ON MONDAY, Jan. 10, as the world continued to be transfixed by the tsunami disaster in southeast Asia, the United Nations World Food Program quietly added three grim stories to its website.
Without emergency food aid, as many as 3.2 million people face starvation in Sudan, it said. The WFP appealed for $300 million (US) in aid donations.
Hundreds of thousands of Rwandans face starvation during the next three months without help. And in Namibia, drought is taking its toll. “People are suffering because of hunger,” the regional government said.
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In the 16 days between the tsunami’s terrible appearance and Jan. 10, fatality estimates in the region rose to more than 150,000 with hundreds of thousands more injured and millions affected.
During those same 16 days, the UN estimates that 400,000 died worldwide from the effects of hunger and malnutrition, most of them children. While the tsunami was a once-in-an-era disaster, hundreds of years in the making, the grim parade of hunger deaths is relentless, growing and daily.
British prime minister Tony Blair noted recently that hunger, poverty and disease in Africa creates the equivalent of a Dec. 26 tsunami every few days.
It is in no way to minimize the tragedy and devastation of the tsunami nor to second-guess the incredible generousity of people and governments around the world to note that the past two weeks underscores the message frustrated hunger-fighting organizations have been making for years – the poor need not always be with us, Matthew 26, verse 11 notwithstanding.
The existence of chronic hunger in the world is a political decision.
On Dec. 26, governments around the world were fending off demands for more spending, pleading tight budgets. By Jan. 10, they had found more than $4 billion and counting. Individuals who probably figured they had given all they could to charity for the year found hundreds of millions of dollars more to donate.
It is a question of political and personal priorities. The television images, heart-breaking stories and political pressure drew a record response.
The largely invisible toll of hunger breeding illness producing death and under-development in villages, refugee camps and big city back alleys around the world does not produce the images, get the attention or draw the response.
The Canadian government generously finds more than $400 million for Asian relief and reconstruction but resolutely refuses to meet its Lester Pearson-established goal of contributing 0.7 percent of annual economic output to aid and development projects. Canada’s budgeted spending is less than half its goal.
And this is in a country WFP executive director James Morris lauds as one of the most generous in the world.
Morris says a sustained commitment by rich nations to spend the billions to truly end chronic poverty would make it happen, much as the world has responded to the tsunami.
“It is shameful,” he said during a visit to Ottawa. “It is a matter of political will. It could be done if people wanted it done.”
It is true.
