Welcome to a witness seminar with journalists who reported from the Nigerian Civil War and the humanitarian relief effort.

The Biafra crisis 1967–70 garnered enormous interest worldwide. Babies with bloated bellies became a symbol for how the West imagined Africa. Reports in Western media showing images of starving children and desperate women led to demands for immediate intervention from the outside world. In the Nordic countries, the reports mobilized various branches of civil society, including church aid organizations, the Red Cross, Save the Children and so-called Biafra committees, which expressed solidarity with Biafra and its suffering population. The humanitarian airlifts organized by Nordchurchaid and the International Committee of the Red Cross saved lives, but also prolonged a bloody civil war – a difficult moral dilemma that remains an issue for humanitarian aid to this day. The participants in the witness seminar are journalists who reported from the Nigerian Civil War and the humanitarian relief effort: Uno Grönkvist (Sweden), Lasse Jensen (Denmark), Pierre Mens (Sweden) and Pekka Peltola (Finland).