Live Aid's message of empathy and action should inspire renewed solidarity today

In 1985, Live Aid broke the deafening silence around famine in Ethiopia. Forty years later, the enduring power of its message of empathy and action should inspire renewed calls for global solidarity in the face of ongoing challenges, writes Dominic MacSorley

Bono, Paul McCartney and Freddie Mercury were among the pop stars to join Live Aid. Bono travelled with his wife, Ali Hewson, to Ethiopia at the end of 1985 where they visited the Concern team in Wollo, the epicentre of the famine.

Michael Buerk's iconic BBC report from Ethiopia in 1984 was not the first to raise the famine alarm bell. 

Brothers Kevin and Mike Doheny from Ballinalacken, Co Laois, who worked with Concern in Ethiopia had been pleading with broadcasters to film the unfolding catastrophe. While the main networks including the BBC deemed it unsafe to send a crew, the Doheny’s persuaded an independent cameraman, Paul Harrison, to travel to Ethiopia in July 1984.

Later, back in London, when Harrison was transferring the film to tape at Visnews, the horrific famine footage was seen by a journalist from ITN.  It was shown that night on their bulletins with a caption asking for donations to be sent to Concern in Dublin and was later picked up by French, Irish, Canadian and Australian media.

It wasn’t until October that year that Michael Buerk went to Ethiopia, and while he was not the first reporter to cover the crisis, his broadcast, with harrowing images shot by Kenyan cameraman Mohammed Amin, produced one of the most powerful television reports of the late 20th century.

Bob Geldof saw the reports and decided that something, anything, had to be done. Band Aid was born, culminating in eight Live Aid concerts that raised £150 million, (equivalent of £490 million today) for famine relief and development in Ethiopia and elsewhere in Africa.  

The full impact of Live Aid on famine relief has always generated debate but, without question, it not only raised desperately needed funds (Concern alone received £11 million for food supplies for both Ethiopia and Sudan that saved thousands of lives), it also raised an extraordinary level of public awareness, sparking a global movement that led to increased aid spending and policy changes.

As Geldof put it: 

We took an issue that was nowhere on the political agenda and…. were able to address the intellectual absurdity and the moral repulsion of people dying of want in a world of surpluses.

Bono, having performed with U2 at Live Aid in London, travelled with his wife, Ali Hewson, to Ethiopia at the end of 1985 where they visited the Concern team in Wollo, the epicentre of the famine.

Geldof and Bono, true Irish humanitarian activists, clearly attuned to Ireland’s own deeply troubled history of famine, embarked on a lifetime journey that took them from charity fundraising to tackling the deeper structural causes of poverty.

40 years on from the momentous Live Aid concerts, while the narrative and conversations around humanitarian work have changed to be more inclusive and representative, the commitments to end global poverty and hunger have weakened.

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We have more data, technology and better resources but in a world that is more dangerous, more brutalized, with hunger and starvation on the rise, empathy and action is in short supply.

Gaza, Haiti, Yemen, South Sudan and many more contexts are already in what is called "catastrophic food insecurity", one step away from starvation.

Sudan, now more than two years into a horrific war has become the world’s largest hunger crisis. Famine has been declared in north Darfur and is threatened in 13 other parts of the country.

Twenty years ago, when I worked in Darfur, I saw how the horror of conflict and suffering shocked the world and yet when I returned last year, a new generation of Sudanese were reliving the same hell; except, this time, the world is failing to pay adequate attention or provide sufficient resources.

Across the globe, humanitarian needs are rising as resources are diminishing. Apart from a handful of donors, including Irish Aid, which have stayed the course, funding levels for humanitarian and development work, already in decline, hit a new crisis level this year.

The magnitude and suddenness of funding cuts from major donors means that, at best, 114 million people, 38% of the total number of people in need of humanitarian assistance globally (299.7 million) will be assisted this year, and then only if the $29 billion required to assist them is immediately forthcoming.  

And this is the problem - as of June 30, just $5.96 billion has been received. In contrast, global military expenditure reached a record high of $2.718 trillion last year, and this figure is set to be surpassed this year.

Seventy years on from his “Chance for Peace" speech, US President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s words ring ever more true: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed”.

Across the world, humanitarian actors and civil society are working relentlessly to respond to the escalating needs of conflict-affected populations. However, the lifeline that is humanitarian assistance can only be stretched and cut back so far. It is already at breaking point.  

If this trend of underfunding for humanitarian crises continues, millions of people in dire, life-threatening circumstances cannot and will not be reached with food, water, shelter, and protection. Many of them will die. It is that simple, that brutal, and totally preventable.

Political self-interest

We are failing, not just on resource mobilisation, but also at a political level. Human suffering is repeatedly sidelined by political self-interest.

World leaders failed to agree an adequate climate finance deal at COP29 to help those countries that suffer the greatest impact of climate change. 

The UN Security Council has consistently failed in its mandate to maintain peace and security, refusing to call for immediate ceasefires, the protection of civilians, and the safe delivery of humanitarian aid in places such as Gaza and Sudan.

The horrific images from Michael Buerk’s report which shocked the word into action 40 years ago continue to be played out on our TVs and social media which pound us with even more disturbing images spurring public outrage and demands for political action.

Yet with all our digital technology, reporting is highly selective. Little attention is given to the millions of people who struggle in the crises such as those in Sudan, and so many other parts of the world where there are still children dying in their mothers’ arms, there are still people desperate for grains of wheat in the sand. 

They remain out of sight, out of mind, and marginalised from public and political attention.

Live Aid broke the deafening silence around famine in Ethiopia. The enduring power of its message of empathy and action should inspire renewed calls for global solidarity in the face of ongoing challenges.

We all have a role to play and as the UN turns 80 this year, we must urge member states to put empathy and action at the heart of every decision, and live up to its claim to be the one place on Earth where all the world’s nations can gather together, discuss common problems, and find shared solutions that benefit ALL of humanity.

• Dominic MacSorley is Humanitarian Ambassador for the Irish humanitarian organisation, Concern Worldwide. For more details of Concern’s work visit concern.net