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As indicated in the book of Jessica Williams named as “50 Realities That Had To Be Changed In the World”, the results of a study made by World Health Organization displays a big problem. Everyday in the world 800 millions peoples starve and 2 millions of people lives chronically feeding disorder. Every year 8 millions of people live chronically diseases depending on starvation. 2 billions of people die due to the diseases connected to starvation. Nearly half of the 10 millions of children under 5 years die due to the diseases depending on starvation. Therefore, insufficient feeding and starvation is the biggest problem of the poor.
However this does not arise from food deficiency. In the world, the food sufficient for all of the humanity is produced. In case of the equal distribution of food, it would be sufficient for all people. The feeding experts say that a health food should involve 2500 calories. An ordinary person consumes 3600 calories while a person in Somali consumes 1500 calories. The food production has fit to the global demand, and the price of the cereals such as rice has been reduced. So why is there so much starvation?
Amartya Sen with Nobel award, who is one of the authority in his field, the reason of the starvation is income insufficiency of a country, not producing of insufficient food.
The armed violations cause the distribution of the food to be effected negatively. Also governments separate their budgets for the wars not the food distributions. Also starvation may be used as a gun by one of the parties. They may damage the food stocks and forces the other to be surrender. It will be nearly impossible to re-create the food resources after wars. Also bad administration of the governments leads to weakness at the import of the food.
Starvation is a big obstacle to develop a country. Enough food may lead to income increase due to the increased efficiency. For example when the farmers in Sierra Leone have fed with more %50 foods, the production increased 16,5%. The solution is to remove the resource of poverty. This can be happen by increasing the average income of the district. Education gains importance at this point. According to the estimations of FAO, 300 millions of poor children either do not go to the school or do not feed in the school. Education causes people to gain more income and so the GDP and the productivity increase. Also marriage age increases and so the birth rate may decrease. Gro Harlem Brundtland, ex-general director of WHO says that “there is a need for strong human rights approach for the excluded people by the health revolution in the world”.
First paragraph of 25th article of the Human Rights Universal Notice “Every person has the right for a life standards providing health and welfare including food, home, medical treatments, and the required social services for himself and his family.” This approach gives the first responsibility to the government. Also we should be aware of this responsibility also. We may support the help funds, call the government to meet the needs, and enforce to perform the promises. We are all responsible from this complex problem. I wish you a successful, happy new year and I hope to do something in 2006.
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