Skip to main content

Global Hunger

What report could be more appropriate, in the current economic hubbub worldwide, than the one released yesterday? - on global hunger.

Whilst bankers and governments around the world deal in billions of dollars to rescue companies - and countries [witness Iceland] - from going to the wall, there are still millions of people around the world who go to bed hungry every day.

oneworld.net reports:

"Despite significant progress in global efforts to reduce poverty, hundreds of millions of people across the world are still going to sleep hungry at night, according to a new study by a group of international food policy think tanks.

The "2008 Global Hunger Index" released today points out that more than 920 million people -- an overwhelming majority of them living in developing countries -- go hungry every day.

"Hunger is one of the most important problems the world faces, and rapid progress in overcoming it is long overdue," said the authors of the report highlighting the countries and regions facing the risk -- and now confronting the added burden of rising food prices and a global economic downturn.

The Index also notes, however that many countries in South and Southeast Asia, the Near East and North Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean have made significant headway in eliminating hunger over the past two decades.

The report identifies as many as 33 countries that have levels of hunger that are "alarming or extremely alarming." Most of those countries are located in South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa."

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Robert Fisk's predictions for the Middle East in 2013

There is no gain-saying that Robert Fisk, fiercely independent and feisty to boot, is the veteran journalist and author covering the Middle East. Who doesn't he know or hasn't he met over the years in reporting from Beirut - where he lives?  In his latest op-ed piece for The Independent he lays out his predictions for the Middle East for 2013. Read the piece in full, here - well worthwhile - but an extract... "Never make predictions in the Middle East. My crystal ball broke long ago. But predicting the region has an honourable pedigree. “An Arab movement, newly-risen, is looming in the distance,” a French traveller to the Gulf and Baghdad wrote in 1883, “and a race hitherto downtrodden will presently claim its due place in the destinies of Islam.” A year earlier, a British diplomat in Jeddah confided that “it is within my knowledge... that the idea of freedom does at present agitate some minds even in Mecca...” So let’s say this for 2013: the “Arab Awakening” (the t

The NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) goes on hold.....because of one non-Treaty member (Israel)

Isn't there something radically wrong here?    Israel, a non-signatory to the NPT has, evidently, been the cause for those countries that are Treaty members, notably Canada, the US and the UK, after 4 weeks of negotiation, effectively blocking off any meaningful progress in ensuring the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons.    IPS reports ..... "After nearly four weeks of negotiations, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference ended in a predictable outcome: a text overwhelmingly reflecting the views and interests of the nuclear-armed states and some of their nuclear-dependent allies. “The process to develop the draft Review Conference outcome document was anti-democratic and nontransparent,” Ray Acheson, director, Reaching Critical Will, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), told IPS. “This Review Conference has demonstrated beyond any doubt that continuing to rely on the nuclear-armed states or their nuclear-dependent allies for l

#1 Prize for a bizarre story.....and lying!

No comment called for in this piece from CommonDreams: Another young black man: The strange sad case of 21-year-old Chavis Carter. Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas  stopped  him and two friends, found some marijuana, searched put Carter, then put him handcuffed  behind his back  into their patrol car, where they say he  shot himself  in the head with a gun they failed to find. The FBI is investigating. Police Chief Michael Yates, who stands behind his officers' story,  says in an interview  that the death is "definitely bizarre and defies logic at first glance." You think?