World Hunger and Poverty

The People’s Daily Online reports about about the 4th World Congress of Rural Women:

Illiteracy, hunger, abuse and other challenges confronting rural women around the world will become focal issues at an international conference late next month in South Africa, a South African official said on Thursday.

About 2,000 delegates from around the world will also discuss the development of rural women during the 4th World Congress of Rural Women in Durban in the last week of April, said Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana.

Xingwana said the congress would focus on solutions and strategies to enable sustainable rural development, the official BuaNews reported.

The minister said the congress would bring together rural women of the world from different backgrounds to share with each other and learn from each other’s experiences.

South Africa was chosen because of the country’s leading role in issues of gender, transformation and the recognition of human rights, Xingwana said.

Read entire article.

A global collection of people coming together as such strikes the perfect collaboration of their differences and similarities. These rural women can use their differing experiences to share ideas, and come up with collaborative ways to fix their common problems.

David Cronin writes about a delaration to drive back poverty:

The 50th anniversary of the European Union has been marked by a declaration committing the 27-country bloc to “drive back poverty, hunger and disease” throughout the world.

“While the 50th anniversary is surely a time for celebration, it is also a time to reflect on one of the underlying reasons for the formation of the EU: the commitment of the nations of Europe to the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity,” said Lotte Leicht, the EU director with Human Rights Watch.

“After the horrific crimes of the Holocaust, the world vowed ‘never again’. But that vow seems terribly empty in view of what is happening today in Darfur.”

Read entire article by David Cronin.

As the title of Cronin’s article says, the poor need more than a declaration. Sadly, it appears that they won’t get that.

Hitherto, most policies of most western European nations have fostered neo-liberal colonialism and exploitation. For example, the Common Agricultural Policy undermines the food markets in poor countries by flooding them with cheap imports.

Instead of pushing poverty back, the West pushes it forward. Despite their claims otherwise, I doubt the EU actually plans to fight poverty, especially since their economic structure makes their success dependent on the exploitation of poor countries.

I live in Connecticut, so I especially noticed a recent article in The Daily Campus about a local hunger workshop called Hunger 101. I include an excerpt of the article:

It is a common misconception that hunger is more of a global than a local issue, but roughly 100,000 people in Connecticut suffer from food insecurity. Of these 100,000 people, 40,000 are children.

Tuesday night ConnPIRG (Public Interest Research Group) held a Hunger 101 workshop in the Student Union to raise hunger awareness. The leaders of the workshop were employees from Foodshare, a regional food bank that distributes to Hartford and Tolland Counties. Foodshare distributes 11 tons of food to 40 locations (including daycares, food pantries and soup kitchens) on a daily basis. Foodshare operates with the assistance of about 1,800 volunteers.

The Hunger 101 workshop is presented locally to different schools and universities, faith communities and companies. There are several different versions of the workshop, each altered to cater to their respective audience. Hunger 101′s aim is to find a way to explain to middle class citizens how people fall into poverty and into situations with low food security.

Read entire article by Danielle Hoo.

I think explaining the local prevalence of hunger helps people to comprehend the horrifying reality of hunger.

When people think of hunger, poverty, and homelessness as simply a so-called “global problem”, they may look at it with the same disconnected apathy with which they view fictional movies and such. In contrast, when they realize the effect these social ills have on their own lives and their own communities, then they address these issues as real problems.

Additionally, we can fight hunger locally. We can do it right at home.

Vice President of India, Shri Bhairon Singh Shekhawat calls poverty a blot on any civilized society. I post an excerpt of a press release on pib.nic.in:

Shri Shekhawat while releasing the book “Poverty and Hunger: Causes and Consequences” by Dr. Ratan Das, an eminent Gandhian and Sarvodaya leader said that success of any programme of poverty alleviation is intimately interlinked with the quality of public governance. Needs and aspirations of the poor and the deprived can be met only when the public administration becomes people-oriented, with a focus on the welfare of the common man. Reforms in public governance are fundamental to any strategy towards alleviation of poverty. He said that the efficacy index of our policies for development should be measured by the success achieved in alleviation of poverty and in increasing the access of the poor to basic education, healthcare and secured employment. That alone would usher in a just socio-economic order that brings cheer to the poor and the deprived.

Shri Shekhawat said that there is a wide-spread feeling that globalisation has not brought about intended economic benefits to the people. He said that the real content and elements of growth have to be inclusive of increase in employment opportunities and economic uplift of all sections of society. He stressed that growth does not just mean the percentage increase in GDP. We need growth that promotes development and brings down disparities by bridging the gap and divide between the rich and the poor.

Read entire press release on pib.nic.in.

I agree with Shri Shekhawat that the value of a government and society depends on how it treats all of its citizens, including the poor. However, I still believe the motto which says, “That government governs best which governs least.” I think the governments of the world can best relieve poverty simply by getting out of the way and stop contributing to the problem. The people of the world don’t need the government’s help to support themselves; they just need the government to stop holding them down by catering to the wealthy few who wish to retain undue wealth by oppressing the masses.

Currently, the major governments of the world work in cahoots with highly profitable megacorporations. These megacorporations use their profits to lobby and bribe politicians and thus use the coercive and violent powers of the government to rob the common-people. For example, by giving politicians a cut, military companies get profitable multi-billion dollar contracts paid with taxpayer dollars; while working-class people die in needless wars. In another example, the private-owned prison industry supports the war on drugs so that they can make profits while non-violent working-class people get thrown in jail and working-class taxpayers get robbed.

We don’t need government to end poverty, hunger, and other social problems. We can do that ourselves. The wealthy leaches that make up the megacorporations need the coercive powers government to steal and leach off the hard-working masses of people. We can take care of ourselves and our communities; we just need to stop the governments from allowing these megacorporations to leech off us and our labor.

Jeffrey D. Sachs recently wrote an article about extreme poverty:

Around one billion people live in extreme poverty, suffering from economic deprivation so severe that they must struggle daily for survival. Extreme poverty is sometimes defined as living on under $1 a day, but more accurately it is the lack of reliable access to basic needs, including adequate food, basic health services, safe drinking water and connectivity with the wider world (via roads, power and telecommunications).

Recent orthodoxy holds that extreme poverty results from corruption, mismanagement and weak institutions. A corollary is that institutional improvements take considerable time, so the escape from extreme poverty is likely to take decades. Without denying the benefit of stronger institutions, I suggest that excessive focus on institutional reforms has gotten the policy sequencing more wrong than right. Often, more direct aid can dramatically reduce extreme poverty in just a few years.

Read entire article by Jeffrey D. Sachs.

I highly recommend reading the entire article linked to above. Jeffrey Sachs wrote the well-known book, The End of Poverty: Economic Possibilities for Our Time.

Irshad Ali writes about child labor:

THE complex issue of child labour has emerged once again.

The notion that children are being exploited and forced into labour while not receiving an education crucial to development, concerns many people.

Children do extremely hazardous work in harmful conditions, putting their health, education, personal and social development, and even their lives at risk.

Some of the circumstances they face are:

• Full-time work at a very early age.
• Dangerous workplaces.
• Excessive work hours.
• Subjected to psychological, verbal, physical and sexual abuse.
• Limited pay.
• Work and life on the streets in bad conditions.
• Inability to escape from the poverty cycle no access to education.

Most children work because their families are poor and their labour is necessary for their survival. Children are often employed and exploited, compared to adults they are more vulnerable, cheaper to hire and are less likely to demand higher wages or better working conditions.

Read entire by Irshad Ali.

If given education and an environment conducive to success, children grow into valuable assets, because as educated and successful adults they provide much more for society than the mindless work outputted by a sweatshop slave. Only a horrible world would have any person slaving away in a sweatshop, but we not only allow that to happen to adults… We allow it to happen to children! This only invigorates the poverty cycle, because denying children a healthy childhood causes them to never escape poverty. For that reason, most children born into poverty remain in poverty for their entire lives.

Naomi Spencer writes about homelessness in the United States:

While statistics do not capture the real social dimension of homelessness in the United States, new data confirm that the homeless face increasing brutality, criminalization and neglect. But like the growing poverty population, the suffering of the homeless population finds no meaningful reflection in the budget or policy priorities of the federal government.

An estimated 754,147 people were homeless in the US in the winter of 2005, according to the first comprehensive survey by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) of homelessness.

Read entire article by Naomi Spencer.

I certainly find it disgustingly odd that the government can find trillions of dollars to spend on such absurdities as needless wars and drug criminalization. However, I doubt we can ever hope from better from a government. Because they fund themselves through taxation, governments do not have to please any customers. Politicians from all sides of the political spectrum only want to advance their own carriers and please their cronies and lobbyists. If we want to find the resources to end hunger, we need to get it out of our own pockets. Use your money to fight hunger, poverty, and homelessness; Don’t use it to pay taxes to corrupt, warmongering governments.

Uruknet reports on Iraqi children’s malnourishment four years after US invasion:

…malnutrition rates have risen in Iraq from 19 percent before the US-led invasion to a national average of 28 percent four years later.

Caritas says that rising hunger has been caused by high levels of insecurity, collapsed healthcare and other infrastructure, increased polarisation between different sects and tribes, and rising poverty.

Over 11 percent of newborn babies are born underweight in Iraq today, compared with a figure of 4 percent in 2003. Before March 2003, Iraq already had significant infant mortality due to malnutrition because of the international sanctions regime.

“Iraq has the second largest oil supplies in the world, but it has levels of poverty, hunger and underdevelopment comparable to sub-Saharan Africa.

Read enitre Uruknet article.

That comes in addition to the hundred of thousands of Iraqi civilians killed by the war. Of course, Americans die in Iraq also, as a result of this war. In fact, more Americans have died from the Iraq War that in the 9/11 attacks. Why does the U.S. allow its government to wage this needless, expensive, and devastating war? Iraq posed no threat to the U.S. and had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks. By weakening the military and increasing anti-Americanism, the Iraq War has increased the threat of terrorism and left the United States in more danger than before.

Why do we allow governments to increase violence and poverty with trillion-dollar wars, when we could use that money to reduce poverty and peacefulness?

Answer these questions for me at the Hunger & Poverty Forums by clicking here.

Christian Charities in the UK demand government address poverty:

“Keep your promise to the poor” – that was the challenge from Christian charities to the UK Government at the launch of the Blow the Whistle campaign in Westminster this week.

World Vision Chief Executive Charles Badenoch said that the Government could have taken moral leadership when it made its decision on Trident this week.

“The billions of pounds spent on arms could be spent alleviating world poverty,” he said. “Then we would not only have a more just world, but a more secure world.”

Blow the Whistle comes at the halfway point for the Government to meet the promises it made in 2000, when it joined other world leaders at the United Nations’ Millennium Summit to set the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to halve global poverty by 2015.

The campaign, run by the Micah Challenge coalition of churches and Christian charities, will put pressure on the Government and the international community to look at the half-time scores and resolve to turn the match around, so that extreme poverty and hunger really are halved for the world’s poor by 2015.

Read more about Blow the Whistle.

Like the United Kingdom, the United States government also spends an astonishing amount on military. When including past military expenses (e.g. veterans benefits), the United States federal government spends over one trillion dollars per year on military expenses. Excluding trust funds (e.g. social security), military spending accounts for 51% of United States federal spending.

With that money, the United States could not only end hunger and poverty in it’s own country (best done by providing student loans, in my opinion), but also they could end hunger everywhere. Remember, 14 million children in the United States live in food insecure households. 1 in 8 United States citizens live in poverty.

Why does the United States waste the money on an over-inflated military budget? Private companies in the military industry make huge profits (which mostly go to lazy non-working shareholders). Companies like Halliburton get rich off needless military spending and expensive wars such as the Iraq War . These military companies use that money to buy off politicians through lobbying, bribes, and campaign contributions. The government literally steals the money from taxpayers, and splits it with its cohorts.

Don’t let anyone trick you into thinking of this racket as a free-market. See the truth: Mega-corporations control the government to use its coercive powers to rob, control, and manipulate the masses and working-people.

We need to take our taxes back and use that money – our money – to fix the problems facing us, such as poverty and hunger. We can no longer allow the average working-class family to live in debt while lazy thieves live in luxury.

Christian or not, I say we all “blow the whistle” on these governments and war-profiteers.

Amy Flowers Umble recently wrote about a documentary by Chad Amour that explores poverty, hunger, debt and kindness:

The 40-minute film covers some weighty topics: AIDS orphans, poverty, hunger and the debt carried by poor countries.

Miller said he tried to make the music hopeful as a counterpoint.

For instance, one song says, “I’ve got news for you. The harvest comes for everyone. It won’t be long ’til everything is all right.”

Amour and Miller hope area churches and community groups will show the film and hold discussions about charity.

Miller said the documentary should make people think about “not just how we react to needs thousands of miles away but also how we offer support and love to our neighbors, our co-workers and our friends.”

Read entire article at fredericksburg.com.

I have not seen the documentary, but I want to, because it seems that the director has used his personal experience to make a powerful film about important issues afflicting our world.