In the 21st century, people still starve
It’s a luxury of our time and place that the majority of people in the developed world do not have to worry about getting sufficient food. Although “food insecurity,” to use the technical terminology, still persists within the United States, a greater number of people struggle to maintain a healthy weight. The number of fitness centers cropping up and diets being hawked are testaments to the abundance of our food supply and its relatively low cost.
It’s easy to forget, however, that there are still places on the planet where getting nourishment is a daily struggle. Sure, the plight of the starving in far-off corners of the world comes to the fore when celebrities are involved in high-profile benefits – if you’re old enough, recall the Live Aid concerts almost 32 years ago – but otherwise the starvation tends to happen outside the glow of the media spotlight. In 2011, to cite one example, an estimated 260,000 people died in a famine in Somalia. Almost certainly, more people in the West were aware of who Taylor Swift was dating that year, or that Beyonce released her fourth studio album.
Consider the looming possibility that four simultaneous famines could afflict the world in the next six months and exact a staggering cost in human lives. The United Nations World Food Program reported last week that 20 million people could die in the next six months as a result of these disasters.
Arif Husain, the chief economist for the program, told Reuters, “In my not quite 15 years with the World Food Program, this is the first time that we are literally talking about famine in four different parts of the world at the same time.”
Three of those places – Yemen, South Sudan and the northeastern corner of Nigeria – have been plagued by conflict, while Somalia is in the midst of a punishing drought that has driven up food prices and devastated the agricultural industry.
To put 20 million people starving to death in perspective, that would be close to the population of Florida.
According to Husain, “It’s almost overwhelming to comprehend that in the 21st century people are still experiencing famines of such magnitude. We’re talking about 20 million people, and all this within the next six months, or now. Yemen is now, Nigeria is now, South Sudan is now.”
Complicating the problem is the number of other spots on the map that are experiencing their own woes and demanding humanitarian relief – there’s Syria, of course, along with Libya and Iraq. There’s only so much in the way of resources, both human and otherwise, to go around. Some of these places are also beset by internal problems, like underdeveloped infrastructure or governance that is awash in corruption.
Of course, we in the well-off developed world can send a few dollars to charities and offer thoughts and prayers. We can also hope our policymakers can offer some kind of aggressive response, since events like catastrophic famines can destabilize fragile societies and have long-term implications for our own safety and security.
Considering all the advances humanity has made in the comparatively short time we have ruled the roost on Earth, it’s sobering to realize people can still end up dying of starvation, just as they did thousands of years ago. This fact should make us realize, in the grand scheme of things, how trivial our day-to-day problems actually are.