When world leaders gather in New York for the world summit this week, they will be subjected to a barrage of pleading and advocacy.
But the voice they probably will not hear is the most important one -- that of the poor and hungry struggling to raise and feed their families on a parched patch of land in the developing world. They are among more than 850 million chronically hungry people worldwide. And their plight is what it is really all about.
Can we continue to live with the scandal of great wealth and conspicuous consumption coexisting with misery, malnutrition and early death? Can we really be surprised if such injustice produces a lost generation bent on violence and destruction?
The leaders will be reviewing progress towards achieving the eight millennium development goals agreed five years ago. The first is the reduction of extreme hunger and poverty. It is the critical one because unless it is achieved, the others will fail too.
Hunger and poverty are inextricably linked. Hunger is not only the most obvious manifestation of poverty but also one of its principal causes. There is a vicious spiral at work that condemns millions of people to short, stunted, unfulfilled lives.
The key battleground in the fight to eradicate hunger and poverty is the countryside. After all, three-quarters of the 1.1 billion people living on less than US$1 a day live in the rural areas of developing countries and depend on agriculture. The logic is therefore inescapable: invest in agriculture and rural infrastructure.
Yet, over the past 20 years official development assistance going to these sectors in the poorest countries has been cut by more than half, from US$5.14 billion to US$2.22 billion.
Despite this, more than 30 developing countries, with a total population exceeding 2.2 billion people, have managed to cut the proportion of their undernourished by more than 25 percent. And all achieved significantly higher growth in agricultural GDP than the developing countries as a whole.
But this success is threatened by continuing injustices in the world trading system. With industrialized countries supporting their agriculture to the tune of nearly US$1 billion a day, international commodity prices are driven down and farmers in the poor countries find themselves undercut in their own markets.
In Hong Kong in December, trade negotiators will seek to address these issues, focusing on the risks of liberalization and the justification of protectionism. There has been much talk of level playing fields -- but there is a long way to go before we achieve this.
Meanwhile, the plight of children dying because of drought continues. After the usual blame game, we rush in food aid, at huge logistical cost. Then we wait for the next crisis, without addressing the root causes of the problem by building the essential water control systems and rural infrastructures.
The cost of doing nothing about hunger is tremendous. If hunger persists at current levels, the related loss of productivity in developing countries will total a staggering US$50 billion while each year without progress will cost 5 million children their lives.
Jacques Diouf is secretary-general of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
A series of strong earthquakes in Hualien County not only caused severe damage in Taiwan, but also revealed that China’s power has permeated everywhere. A Taiwanese woman posted on the Internet that she found clips of the earthquake — which were recorded by the security camera in her home — on the Chinese social media platform Xiaohongshu. It is spine-chilling that the problem might be because the security camera was manufactured in China. China has widely collected information, infringed upon public privacy and raised information security threats through various social media platforms, as well as telecommunication and security equipment. Several former TikTok employees revealed
For the incoming Administration of President-elect William Lai (賴清德), successfully deterring a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attack or invasion of democratic Taiwan over his four-year term would be a clear victory. But it could also be a curse, because during those four years the CCP’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will grow far stronger. As such, increased vigilance in Washington and Taipei will be needed to ensure that already multiplying CCP threat trends don’t overwhelm Taiwan, the United States, and their democratic allies. One CCP attempt to overwhelm was announced on April 19, 2024, namely that the PLA had erred in combining major missions
The Constitutional Court on Tuesday last week held a debate over the constitutionality of the death penalty. The issue of the retention or abolition of the death penalty often involves the conceptual aspects of social values and even religious philosophies. As it is written in The Federalist Papers by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay, the government’s policy is often a choice between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods, and it is impossible to be perfect. Today’s controversy over the retention or abolition of the death penalty can be viewed in the same way. UNACCEPTABLE Viewing the
At the same time as more than 30 military aircraft were detected near Taiwan — one of the highest daily incursions this year — with some flying as close as 37 nautical miles (69kms) from the northern city of Keelung, China announced a limited and selected relaxation of restrictions on Taiwanese agricultural exports and tourism, upon receiving a Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) delegation led by KMT legislative caucus whip Fu Kun-chi (傅崑萁). This demonstrates the two-faced gimmick of China’s “united front” strategy. Despite the strongest earthquake to hit the nation in 25 years striking Hualien on April 3, which caused