Christianity and the Environment: A Collection of Writings
World Hunger as the 1990s Begin
July 22, 1990
Each year the Alan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Program at Brown University develops an assessment of world hunger conditions in conjunction with its annual conference on world hunger. A condensation of that assessment is reported in Community Nutrition Institute's newsletter Nutrition Week (July 5, 1990). Pertinent facts and trends in world hunger in the 1990s are of value for individuals and organizations like MCC who are continually attempting to alleviate hunger and poverty around the world.
The above report says, "At the beginning of the 1990s, hunger continues to plague more than 1 billion (of the 5 billion plus) people around the world. More than 1.5 billion people live in countries where total food supplies are inadequate to meet nutritional needs and 500 million people or more live in countries where substantial fluctuations in food supplies still occur."
The report also shows:
- Almost 500 million people are too poor to obtain enough food to support their labor.
- Almost one-third of all children under five years of age -- more than 150 million children -- are significantly underweight, and one in six infants weighs no more than 5.5 pounds at birth.
- An estimated 700 million people suffer from iron-deficiency anemia and more than 200 million from iodine deficiency.
- More than 15 percent of the world's children suffer from vitamin A deficiency, which can lead to blindness and illness.
The report underscores the fact that a disproportionately large number of hungry people now live in sub-Sahara Africa where two of the three famines in 1989 occurred. All these famines were associated with civil war and violent conflict. More than four out of five people in this region live in countries lacking sufficient food supplies to meet their nutritional requirements. Nearly one in three live in countries where total food supplies in the 1989-90 crop year fell below usual levels of consumption. Nearly half of the population is too poor to obtain enough food for work and one-fourth cannot obtain enough food for adult subsistence and child growth.
Food aid to the hungry provided by the developed world is substantial, yet still far short of need. Food aid provides 15 percent of the food imported by low income food-deficit countries, but constitutes only one-quarter of what would be needed to meet aggregate nutritional needs and only half of what is needed to meet temporary shortfalls.
Since world food stocks are extremely low at present and more food aid is going to countries in Eastern Europe, the total food aid going to developing countries is not expected to increase and could well decrease. Even so, food aid needs over the next decade are expected to increase by 50 percent or more.
The report confirms what is observed by relief workers. "The greatest obstacle to the delivery of food aid and other forms of assistance remains violent conflict and the use of food as a weapon." "Food wars" were going on in at least 12 countries in 1989. These conflicts caused disruption of food production and distribution, destruction of natural resources, upset of economic infrastruture, displacement of millions of people, etc. The number of international refugees continues to rise rapidly, reaching at least 15 million in 1990 while many millions more are uprooted within their own countries.
It is clear that war and conflict are responsible for much of the world's hunger. Refugees, for example, are totally vulnerable when it comes to sufficient food supplies. The report says little about how to resolve the conflicts that create refugees.
The work of relief aid development organizations responding to world has had some positive results. One of the most successful programs has been the use of oral rehydration therapy (ORT) throughout the developing world. UNICEF estimates that ORT use has more than tripled since 1984, to some 36 percent of all children under five with diarrhea, and it is now being used by one-third of all families in the developing world. According to UNICEF, expanded use of ORT has helped to reduce child mortality by 20 percent, from 5 million to 4 million deaths per year.
Efforts to combat micro-nutrient deficiencies have also met with some success. Programs to provide iodized salt have reached people in Bhutan, Bolivia, China and India, in some cases leading to significant reductions in rates of goiter and cretinism. Programs to prevent xeropthalmia through vitamin A supplementation have been initiated in a number of countries including Brazil, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Haiti, Honduras, India, Indonesia and Tanzania.
The report points out that the U.S. provided the bulk of cereal food aid in the past year. The member countries of the European Economic Community were the second-highest providers. 44 of all food aid went to Africa, about half of which went to sub-Saharan countries. The rest was divided among Asia (28 percent), Latin America and the Caribbean (17 percent) and Poland (11 percent).
"In the long run, significant increases in worldwide levels of food aid will almost certainly be required to ensure that even the minimal status quo and nutritional needs of hundreds of millions of people in the developing countries will be met." So concludes the report.
Whether governments and relief and development agencies of the developed world will be able to respond adequately to the challenges described in this report is an open question.
