More than 1.4 billion people live in poverty so extreme that they can barely survive, and around 25,000 people die from hunger each day whilst a new billionaire is created every second day. The call for a global safety net has never been so urgent - and compels the international community to transform economic priorities and guarantee the universal securing of basic human needs.
The federal government has decided to drop the word "hunger" from its vocabulary, according to a new report released by the USDA. The reason? USDA sociologist Mark Nord, the author of the report, claims that the term "hungry" is "not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured in the food security survey. We don't have a measure of that condition."
On more than one occasion over recent months I’ve heard or read something actually defending inequality. After a lifetime of hearing about the idea of “liberty, equality and fraternity”, I was hearing educated people saying inequality is what keeps the system going - a motive force propelling our society to ever new heights. At first, I found it hard to believe what I was hearing. Then, I thought perversely, if a little inequity is good for us, a lot of it must be better. After all, that seems to be the operating principle of the people currently in power in the nation’s capital. They keep pushing in that direction.
Despite repeated promises to eradicate hunger, the number of people going hungry continues to grow – now more than 852 million – with a child dying every five seconds from malnutrition and related diseases, an independent United Nations expert said today.
In the summer of 2005, the world rocked to Live Aid concerts, and the Make Poverty History Movement celebrated developed countries' fresh commitments toward the International Development Goals (IDG), development assistance, and debt cancellation at the G8 summit in Gleneagles.
In a world of paradox and plenty, 852 million people are starving while one billion people are overweight, with 300 million of them considered medically obese.
Since hunger and famine are still widespread in parts of Africa and Asia, the international community is in violation of the right to food as a basic universal human right, according to a new study released by the United Nations.
