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ICRC's Perverted Priorities
(Jerusalem Post) Don Habibi - According to its 2001 Annual Report, the International Committee of the Red Cross's (ICRC) budgetary allocations do not reflect proportionality, urgency, or a hierarchy of need. In North Africa, the ICRC has one office, a budget of 2,512,613 Swiss francs, and 15 staff. For Asia and the Pacific, serving a population of 1.7 billion, the ICRC has one office, a budget of 5,838,991 Swiss francs, and 60 personnel. For "Israel/Occupied Territories/Autonomous Territories," the ICRC has 13 offices, a budget of 22,407,815 Swiss francs, and 210 personnel in a region of less than 9.5 million people, whose services are concentrated on the Palestinian population (3.5 million). Like so many other humanitarian and human rights organizations, the ICRC has far more of its limited resources concentrated in this very tiny area than it has almost anywhere else. It is tragic that the self-inflicted "plight of the Palestinians" has dominated the agenda of the international community and diverted our attention from the countless innocent victims of human rights violations elsewhere in the Middle East and the world. The writer is professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.