World Notes Ethiopia

Images of the devastating suffering caused by the Ethiopian famine stick firmly in the mind, but they tell only part of the story. A report issued by Doctors Without Borders, a Paris-based group that sends medical personnel to trouble spots around the world, charges that the Ethiopian government's efforts to resettle 575,000 famine-stricken peasants from the country's northern highlands may have left as many as 100,000 refugees dead. Says Author Claude Malhuret: "There can be no doubt that today resettlement is the biggest killer in Ethiopia, not famine."

The report is based on eyewitness accounts of relief workers and surveys conducted in Sudan among Ethiopian refugees by Cultural Survival, a U.S. human rights group. It alleges that many peasants were taken against their will, sometimes at gunpoint, and trucked south, only to be left on uncleared land with inadequate rations. M. Peter McPherson, administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, has denounced resettlement as a "vast human tragedy" and calls the report a "very positive development." But an Ethiopian government official labeled French doctors' charges "preposterous."