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