The testimony of Thomas Koenig, volunteer of Misereor, on the situation on the frontier of Afghanistan 300,000 DM to be placed at the disposal of experts working in the areas most directly involved by the military escalation underway over the last few days: the initiative is that of the German aid organization Misereor which ever since 1958 has been promoting projects “against hunger and disease throughout the world”. Active as a partner in development projects in the fight against poverty around the world, Misereor has also been playing an awareness-raising role in Germany in sensitizing public opinion to the problems of underdevelopment in the southern hemisphere. According to the physician Thomas Koenig, head of the “Control of leprosy and development programme” (Lepco), who is currently in Islamabad, in Pakistan, “ the disastrous situation of the population has suffered a significant deterioration that affects both those already in Afghanistan and the Afghan refugees pouring into the bordering countries, especially Pakistan, whose number has dramatically increased”. The association is also engaged in activities to provide relief to and intercept the flows of refugees. For instance, it is trying to implement a basic educational programme for women and girls in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, on the border with Afghanistan, which is now being supplemented by an introduction to basic first aid. Similarly, a programme being run in Afghanistan aimed at combating leprosy and tuberculosis is now being supplemented and reinforced by an introduction to basic medical treatment. Misereor, by statute, promotes the charitable commitment of the German Catholic Church especially abroad. But ever since the year of its foundation, the organization has also aimed at promoting at home the concept that “sharing must become a fundamental norm of responsible conduct from an ethical point of view”. At the same time, Misereor aims, in its mission abroad, at developing aid programmes calculated to stimulate local projects and local creativity. The projects in question are long term ones that have as their objective an improvement of human life through a range of development measures that provide the beneficiaries of aid with the capacity to recognize that it is possible to achieve a change through their own efforts. Aid to individual projects is allocated through direct support, providing the necessary consultancy where needed and also funding the human resources necessary for the project’s implementation. The aim of the organization as a whole is not to provide general aid, but to initiate a process, as Kesuma Saddak of Misereor explains, with particular regard to the present crisis: “We’ll first tackle the things that are most urgently needed at the present time, but the objective of our aid is to begin a long-term process for the reconstruction of Afghanistan”. The organization can already claim one small success, achieved thanks to the efforts of one of the experts they have sent to the region, Thomas Koenig, who heads the “control of leprosy and development programme”. Koenig explains that “the organization has already received from the World Health Organization five tons of clinical material and medicines, which will be sent to Peshawar, on the border with Afghanistan. We’ll try to ensure the safe allocation and utilization of the supplies in local hospitals, also with the help of local Lepco staff. Here in Islamabad the situation is relatively quiet, though tensions can be felt. I try to maintains contacts with the local units and with the hospitals, so that the basic provisioning may continue, but that isn’t always easy”. Patrizia Collesi
