Honger in de Wereld

En omdat de Nederlandse regering - gesteund door een meerderheid van het parlement - in opdracht van de Bush-bende honderden miljoenen euro's uittrekt om Afghaanse gangsters in het zadel te houden, is er minder geld om de honger in de wereld te bestrijden. De Inter Press Service bericht: 'SPECIAL REPORT-PART I:A World Addicted to Hunger - In Ethiopia, some 12.6 million people require food aid, up from 11.3 million... Donors have pledged enough to meet about 82 percent of food needs, but only 54 percent has been delivered... Sound familiar? This alert was issued three years ago by the Famine Early Warning Systems Network, known as FEWS NET. Guess what? Ethiopia appeared again this year on FEWS NET's list of "current emergencies," alongside Somalia, Zimbabwe, and Chad. In a report on Ethiopia issued on Feb. 24, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) says that "about fifteen million people are facing food insecurity that is either chronic or transitory in nature." Of these, five to six million people are chronically food insecure (that is, "people who have lost the capacity to produce or buy enough to meet their annual food needs even under normal weather and market conditions"), and the remaining 10 million are vulnerable, "with a weak resilience to any shock," says FAO. According to Oxfam International, a confederation of anti-poverty organisations, more than 850 million people suffer from chronic hunger. Is Ethiopia condemned to suffer hunger regularly? Are others? "Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply," said a 1998 paper entitled "12 Myths About Hunger," published by the Institute for Food and Development Policy/Food First, a U.S.-based non-governmental organisation. "Even most 'hungry countries' have enough food for all their people right now. Many are net exporters of food and other agricultural products." One could talk about the contradictions of hunger. For example, in Nigeria, Brazil or Bolivia, abundant food resources coexist with pockets of famine; while Costa Rica has only half the farmed hectares per person that Honduras has, Costa Ricans enjoy a life expectancy 11 years longer than that of Hondurans.' Lees verder:
http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33107 En: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=33108