An Issue of a

Choice

-----For people died of hunger, malnutrition

and our indifference.

Are you hungry?

Do you know how many people feel hungry now?

Believe it or not,

more than 1,000,000,000 people worldwide are suffering from hunger

right here on this planet,

right now at this moment.

One percent of them die of hunger and malnutrition each

year.

So how do we help them?

At a side event of the World Food Summit: five years later, in June 2002, the FAO Secretariat presented a draft outline for an Anti Hunger Programme, a strategic, cost-effective framework for national and international action to reduce hunger through agricultural and rural development and wider access to food.

According to this proposal, public investment of US$24 billion a year would be enough to jump-start an accelerated campaign against hunger that could reach the WFS goal. Taken in perspective, the price tag is startlingly low, dwarfed by the more than US$300 billion that the OECD nations transferred to support their own agriculture in 2001. As the economist Jeffrey Sachs has pointed out, in comparison to a global economy measured in the trillions, US$24 billion could be considered a “rounding error”, representing barely five cents for every US$100 of income.

And the payoff would be impressively high. FAO has estimated that achieving the WFS goal would yield at least US$120 billion per year in benefits as a result of longer, healthier and more productive lives for several hundred million people freed from hunger.

----- The State of Food Insecurity in the World (2002)

They just need 24 billion dollars each year.

Unfortunately, the total expenditure of

World Food Programmewho provided food for

102.1 million people in 78 countries in 2008

was only US$3.72 billion in that year.

Do you think that 24 billion dollars is

a huge amount of money?

I don’t think so.

If every country gave less than 0.05 percent

of its GDP in 2008,

there would be 24 billion dollars.

If every government of countries gave less than

2 percent of itsmilitary expenditure in 2008,

there would be 24 billion dollars.

If every company whose name was in Forbes Global

2000 list gave a bit more than 1 percent of its profits in

2008,

there would be 24 billion dollars.

If every citizen of developed countries and territories gave less than 2 dollars of his or her income once a month in

2008,

there would be 24 billion dollars.

So this is not a technological issue.

This is not aneconomic issue.

This is even not a political issue,

but a moral issue.

Do you believe it?

Are you still sitting there and doing nothing for this?

If your conscience allows you to do so,

what do you think the difference is between you

and this man?

He killed more？

I don’t think so.

People more than those who died in

World War II

starved to deathin the last decade.

People more than those who died in

the Holocaust

starve to death each year.

People more than three times

of those who died inthe atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

starve to death each month.

People more than eight times

of those who died in 9.11

starve to death each day.

One person

who just wishes for some food

starves to death each three seconds.

Most of those starved people

are children

younger than five years old.

What made those children starved?

Natural disasters?

Wars?

The global food crisis?

I don’t think so.

Our indifference killed the children.

This is an issue of a choice.

As a member of this cold society,

what do you choose to do?

To save

or to kill?

You can donate money, food or whatever you can donate t

o World Food Programme.

Even if you don’t have the power or money,

you can go to www.thehungersite.com

and www.freerice.com to give free food.

You can go to www.wfp.org, www.fao.org and www.ifad.or

g to learn more.

You can tell all those things you learned to your family,

friends, strangers and whoever you can speak to.

Just believe it, there are many things you can do.

Just do something

from now on.

The dying children

can’t wait.

Data sources http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/20872/icode

http://www.fao.org/mdg/55978/en/

http://www.wfp.org/wfp-numbers

http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2009/01/weodata/download.aspx

http://books.sipri.org/index_html?c_category_id=1

http://www.forbes.com/lists/2008/18/biz_2000global08_The-Global-2000_Rank.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_income_economy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

Image sources http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starved_girl.jpg

http://www.wfp.org/hunger/map

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Starved_child.jpg

http://www.pulitzer.org/awards/1994

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_Two_Dollar_Uncut_32-Subject_Currency_Sheet.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_11_Launch2.jpg

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39141397@N08/3615903786/

An Inconvenient Truth

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Adolf_Hitler_in_Yugoslavia_crop2.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Omaha_Normandy_Cemetery.JPG

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Bundesarchiv_Bild_175-04413,_KZ_Auschwitz,_Einfahrt.jpg

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Atomic_cloud_over_Hiroshima.jpg

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http://www.reddit.com/domain/timesnewgloaming.files.wordpress.com

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http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ueberladewagen.jpg