apathy 2 action

 

The 'hunger tsunami' sweeps across the earth every week killing more than 210,000 persons and wrecking the lives of countless millions.  But this old challenge of malnutrition and starvation, except in times of extreme famine, rarely draws any headlines.  People and governments tend to accept the status quo of global hunger even though it leaves 850 million people struggling with food insecurity and its dire consequences in terms of health, education, productivity and poverty.

 

We take refuge in the fact that people disagree about the causes of hunger and the necessary strategies for ending it. We act like ending hunger is an ethical option rather than a moral obligation.  We deceive ourselves by making up excuses why we can't do more.  We rationalise that 'it is the responsibility of the government to act,' or that 'since the problem is so large, there is little if anything I can do.'  We excuse ourselves by praying for the hungry even as we regularly eat excessively and consume far more than we really need.  We seem totally ensnared by our chosen cultural standards of living and cannot escape the prisons of our affluence.

Donald E Messer (Director Centre for the Church and Global Aids, Lliff School of Theology, Denver)

 

  

How high must be the pile of statistics of hungry people?  How high must be the pile of dead people?  How high must be the pile of Bible verses?  What will awaken the people of God from their comatose state?

Craig L Nessan (Give Us This Day, A Lutheran Proposal For Ending World Hunger, 2003)

 

 

We have twenty-five years to bring hope and health and life to those now facing starvation around the globe. It is clearly within our power to win the victory in that time.  That means we've got twelve and a half years until half time, when 400 million of the world's 800 million hungry people should be eating adequately.  We will then have twelve and a half more years in the second half to seize life over death for the remaining 400 million.

George McGovern (Former US Senator, now United Nations Ambassador on issues of hunger)

 

 

More engaging is Easterly's theme that the aid business has too many top down 'planners' drawing up schemes at the national and international level and too few low-level providers and consumers (searchers) who mimic free markets by trying out small scale aid and development programmes on the ground.

Alan Beattie (FT world trade editor) reviewing books on Africa including The White Man's Burden: Why the West's Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done so Much Ill and So Little Good by William Easterly

 

 

food 4 thought

 

  • 850 million people are desperately hungry and malnourished in our world; 300 million of them children, whilst 1.1 billion or more of us eat excessively. 
  • Every day 30,000 people die of starvation.  That's one every 3 seconds. 
  • The global AIDS pandemic has intensified world hunger - farmers in Africa are dying or too ill to plant food.  Many regions in Africa are left with only the old and the young.  By 2020 it is estimated that one-fifth of the agricultural labour force in Southern Africa will be lost.  Aids is both a cause and a consequence of hunger. 
  • Due to gender discrimination and cultural traditions, women and children often suffer the most. 
  • In the impoverished nations of the world, 1 in 10 children dies before her third birthday. 
  • Globally a billion people live without clean water. 
  • In a world of astonishing scientific, technical and economic capability, Africa practises primitive farming methods.  
  • The United Nations have agreed a target to reduce the worlds hungry by half by 2015. 
  • If we provided a good nutritious lunch every day for every child in the planet, we would transform life on our planet.   
  • Widespread hunger is one of the contributing factors that leads to discontent and creates an environment that is conducive to terrorism. (Senator Bob Dole).   goat         
 

 
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