The Bigger Picture
While famine caused by high-profile crises like natural disasters and war garner the headlines, these emergency situations account for less than eight percent of hunger’s victims, according to the World Food Programme. Millions more suffer from a less visible, yet devastating, chronic undernourishment. For these individuals, hunger not only prevents them from leading healthy and productive lives, it also prevents their households, communities, states and countries from functioning in healthy and productive ways.
Hunger As a Barrier
No one should go hungry. The suffering caused by hunger is intolerable in human terms. The cost of hunger is also unacceptable from society’s perspective, for its ramifications extend far beyond the misery of an individual who has an empty stomach.
Hunger and malnutrition undermine all other humanitarian and development goals. Progress on every issue depends on progress made to alleviate the scourge of hunger. As long as people are hungry, everything is at risk
When people are well nourished, they can take active roles in advancing their nation’s economic and social development. But when people are hungry, they are motivated only to seek what they need to survive. Chronic hunger in communities can lead to food riots, threatening the overall security of a community and country, not just their food security.
Malnutrition extracts societal and economic costs that span generations, starting in the womb and early childhood. Malnourished women are more likely to suffer complications from or die in childbirth, and the children they give birth to start their lives malnourished. Infants and young children who are malnourished have an increased risk of dying young, contracting childhood diseases, and suffering from lifelong disabilities.
Malnourished children who make it to adulthood usually suffer from reduced mental capacity and compromised physical health, making it difficult or impossible for them to become self-sufficient, contributing members of their communities.
Perspective
"A hungry man can't see right or wrong. He just sees food."
“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”
"It has been well said that a hungry man is more interested in four sandwiches than four freedoms."
