: "While governments squabble about what to do, we are walking through the legs of the giants and doing the job." The California-based World Vision International, a conservative Protestant organization noted for its missionary efforts, has also been well received by Cambodian officials, largely because of contacts made there before the 1975 triumph of the Khmer Rouge. So far WVI has flown in about 15 tons of food.

In the refugee camps along the Thai border, a host of smaller agencies--including Christian Outreach, CARE, Catholic Relief Services, Church World Service and the International Rescue Committee--are working alongside UNICEF and ICRC staffers. These groups are supported largely by private contributions from the U.S., where special church collections, newspaper ads, mail-in campaigns and benefits have reaped millions for Cambodian relief. Says Rabbi Marc H. Tanenbaum of the American Jewish Committee: "This isn't just a matter of dollars and cents and cans of tuna fish. This is a crisis of staggering magnitude." Interagency cooperation is the official policy in the camps. Nonetheless there is competition among agencies to be the first on the scene where refugees cross at a new point along the border.

Another problem has been created by the dozens of untrained volunteers that the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) bused daily to the Sakaew camp from Bangkok. The volunteers, who included students, nurses, businessmen, and diplomats' wives, filled a manpower gap at the crucial time when the camp first opened; many full-time workers now dismiss some of the volunteers as "refugee tourists" who only got in the way. Last week UNHCR halted the indiscriminate acceptance of volunteers. But most of the volunteers were moved to help the refugees from a sense of pity, not publicity, and their help was important. One U.S. executive spent six hours of a hot day at Sakaew bathing orphans. After watching three volunteers struggling to put up a tent, an exhausted but grateful Cambodian observed: "I have never seen that before."

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