Madam, - Bill Corcoran (Opinion, June 28th) asks if aid agencies should remain in Zimbabwe if they are being "used as pawns". There is a danger here of corruption and bad governance being used as an excuse for ignoring people who desperately need our help.
My colleague Judith Melby has just returned from Harare where she visited Caledonia Farm, currently being used as a camp for people who have been bulldozed out of their homes. There one of our partners, Christian Care, is currently providing food and blankets for some 2,000 people. Christian Aid is also supporting feeding programmes targeted at schoolchildren, and HIV prevention programmes in a country that has one of the continent's highest HIV rates.
The very thought of allowing people to die in order to score a point against the Mugabe government is as bad as anything that that regime is doing to its own people. We must and will be better than that. - Yours, etc,
ADRIAN HORSMAN, Christian Aid Ireland, Dublin 2.
Madam, - It is rightly hoped that the African Union will be a champion of good governance and human rights in Africa. Sadly, this is not the signal that is being given by its silence and inaction in response to the unfolding humanitarian disaster in Zimbabwe.
The horrendous situation in Zimbabwe and the lack of response from the African Union surely demonstrates in the clearest possible terms that the main issue impeding the development of African nations is the lack of good, honest governance.
Debt relief and aid are important issues but secondary in importance to good honest governance.
Without it, debt relief, aid and trade will have no lasting benefits whereas with good governance they will.
It is as simple and as straight forward as that. We look to the UN and G8 for solutions to world poverty, not for inadequate gestures. - Yours, etc.,
Dr LF LACEY, Skerries, Co Dublin.