In politics, humanitarian aid, and social science, hunger is a condition in which a person, for a sustained period, can not eat enough food to meet basic nutritional needs.
Throughout history, some of the world's population often experience periods of sustained famine. In many cases, this is caused by food supply disruptions caused by war, plagues, or bad weather. During the first few decades after World War II, technological advances and enhanced political cooperation showed that it might be able to substantially reduce the number of people suffering from hunger. While progress is uneven, in 2000 the threat of extreme hunger subsided for many in the world. According to WFP, some statistics state that, "Around 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life, that is about one in nine people on earth.Most hungry people in the world live in developing countries, where 12 , 9 percent of the population is malnourished. "
Until 2006, the average international food price has been stable for decades. In the last months of 2006, prices began to rise rapidly. In 2008, rice prices tripled in some areas, and this greatly affects developing countries. Food prices fell in early 2009, but rose to another record high in 2011, and have since declined slightly. The 2008 world financial crisis has further increased the number of people suffering from hunger, including dramatic increases even in developed countries such as Britain, the Eurozone and the United States.
The Millennium Development Goals include a commitment to a further 50% reduction in the proportion of the world's population suffering from extreme hunger by 2015. By 2012, this target seems difficult to achieve, in part because of persistent inflation in food prices. However, by the end of 2012 the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) says it is still possible to reach the target with sufficient effort. By 2013, FAO estimates that 842 million people are malnourished (12% of the global population). Malnutrition is the cause of death for more than 3.1 million children under 5 years each year. UNICEF estimates that 300 million children sleep hungry every night; and 8000 children under 5 are estimated to die from malnutrition every day.
Video Hunger
As a physical condition
Physical sensation of hunger associated with abdominal muscle contraction. This contraction - sometimes called hunger after becoming severe - is believed to be triggered by high concentrations of the hormone ghrelin. Peptide YY and Leptin Peptides can have the opposite effect on appetite, leading to a feeling of satiety. Ghrelin can be released if blood sugar levels are low - a condition that can result in long time without eating. Gastric contractions due to hunger can be very severe and painful in children and young adults.
Hunger starvation can be exacerbated by irregular food. People who can not afford to eat more than once a day sometimes refuse one extra meal, because if they do not eat at the same time on the following days, they may suffer from severe hunger. Older people may feel less severe stomach contractions when they are hungry, but still suffer from secondary effects due to poor food intake: these include weakness, irritability and decreased concentration. Lack of adequate nutrition also leads to increased susceptibility to disease and reduces the ability for the body to heal itself.
Hungry and gender
In both developing and developed countries, parents sometimes go without food so they can feed their children. Women, however, seem more likely to make this sacrifice than men. The World Bank study consistently found that about 60% of those who are hungry are women. A clear explanation for this imbalance is that, compared with men, women are more often than not eating to feed their children.
Older sources sometimes claim that this phenomenon is unique to developing countries, due to greater sexual inequality. Recent findings indicate that mothers often lose food in developed countries as well. For example, a 2012 study conducted by Netmums in the United Kingdom found that one in five mothers sometimes lose food to save their children from starvation.
In some periods and regions, gender is also an important factor determining whether the famine victims will set an appropriate example to generate enthusiasm for hunger recovery efforts. James Vernon, in his book Hungry: A Modern History, writes that in England before the 20th century, usually only women and children suffering from hunger can evoke compassion. Men who fail to provide for themselves and their families are often regarded with contempt.
This changed after World War I, where thousands of people who have proven their masculinity in battle found themselves unable to find work. Similarly, female sex can be advantageous for those who want to advocate for hunger aids, with Vernon writing that being a woman helps Emily Hobhouse attract the suffering of hungry people to wider attention during the Second Boer War.
Malnutrition, starvation, hunger, appetite
- Malnutrition is a generic term for a condition caused by inadequate dietary intake and/or disease; it can occur along with the consumption of calories and/or micro-nutrients below and above.
- Hunger is a widespread food scarcity that might apply to any species of fauna; This phenomenon is usually accompanied by regional malnutrition, hunger, epidemics, and increased mortality.
- Hunger describes "the state of body fatigue caused by lack of food." This state can precede death.
- Appetite is a natural desire to satisfy the needs of the body, especially for food.
Maps Hunger
World stats
The FAO, WFP and IFAD annual report, the Food Insecurity Country of the World provides a statistical picture of hunger, and is usually considered a key reference in this regard (for example, for the Millennium Development Goals). However, it is important to note that they have several warnings. First, malnutrition is defined only in terms of food energy availability (ie, ignoring micronutrients such as vitamins or minerals). Second, using energy requirements for minimum activity levels as a benchmark, while many hungry people are likely to face manual manual labor. Third, they do not reflect short-term shortcomings (for example, from food price shocks), unless they change long-term food consumption.
In October 2012, FAO published a report that said their 2009 preliminary estimate that a billion people suffering from chronic hunger have been overstated, because of the incorrect methodology resulting from the pressures they face to quickly predict the impact financial crisis against hunger. They also say the number of people currently suffering from chronic hunger is approaching 842 million.
According to the US Department of Agriculture in 2015, 50 million Americans suffer from food insecurity in 2009, including 17 million children. It represents almost one in four American children.
The Global Hunger Index (GHI) is a multidimensional statistical tool used to describe the state of the country's starvation situation. GHI measures progress and failure in the global fight against hunger. GHI is updated once a year. Data from the 2015 report indicates that Hunger has fallen by 27% since 2000. Fifty-two countries remain at a serious or alarming level. In addition to the latest statistics on Hunger and Food Security, GHI also displays different topics each year. The 2015 report includes articles on food security and conflict.
Hungry in Ghana
Ghana has taken major steps to combat hunger and to accomplish UN goals 2020. Measures such as lowering taxes on farmers, and the funding resources and equipment needed to boost production. These measures caused Ghana's GDP per capita to increase from $ 400 in 2001 to $ 1,300 in 2007. However, various problems also prevented Ghana from reaching its full potential and completely eradicate hunger, such as having stable electricity supply, as well as balancing the amount of food production in the southern industrial area of ​​Ghana and northern agricultural regions, the latter accounted for 63% of the total number of people in Ghana living below the poverty line. The total population is about 27 million, which means that 63% will roughly be 16,317,000 from 26.9 million. 45% of the poor population live on less than $ 1.25, and Ghana is known as a "middle to lower" country, meaning that per capita income is between $ 400 and $ 4000.
In the United States
Although the US Department of Agriculture reports in 2012 that about 85.5 percent of households in the country are safe for food, millions of people in America are struggling with hunger or starvation every day. USDA defines food security as a household economic condition where there is reliable access to sufficient quantities of food so that all household members can lead a healthy productive life. Hunger is most often associated with poverty due to food shortages helping to perpetuate the cycle of poverty. Most obviously, when people live in poverty, they lack the financial resources to buy food or pay for unforeseen events, such as medical emergencies. When such emergencies arise, families are forced to reduce food expenditure so they can meet unexpected emergency financial demands. There is no single cause for hunger, but rather a complex interconnected network of factors. Some of the most vulnerable populations of hunger are parents, children, people from low socioeconomic status, and minority groups; However, the effects of hunger are not limited to these people.
The largest nonprofit food aid organization in the United States, Feeding America, feeds 46.5 million people annually to address the problem of national food insecurity. This is equivalent to one in seven Americans who need their help in a given year. An organization focused on providing food for the elderly population is Meals on Wheels, a nonprofit organization that delivers food to elderly homes. The government is also working to provide assistance through programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), which was formerly known by the community as Food Stamps. Another notable government program is the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) that provides free or reduced lunches for students eligible for the program.
The number of Americans suffering from hunger increased after the financial crisis of 2008, with children and working adults now making the most of those affected. In 2012, the Gleaners Indiana Food bank reported that now 50 million Americans are struggling with food insecurity (about 1 in 6 population), and that the number of people seeking help from food banks has increased by 46 % since 2005. According to a 2012 study by the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, even married couples who both work but have low incomes sometimes need the help of food banks.
The fight against hunger
Throughout history, the need to help those who suffer from hunger is common, though not universally recognized.
Philosopher Simone Weil writes that feeding the hungry when you have the resources to do so is the most obvious of all human obligations. He said that as far back as the Ancient Egyptians, many believed that people should show that they have helped the hungry to justify themselves in the afterlife. Weil writes that social progress is generally held to be the first, "... transition to a state of human society where people will not suffer hunger." The social historian Karl Polanyi wrote that before the market became the dominant form of economic organization in the world in the nineteenth century, most human societies would starve together or not at all, because people would always share their food.
Hunger as an academic and social topic became famous during the Great Depression. As many people struggle for food, the same agricultural industry suddenly generates a large surplus as a means of increasing production to counter the declining demand from the European market. This increase in output is intended to reduce the level of debt, but domestic demand can not keep up with prices. Conversely, what is often called the "paradox of desire in the middle of many," agricultural surplus and great demand do not match, causing the Hoover government to buy products in large quantities, such as wheat, to stabilize prices. Initially refusing to further compromise depressed price levels, political pressure from hungry families across the country forced Congress to reconsider. With huge savings of wasted grain in government ownership, the only remaining political step is to start a donation process to the hungry from the Agricultural Council, a federal supervision created in 1929 to promote the sale and stabilization of agricultural products. Instead of starvation being the reason for the allocation of large grain surplus, waste becomes the ultimate driving force.
From the first era of globalization, which began in the 19th century, it became more common for people to consider issues such as global hunger. However, since early globalization coincided with the high peaks of classical liberalism, there was relatively little call for politicians to overcome world hunger.
At the end of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the view that politicians should not intervene against hunger is increasingly challenged by journalist campaigns, with some academics and politicians also calling for or organizing interventions against world hunger, such as US President Woodrow Wilson.
The UN estimates that ending world hunger could cost around 30 billion.
Hunger politics
After World War II, a new international political-economic order emerged, later described as Embedded Liberalism.
At least during the first decade after the war, the United States, by far the most dominant national actor, strongly supports efforts to overcome world hunger and to promote international development. It is heavily funded by the UN development program, and then the efforts of other multilateral organizations such as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB).
The newly formed United Nations became a major player in coordinating the global struggle against hunger. The UN has three agencies working to promote food security and agricultural development: the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). FAO is the world's agricultural knowledge institution, providing policy and technical assistance to developing countries to promote food security, nutrition and sustainable agricultural production, particularly in rural areas.
WFP's primary mission is to deliver food to the hands of the hungry poor. The agency acts during emergencies and uses food to aid recovery after an emergency. His long-term approach to hunger helps transition from recovery to development. IFAD, with its knowledge of rural poverty and an exclusive focus on rural poor communities, designs and implements programs to help people access the assets, services, and opportunities they need to address poverty.
Following the successful post-World War II reconstruction of Germany and Japan, the IMF and World Bank began to turn their attention to the developing world. Many civil society actors are also active in the fight against hunger, especially after the late 1970s when global media began to bring the suffering of the hungry in places like Ethiopia to wider attention. Most important of all, especially in the late 1960s and 70s, the Green revolution helped improve agricultural technology worldwide.
The United States began to change its approach to the problem of world hunger since around the mid-1950s. Influential administrative members became less enthusiastic about the methods they saw as promoting excessive dependence on the state, as they feared it could help spread communism.
Despite this view, during the 1960s, the postwar era of famine in the United States was overshadowed by famine in Europe and Asia. John F. Kennedy did use the Executive Order to double the number of available commodities from the surplus commodity program and start the pilot Food Stamp Program which later became permanent in 1964.
In the 1980s, the previous consensus that supported moderate government intervention had been abandoned throughout the western world. The IMF and World Bank in particular began to promote market-based solutions. In cases where countries become dependent on the IMF, they sometimes force national governments to prioritize debt payments and cut public services sharply. This sometimes has a negative impact on fighting hunger.
Organizations like Food First raise the issue of food sovereignty and claim that every country on earth (with the possible minor exception of some city-states) has sufficient agricultural capacity to feed its own people, but that the "free trade" economic order, which from the late 1970s until about 2008 has been linked with institutions like the IMF and the World Bank, has prevented this from happening.
The World Bank itself claims it is part of the solution to hunger, insisting that the best way for countries to break the cycle of poverty and hunger is to build an export-led economy that provides financial means to buy groceries on world markets. However, in the early 21st century, the World Bank and the IMF became less dogmatic about promoting free market reforms. They are increasingly coming back to the view that government intervention does have a role to play, and that it can be advisable for governments to support food security with policies favorable to domestic agriculture, even for countries with no comparative advantage in the region. In 2012, the World Bank remains active in assisting governments to intervene against famine.
Until at least the 1980s - and, to some extent, the 1990s - the dominant academic view of world hunger is that demand problems outpace supply. The proposed solution is often focused on increasing food production, and sometimes in birth control. There are exceptions to this, even as early as the 1940s, Lord Boyd-Orr, the first head of the UN FAO, has felt hunger as a distribution problem, and devised a comprehensive plan to improve it. Some agreed with him at the time, however, and he resigned after failing to secure support for his plans from the United States and Britain. In 1998, Amartya Sen won the Nobel Prize as part to show that hunger in modern times is usually not a product of food shortages. Conversely, hunger usually arises from food distribution problems, or from government policies in developed and developing countries. It has since been widely accepted that world hunger resulted from problems with the distribution and production of food. 1981 Essay The Senator Poverty and Hunger: The Essay on Rights and Forgiveness plays an important role in shaping a new consensus.
In 2007 and 2008, rapid food price increases caused the global food crisis, increasing the number of people suffering from hunger more than a hundred million. Food riots erupt in several dozen countries; in at least two cases, Haiti and Madagascar, this led to the overthrow of the government. The second global food crisis is due to a spike in food prices in late 2010 and early 2011. Less food riots occur, in part because of the greater availability of food stocks for aid. However, some analysts argue the food crisis is one of the causes of the Arab Spring.
Hunger Education
The World Hunger Education Service, which has existed since 1976, works to educate the United States and the world on the world's malnutrition, hunger and food insecurity, and this group has helped people learn about the problems of world hunger. There are also some small organizations that work to educate the public about poverty in their homes and neighborhoods around the world.
Efforts since the 2008 global crisis
At the beginning of the 21st century, there was little awareness of the famine of the leaders of the developed countries as it formed the G8. Prior to 2009, efforts to combat hunger were mainly undertaken by governments of the worst affected countries, by civil society actors, and by multilateral and regional organizations. In 2009, Pope Benedict published his third encyclical, Caritas in Veritate, which emphasized the importance of fighting hunger. The encyclical was deliberately published shortly before the July 2010 G8 summit to maximize its influence on the event. At the Summit, which took place in L'Aquila in central Italy, the L'Aquila Food Safety Initiative was launched, with a total of US $ 22 billion committed to fighting hunger.
Food prices fell sharply in 2009 and early 2010, although analysts gave more credit to farmers who increased their production in response to the 2008 price spike, compared with the results of improved government action. However, since the 2009 G8 Summit, the fight against hunger remains an important issue among leaders of the world's major nations, and is an important part of the 2012 G-20 Summit agenda.
In April 2012, the Food Assistance Convention was signed, the first legally binding international agreement on food aid. The Copenhagen Consensus in May 2012 recommends that efforts to combat hunger and malnutrition should be the first priority for private sector politicians and philanthropists who wish to maximize the effectiveness of aid spending. They put this ahead of other priorities, such as the fight against malaria and AIDS. Also in May 2012, US President Barack Obama launched a "new alliance for food and nutrition security" - a broad partnership between the private sector, government actors and civil society - aiming to "... achieve sustainable and inclusive agricultural growth and raise 50 million people out of poverty for the next 10 years. "British Prime Minister David Cameron held a famine summit on August 12, the last day of the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The struggle against hunger is also followed by an increase in the number of ordinary people. While people around the world have long contributed to efforts to reduce hunger in developing countries, recently there has been a rapid increase in the numbers involved in tackling domestic hunger even in economically advanced countries in the Global North.
This has happened much earlier in North America than in Europe. In the US, the Reagan administration reduced welfare in the early 1980s, which led to a major increase in charity efforts to help Americans unable to afford enough to eat. According to a 1992 survey of 1000 randomly selected US voters, 77% of Americans have contributed to feeding the hungry, either by volunteering for hunger relief agencies such as food banks and public kitchens, or by donating money or food. Europe, with its more generous prosperity system, had little awareness of domestic hunger to food price inflation beginning in late 2006, and mainly because of saving welfare reductions came into effect in 2010. Surveys reported that over 10% of the population Europe is beginning to suffer from food insecurity. Especially since 2011, there has been a substantial increase in grassroots efforts to help people hungry through food banks, both in Britain and in continental Europe.
As of July 2012, the US drought in 2012 has led to a rapid rise in prices of wheat and soybeans, with a beating effect on meat prices. As well as affecting hungry people in the US, this causes prices to rise in global markets; The US is the world's largest food exporter. This led to a lot of talk about the possibility of the global food crisis of the 21st century. The Financial Times reports that BRICS may not be so affected as they are in crisis early in 2008 and 2011. However, smaller developing countries that have to import most of their food can be hard hit.. The UN and G20 have started contingency planning so are ready to intervene if a third global crisis breaks out. However, as of August 2013, concerns have eased, with wheat crops above the expected average of large exporters, including Brazil, Ukraine and the US 2014 also seeing good world crops, leading to speculation that wheat prices will soon start falling.
At the April 2013 Summit in Dublin on Hunger, Nutrition, Climate Justice, and the post-2015 MDG framework for global justice, Irish President Higgins says that only 10% of deaths from hunger are due to armed conflict and natural disasters, to moderate hunger take place. to be "the biggest ethical failure of the current global system" and "the greatest ethical challenge facing the global community." $ 4.15 billion of the new commitments made to address hunger at the June 2013 Famine Summit held in London, hosted by the governments of Britain and Brazil, together with the Children's Investment Fund Foundation.
Global initiative to end hunger
The EndingHunger campaign is an online communication campaign aimed at raising awareness of hunger issues. It has worked a lot through viral videos depicting celebrities voicing their anger about the large number of hungry people in the world.
The main global policy to reduce hunger and poverty is the recently approved Sustainable Development Goal. Specifically Goal 2: Zero Hunger sets globally agreed targets to end hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
While SDG 2 aims to end hunger by 2030, a number of organizations have established initiatives with a more ambitious goal of achieving this outcome in just 10 years, by 2025:
- In 2013, Caritas International embarked on a broad Caritas initiative aimed at ending systemic hunger by 2025. One human family, food for all campaigns focuses on raising awareness, enhancing the impact of the Caritas program and advocating the implementation of the right to food.
- The IFPRI-led Compact2025 partnership with the involvement of UN organizations, NGOs and private foundations develops and disseminates evidence-based advice to politicians and other decision makers aimed at ending hunger and malnutrition within the next 10 years, by 2025. It bases its claims that hunger may be terminated by 2025 on a report by Shenggen Fan and Paul Polman analyzing the experiences of China, Vietnam, Brazil and Thailand and concluding that eliminating hunger and malnutrition may occur by 2025.
- As of June 2015, the EU and Bill & amp; The Melinda Gates Foundation has launched a partnership to combat malnutrition, especially in children. The program will begin in Bangladesh, Burundi, Ethiopia, Kenya, Laos and Niger and will help these countries improve nutrition information and analysis so they can develop effective national nutrition policies.
- The UN Food and Agriculture Organization has created partnerships that will act through an African Union CAADP framework aimed at ending hunger in Africa by 2025. These include interventions including support for increased food production, strengthening social protection and integration of the right to food in national legislation.
Millennium Development Goals
Goal # 1 The Millennium Development Goals of 2000 state the following plans:
- Target 1A: Divide, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people living on less than $ 1.25 a day
- the poverty gap ratio [occurrence x depth of poverty]
- Distribution of the poorest quintile in national consumption
- Target 1B: Achieving Decent Work for Women, Men, and Young People
- GDP Growth per Working Person
- Employment Level
- The proportion of working population below $ 1.25 per day (PPP value)
- The proportion of family-based workers in the working population
- Target 1C: Divide the two, between 1990 and 2015, the proportion of people suffering from hunger
- Prevalence of minors under five years
- Proportion of population below the minimum level of food energy consumption
Food bank
Food banks or foodbank are nonprofit and charitable organizations that distribute food to those who have trouble buying enough food to avoid starvation.
Kitchen soup
The common kitchen, food center, or food kitchen is the place where food is offered to the hungry for free or at a price below the market price. Often in low-income environments, they are often managed by volunteer organizations, such as churches or community groups. Soup kitchens sometimes get food from the food bank for free or at a low price, because they are considered a charity, which makes it easier for them to feed many people who need their services.
Basic earnings
Basic earnings (also called unconditional basic earnings , basic earnings security , universal bottom income or universal demogrant ) are a form of social security in which all citizens or residents of a country regularly receive an unconditional amount of money, either from the government or other public institutions, in addition to income received elsewhere.
See also
Notes and references
Further reading
Hunger: an unnatural history (2006) by Sharman Apt Russell - rather than focusing on political and hunger economics, this work addresses the psychological effects on individuals and also explores topics from an anthropological perspective.External links
- World Food Program | WFP
- Action Against Hunger | ACF-USA
- Action Against Hunger | ACF-UK
- Global Food and Nutrition Safety Forum (FSN Forum)
- Ten Things You Can Do to Fight World Hunger The Nation , 13 May 2009
- United Nations 2007 report
- Relief Relief Research in IssueLab
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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