Today, around 21,000 children died around the world

Around 21,000 children die every day around the world.

That is equivalent to:

• 1 child dying every 4 seconds
• 14 children dying every minute
• A 2011 Libya conflict-scale death toll every day
• A 2010 Haiti earthquake occurring every 10 days
• A 2004 Asian Tsunami occurring every 11 days
• An Iraq-scale death toll every 19–46 days
• Just under 7.6 million children dying every year
• Some 92 million children dying between 2000 and 2010

The silent killers are poverty, easily preventable diseases and illnesses, and other related causes. Despite the scale of this daily/ongoing catastrophe, it rarely manages to achieve, much less sustain, prime-time, headline coverage.

World Hunger and Poverty

Last updated Sunday, August 22, 2010.

Meaningful long-term alleviation of hunger is rooted in the alleviation of poverty, as poverty leads to hunger. World hunger is a terrible symptom of world poverty. If efforts are only directed at providing food, or improving food production or distribution, then the structural root causes that create hunger, poverty and dependency would still remain. While resources and energies are deployed to relieve hunger through technical measures such as improving agriculture, and as important as these are, inter-related issues such as poverty means that political solutions are likely required as well for meaningful and long term hunger alleviation.

Food Dumping [Aid] Maintains Poverty

Last updated Monday, December 10, 2007.

Food aid (when not for emergency relief) can actually be very destructive on the economy of the recipient nation and contribute to more hunger and poverty in the long term. Free, subsidized, or cheap food, below market prices undercuts local farmers, who cannot compete and are driven out of jobs and into poverty, further slanting the market share of the larger producers such as those from the US and Europe. Many poor nations are dependent on farming, and so such food aid amounts to food dumping. In the past few decades, more powerful nations have used this as a foreign policy tool for dominance rather than for real aid.

Food and Agriculture Issues

Last updated Sunday, July 31, 2011.

Food and agriculture goes to the heart of our civilizations. Religions, cultures and even modern civilization have food and agriculture at their core. For an issue that goes to the heart of humanity it also has its ugly side.

This issue explores topics ranging from the global food crisis of 2008, to issues of food aid, world hunger, food dumping and wasteful agriculture such as growing tobacco, sugar, beef, and more.

Trade, Economy, & Related Issues

Last updated Saturday, November 12, 2011.

Corruption

Last updated Sunday, September 04, 2011.

We often hear leaders from rich countries telling poor countries that aid and loans will only be given when they show they are stamping out corruption.

While that definitely needs to happen, the rich countries themselves are often active in the largest forms of corruption in those poor countries, and many economic policies they prescribe have exacerbated the problem.

Corruption in developing countries definitely must be high on the priority lists (and is increasingly becoming so in the wake of the global financial crisis), but so too must it be on the priority lists of rich countries.

Foreign Aid for Development Assistance

Last updated Sunday, June 05, 2011.

In 1970, the world’s rich countries agreed to give 0.7% of their gross national income as official international development aid, annually.

Since that time, billions have certainly been given each year, but rarely have the rich nations actually met their promised target.

For example, the US is often the largest donor in dollar terms, but ranks amongst the lowest in terms of meeting the stated 0.7% target.

Furthermore, aid has often come with a price of its own for the developing nations. Common criticisms, for many years, of foreign aid, have included the following:

• Aid is often wasted on conditions that the recipient must use overpriced goods and services from donor countries
• Most aid does not actually go to the poorest who would need it the most
• Aid amounts are dwarfed by rich country protectionism that denies market access for poor country products while rich nations use aid as a lever to open poor country markets to their products
• Large projects or massive grand strategies often fail to help the vulnerable; money can often be embezzled away.

This article explores who has benefited most from this aid, the recipients or the donors.

Causes of Hunger are related to Poverty

Last updated Sunday, October 03, 2010.

There are many inter-related issues causing hunger, which are related to economics and other factors that cause poverty. They include land rights and ownership, diversion of land use to non-productive use, increasing emphasis on export-oriented agriculture, inefficient agricultural practices, war, famine, drought, over-fishing, poor crop yields, etc. This section introduces some of these issues.

United Nations World Summit 2005

Last updated Sunday, September 18, 2005.

The UN World Summit for September 2005 is supposed to review progress since the Millennium Declaration, adopted by all Member States in 2000. However, the US has proposed enormous changes to an outcome document that is to be signed by all members. There are changes on almost all accounts, including striking any mention of the Millennium Development Goals, that aim for example, to halve poverty and world hunger by 2015. This has led to concerns that the outcome document will be weakened. Developing countries are also worried about stronger text on human rights and about giving the UN Security Council more powers.

IMF & World Bank Protests, Washington D.C.

Last updated Friday, July 13, 2001.

To complement the public protests in Seattle, the week leading up to April 16th/17th 2000 saw the other two global institutions, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank, as the focus of renewed protests and criticisms in Washington, D.C. The purpose of the mass demonstrations was to protest against the current form of globalization, which is seen as unaccountable, corporate-led, and non-democratic, and to show the link between poverty and the various policies of the IMF and the World Bank.

Economic Democracy

Posted Sunday, November 26, 2000.

This next page is a reposting of a flyer about a new book from J.W. Smith and the Institute for Economic Democracy, whom I thank for their kind permission. The book is called Economic Democracy: The Political Struggle Of The 21st Century. Typically on this site, I do not advertise books etc, (although I will cite from and link to some, where relevant). However, in this case, I found that the text in the flyer provides an excellent summary of poverty’s historic roots, as well as of the multitude of issues that cause poverty. (Please also note that I do not make any proceeds from the sale of this book in any way.)

Poverty Links for More Information

Last updated Monday, April 28, 2003.

Links to other sites discussion issues on trade, the global economy, poverty and other related issues.

Read “Poverty Links for More Information” to learn more.

Trade, Economic Links For More Information

Last updated Wednesday, July 25, 2001.

Read “Trade, Economic Links For More Information” to learn more.

World hunger related links for more information

Last updated Monday, December 10, 2007.

Links to web sites and articles that discuss world hunger, the relationship between populations and hunger, of poverty and hunger, agricultural issues, land rights and so on.

Read “World hunger related links for more information” to learn more.

Sustainable Development

Last updated Sunday, June 05, 2011.

Read “Sustainable Development” to learn more.

Aid

Posted Sunday, June 05, 2011.

There are numerous forms of aid, from humanitarian emergency assistance, to longer term development aid. Some provide food aid, or military assistance, but all these forms of aid seem to be accompanied with criticism, either around inefficiency of delivery, or of political agendas or more. This section attempts to look at some of these issues.