The great African drought/famine of 1984-85 pushed upwards of 300,000 starving Ethiopian farmers and herders into eastern Sudan. Their plight, as revealed almost nightly during early 1985 on millions of television sets throughout the Western world, provoked one of the greatest outpourings of and humanitarian assistance ever recorded. Thanks to the efforts of relief organizations, amateur and professional fund-raisers, and millions of private citizens who donated hundreds of millions of dollars, emergency aid was quickly forthcoming, and a potentially massive human tragedy was averted. By 1986 the bright light of publicity that had focused the world's attention on Ethiopian drought victims had dimmed and gone out. Cynics claim that compassion fatigue had set in and caused the public's concern to wane. People just did not want to see more pictures of starving, miserably poor Africans attempting to survive in desolate camps in Sudan and Ethiopia. In any event, the mass media had gone elsewhere. In Eastern Sudan, many of the erstwhile drought victims had also gone elsewhere-in fact, 100,000 or more of those who entered Sudan during 1984-85 spontaneously returned to western Ethiopia, particularly to Tigray province, where the early 1986 rains presaged the possibility of a normal harvest. Most of those who remained in Sudan after 1986 are accommodated in newly constructed, or newly expanded, refugee settlements. Here they join earlier asylum seekers from Ethiopia.

In population planning in Latin America the programs are as successful as the government's support of family planning. Colombia is one of the few Latin American countries which has actively exhorted its populace to birth control. If the propensity for large families reflects a belief in the economic or social utility of children, instead of machismo, birthrates will fall with expanded social security and economic welfare programs. If birthrates are the result of machismo, new gender models stressing the positive rewards and social esteem to be gained through responsible parenthood would have to be taught to both adults and children. The position profamily planning in most Latin American countries is generally supported by the ministers, technocrats, corporations, businessmen, middle-class women, doctors, mass media, protestant congregations, and working-class women. Family planning is usually opposed by members of the armed forces, Catholic hierarchy, Catholic lay organizations, oligarchy, university students, leftist intellectuals, Marxist insurgents, Indian communities, and peasants. The portion of the total national populations encompassed by the groups composing the core combination, ideological bias, and stability group ranges from 50-60% in Argentina, Uruguay, and Venezuela to 10-20% in Central America, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Paraguay. Most groups are outside the policy-making process.

Toward Strategies for Public Administration Development in Latin America. By John C. Honey, with commentaries by Peter D. Bell, Richard A. Fehnel, James R. Himes, and George Sutija. (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1968. Pp. 175. $5.75.) - Volume 63 Issue 4