Seven out of the eight governments in the Sahel — the arid zone between the Sahara desert in North Africa and Sudan’s Savannas in the south — have taken the unprecedented step of declaring emergencies as 12 million people in the region are threatened by hunger. Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Cameroon and Nigeria [...]
“There were some times where, you know, we wouldn’t have that much food, and I would tell my mom, ‘I’m not hungry, don’t worry about it,’ and I lost a lot of weight. I remember I used to be a size five, and I went from a size five to a size zero,” a New [...]
There are no illegal people; there are only laws that make it a crime to try and survive economically. That perpsective is at the center of David Bacon’s book — sardonically titled “Illlegal People” — about how corporate profiteering, trade agreements, and racism “criminalize immigrants.” An excerpt from “Illegal People” follows. In 1947, after [...]
Women have been left in charge of many of the households in the village of Zamkoye-Koïra, in western Niger, as food shortages have driven male family members to leave in search of work elsewhere. A national survey of vulnerable households shows that 5.4 million people face food insecurity across Niger. ‘The men have gone to [...]
Without a dramatic rethink, our “free-enterprise” system may never again provide enough decent jobs for those who need them. Capitalism is coming apart at the seams and the middle-class is paying the price. This week’s news alone bombards us with examples of how, absent a dramatic rethink, our “free-enterprise” system may never again provide enough [...]
Inequality is a disease of society, a cancer growing out of control at one end of the body while the rest of it withers away. It’s not just about the money, although income and wealth inequality have never been worse in the United States. It’s also the pathological adherence to free market principles that have [...]
When the world’s nations convene in Durban in November in the latest attempt to inch towards a global deal to tackle climate change, one fundamental principle will, as ever, underlie the negotiations. Is is the contention that while rich, industrialised nations caused climate change through past carbon emissions, it is the developing world that is [...]
For millennia, people have coped with drought in the Horn of Africa, comprised mainly of drylands. Yet today, more than 13 million people there are starving because of political instability, poor government policies and failure to invest in the world’s poorest people, say experts here in Changwon. 2.5 billion dollars in humanitarian aid is needed [...]
Food pantries picked over. Incomes drying up. Shelters bursting with the homeless. Job seekers spilling out the doors of employment centers. College grads moving back in with their parents. The angry and disillusioned filling the streets. Pan your camera from one coast to the other, from city to suburb to farm and back again, and [...]
One in four California households with children reported food hardship, according to a new analysis of Gallup data released last Thursday by the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). The report analyzed data gathered as part of the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index project’s responses to the question: “Have there been times in the past 12 months [...]
As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank gathered in Washington for their annual spring meetings, there was more talk about how much the IMF has changed. Its managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, quoted John Maynard Keynes in his speech at the Brookings Institution: “The outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live [...]
More than 15 million Americans are unemployed, homelessness has increased by 50 percent in some cities, and 38 million people are receiving food stamps, more than at any time in the program’s almost 50-year history. Evidence of rising economic hardship is ample. There’s one commonly used standard for measuring it: the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty [...]
Understanding the Nature of the Global Economic Crisis The people have been lulled into a false sense of safety under the ruse of a perceived “economic recovery.” Unfortunately, what the majority of people think does not make it so, especially when the people making the key decisions think and act to the contrary. The sovereign [...]
The Chinese government has reportedly decided to spend $1 billion to battle the drought plaguing huge areas in the north, as wheat prices continued their climb and the UN warned of serious consequences for the winter harvest. The drought is the worst in six decades in many areas, and has left a swathe of grain-producing [...]
Underlying the sudden, volatile uprising in Egypt and Tunisia is a growing global crisis sparked by soaring food prices and unemployment. The Associated Press reports that roughly 40 percent of Egyptians struggle along at the World Bank-set poverty level of under $2 per day. Analysts estimate that food price inflation in Egypt is currently at [...]
Hunger in the United States There has been a dramatic increase in hunger in the United States in the last three years, 2008, 2009 and 2010. Statistics are only available for 2008. US statistics do not measure hunger, they measure food insecurity and security (explained below). The Census Bureau statistics establish two grades of food [...]
Wasted resources are easy to come by in Haiti, where a volatile and overwhelmed government presides, and a multitude of NGOs (non-governmental organizations) incoherently work to address the needs not being fulfilled by the government. The amount of waste is evident in the fact that very little has changed since the earthquake. A Haitian colleague [...]
Global Poverty Facts * Poverty kills more than 50,000 people every day – 18 million poor people die every year from extreme poverty. Source: Global Poverty Facts * These statistics account for one third of all human deaths. More people die as a result of extreme poverty than of any other cause. Source: WHO 2008 [...]
At the one-year anniversary of Haiti’s tragic earthquake, media scrutiny will focus on the sorry lack of achievement in reconstructing Haiti’s public buildings, private residences, economy, and infrastructure. No doubt a fair amount of finger-pointing will be directed at all players, including NGOs, the U.S. and Haitian governments, the UN peacekeepers and agencies, and a [...]
Rony Charles, a rice grower and member of the Agricultural Producer Cooperative of Verrettes, said, “Instead of foreigners sending us food, they should give us the chance to do our own agriculture so it can survive.” Giving domestic agriculture the chance to survive would address four critical needs: * Creating employment for a Haiti’s rural [...]
