Essay on the Geopolitical Book of Hunger by Jean Ziegler
The book of the Swiss Jean Ziegler is divided into six parts, to talk about him I will list each of them.
First part: La Matanza
The right to food is the most violated of all human rights. A sixth part of the planet’s inhabitants suffers permanently hunger.
Sub -talimentation is defined from the caloric needs of individuals depending on age. In an adult would be 2220 calories, below that amount an individual will be considered to suffer subalimentation.
Dying hunger is painful, it is a slow death and with great physical pain linked to the anguish that is suffered. In children it is faster, fat and sugar reserves are consumed, the immune system collapses, varied diseases such as diarrhea and infections appear. Finally they can no longer stand and it seems that life moves away from their faces die.
The groups most exposed to hunger are the rural poor, the urban poor and those who are victims of a catastrophe.
The rural poor represent most men suffering from hunger in the world. 75% of the 1.200 million human beings living in extreme poverty belong to the rural environment and have income of less than $ 1.25 daily.
Not being the owner of the Earth is one of the causes, but there are also peasants who do not have sufficient size and quality. In the southern hemisphere 90 % of peasants do not have more sophisticated tools than the hoe, nor of the use of fertilizers, or irrigation of the fields, do not even have manure since they cannot have animals. The weather is hard and keeping healthy cattle costs a lot.
At the same time, in Niger a country with recurring drought, subalimentation and malnutrition, was forced by the IMF to dismantle cereal reserves stocks that amounted to 40.000 tons and that were intended to solve food emergency situations. The IMF criteria is that these reservations nervously affect the free market. Since the mid -80s Niger lives a famine every two years on average.
Niger is the second poorest country on the planet, but it is also the second uranium producer in the world.
Second part: the awakening of consciences
Malthus raised in the 18th century that hunger is due to a kind of law of need since it establishes a balance between the constant increasing population and limited resources. Until the mid -twentieth century Malthusian ideas have been for Westerners a form of discharge of their moral responsibility.
His work in the 30s allowed him. How high birth was not the cause of scarcity, but the shortage promotes high birth, in the face of tomorrow’s anguish, there are many children to try to ensure help when the years go by; He also showed the delegitimization of racist approaches about the vaguerry and indolence of certain populations, which are actually fruit of empty stomachs that prevent the development of capacities.
In this spirit of an aware west the United Nations were created and in 1946 the FAO. In 1963, PMA was created as a way to respond to emergency situations. In the spirit of the creators of the pacts is that hunger is not a fatality and that we must intervene with concrete actions, not leaving the free movement of the markets but with agricultural reforms, subsidies of basic foods, public investment for the land productivity etc
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