More and more people around the world are going hungry. Millions in the Horn of Africa have been on the brink of starvation due to civil war and drought. And the combination of war and weather has made chronic hunger a reality for people in Iraq and the West Bank, much of Eastern Europe, the Philippines, Liberia, and countless other countries.
The editors of the Hong Kong-based Christian newsletter Asia Focus stated recently in a World Food Day (October 16) editorial that hunger in Asia and the rest of the world reflects a "callous disregard" for those who suffer the indifference of governments and conditions that threaten their lives.
"It is not that the indifference lies in a human absence of charity or being deaf to their plight," the editors stated. "Silent acquiescence to dictatorial regimes and governments that view human life as a commodity of exchange, a resource to be exploited, is a form of collaboration with sin."
More than a half billion adults and children are in a constant state of hunger. And a recent study by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization predicted that food shortages will grow worse as the world population increases (from five billion to 8.5 billion over the next 30 years) and deforestation continues at a rapid rate.
Despite the grave statistics, a recent report by the Bread for the World Institute on Hunger and Development maintains that this kind of widespread hunger is not inevitable.
"The principal barrier to overcoming world hunger is neither lack of resources nor lack of knowledge, but the failure to put ideas that work into practice," according to the institute's second annual report on the state of world hunger, released on World Food Day.
The report describes 10 anti-hunger initiatives that it says are making a difference, including: new agricultural technologies with support for small rural enterprises, as in the case of the Green Revolution in India; creating partnerships that help low-income community groups move toward self-reliance, as with churches in St. Louis and the St. Louis Association for Community Organizations; and intensive grassroots organizing that creates political power for poor people.
The projects that are most successful, according to the report, are led by those in need and receive government and private support.
U.S. government assistance -- both emergency humanitarian assistance and foreign aid -- was scrutinized by two different studies recently. And both recommended an overhaul of current U.S. aid policies and decision making.
The U.S. Committee for Refugees, a Washington, DC-based non-profit group, recommended that a high-level commission of relief organizations and government officials, along with representatives of the American public, re-examine U.S. humanitarian assistance programs that have been hampered by "political game-playing."
And according to a study published by Oxfam America, U.S. aid and development policies in the Caribbean have hurt the very people they are supposed to benefit.
"The Caribbean in the 1980s was a testing ground for the aid and trade policies that are now at the core of the U.S. economic program for a "new world order" in the 1990s," writes Kathy McAfee, author of the report. "The Caribbean experience indicates that these policies hinder sustainable development and cannot succeed in promoting meaningful democracy."
McAfee says the Caribbean experience shows that the twin doctrines of "free-market development" and "structural adjustment" that have been the hallmarks of U.S. foreign aid policy "help the strong and the rich and hurt the weak and the poor."
Chris Herman assisted with research.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!