-Caveat Lector-
FROM: Le Monde diplomatique
The politics of hunger
by IGNACIO RAMONET
Now here’s a statistic you might have missed. The total wealth
of the world’s three richest
individuals is greater than the combined gross domestic product
(1) of the 48 poorest countries
- a quarter of all the world’s states. Everybody knows inequality
has increased over the last 20
years of unfettered ultra-liberalism. But who could have imagined
the gap had widened so far?
In 1960 the income of the 20 % of the world’s population living in
the richest countries was 30
times greater than that of the 20 % in the poorest countries.
Now we learn that in 1995 it was 82 times greater
(2). In over 70 countries, per capita income is
lower today than it was 20 years ago. Almost three billion people
- half the world's population -
live on less than two dollars a day. While goods are more abundant
than ever before, the
number of people without shelter, work or enough to eat is
constantly growing. Of the 4_ billion
people giving in developing countries, almost a third have
no drinking water. A fifth of all
children receive an insufficient intake of calories or protein.
And two billion people - a third of
the human race - are suffering from anemia.
Is this the way it has to be? The answer is no. The UN calculates
that the whole of the world
population's basic needs for food, drinking water, education
and medical care could be covered
by a levy of less than 4 % on the accumulated wealth of the
225 largest fortunes. To satisfy all
the world's sanitation and food requirements would cost only
$13 billion, hardly as much as the
people of the United States and the European Union spend each
year on perfume.
Next month will see the 50th anniversary of the Universal
Declaration on Human Rights, which
states that "everyone has the right to a standard of living
adequate for the health and
well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing,
housing and medical care and
necessary social services". But for most of humanity,
these rights are increasingly inaccessible.
Consider, for example, the right to food. Food is not in
short supply. In fact, food products have
never been so abundant. There is enough available to provide
each of the Earth's inhabitants
with at least 2,700 calories a day. But production alone is
not enough. The people who need
the food must be able to buy it and consume it. And that is
precisely the problem. Thirty million
people a year die of hunger. And 800 million suffer from
chronic malnutrition.
Again, there is nothing inevitable about this. Climatic problems
are often predictable. When
humanitarian organizations like Action Against Hunger (3) are
able to intervene, they can often
nip a famine in the bud in a matter of weeks.
And yet hunger continues to decimate whole populations.
Why? Because hunger has become a political weapon. In
today's world, no famine is gratuitous.
Hunger is a strategy pursued with unbelievable cynicism
by governments and military regimes
whom the end of the cold war has deprived of a steady income.
Rather than starving the
enemy, as Sylvie Brunel points out (4), they are starving their
own populations in order to cash
in on media coverage and international compassion, an
inexhaustible source of money, food
and political platforms.
In Somalia, Sudan, Liberia, North Korea, Burma and Afghanistan,
governments and military
leaders are holding innocent people hostage and starving
them for political ends, sometimes
with appalling cruelty. In Sierra Leone, the men of
ex-Corporal Foday Sankoh's Revolutionary
United Front (RUF), in a horrific year-long campaign of
terror, have been systematically
chopping off peasants' hands with machetes to prevent
them cultivating the land. Climate has
become a marginal factor in major famines. It is man who
is starving man. Amartya Sen, the
winner of this year's Nobel prize for economics, is renowned
for showing how government
policies can cause famine even when food is abundant. On
several occasions, he has stressed
"the remarkable fact that, in the terrible history of
famines in the world, no substantial famine
has ever occurred in any independent and democratic country
with a relatively free press (5)".
Rejecting the arguments of the neo-liberals, Professor
Sen contends that greater responsibility
for the well-being of society must be given, not to the
market, but to the state. A state that must
be sensitive to the needs of its citizens and, at the same
time, concerned with human
development throughout the world.
Translated by Barry Smerin
(1) Overall national production of goods and services.
(2) Human Development Report 1998, United Nations Development Programme,
New
York, September 1998. See also Dominique Vidal, "Dans le Sud, développement
ou
régression?", Le Monde diplomatique, October 1998.
(3) UK office: 1, Catton Street, London WC1R 4AB, email [EMAIL PROTECTED];
US
office: 875 avenue of the Americas, Suite 1905, New York NY 10001, email
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
(4) See Sylvie Brunel and Jean-Luc Bodin, Géopolitique de la faim. Quand la
faim est une arme, (annual report by Action Against Hunger), PUF, Paris,
1998, 310
p., 125 F, soon to be available in English as "The Hunger Report".
(5) See "Human Rights and Asian Values: What Lee Kuan Yew and Le Peng don't
understand about Asia", The New Republic, July 14, 1997.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED © 1998 Le Monde diplomatique
DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER
==========
CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic
screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters
and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright
frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects
spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL
gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers;
be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and
nazi's need not apply.
Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector.
========================================================================
Archives Available at:
http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html
http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/
========================================================================
To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email:
SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Om
