by Frédéric Burnand in Geneva, swissinfo.ch
This week’s visit by Swiss President Micheline Calmy-Rey to famine-hit East Africa sends a strong signal to other countries and the public, in a senior expert’s view.
Calmy-Rey visited the Dadaab refugee camp and was shocked by the dire situation in the famine-stricken Horn of Africa (Reuters)
Interviewed by swissinfo.ch, François Nordmann, a policy advisor and retired Swiss diplomat, dismisses critics who accuse Calmy-Rey of staging the event for the media.
During her three-day trip to Kenya, Calmy-Rey visited the Daddab refugee camp, which houses an estimated 400,000 people, some 100 kilometres from the Somali border.
On Thursday she met Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki, who called on the international community to intervene over the drought and the Somalia security issue.
Calmy-Rey is the first president of a western country to travel to the disaster region in the Horn of Africa where up to 12 million people face starvation
Categories: Africa, Switzerland