–Written By Neeraj Kumar Jain,
BA LLB, First year,
USLLS
We as a civilization have reached a stage where we are living in the ultra age of internet which works faster than the jets, an age where billions of dollars are being spent to find out the mysterious happenings on Moon and Mars. Every country is spending a major part of its budget on Defence and Arms. In this nuclear age where everyone knows that even a small step of aggression of even a considerably small country towards a war may lead to the destruction of mankind. I such situations, various questions comes in mind as to what is the purpose of spending so much money on space missions and arms when a lot of people are sleeping empty stomach where no one should be left hungry in this world.
Hunger is a perilous cycle that passes from one generation to the next: Families who struggle with chronic hunger and malnutrition consistently go without the nutrients their minds and bodies need, which then prevents them from being able to work, go to school, or improve their lives. Being hungry means more than just missing a meal. It’s a debilitating crisis that has more than 820 million people in its grip.
Around the world, 821 million people do not have enough of the food they need to live an active, healthy life. One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night, including 20 million people currently at risk of famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria. People suffering from chronic hunger are plagued with recurring illnesses, developmental disabilities and low productivity. They are often forced to use all their limited physical and financial resources just to put food on the table. Ninety-eight percent of the world’s hungry live in developing regions. The highest number of malnourished people, 520 million, lives in Asia and the Pacific, in countries like Indonesia and the Philippines. In sub-Saharan Africa, 243 million people face hunger in arid countries like Ethiopia, Niger and Mali. And 43 million people in Latin America and the Caribbean are struggling to find enough to eat, in places like Guatemala and Haiti. The majority of these hungry families live in rural areas where they widely depend on agriculture to survive.
In many places, male-dominated social structures limit the resources women have like job opportunities, financial services, and education, making them more vulnerable to poverty and hunger. Sixty percent of the world’s hungry are women and girls. This, in turn, impacts their children. A mother who suffers from hunger and malnourishment has an increased risk of complications during childbirth or delivering an underweight baby, which can mean irreversible physical and mental stunting right from childbirth.
Fifty percent of the world’s poorest families don’t buy their food — they grow it. These families depend on their land and livestock for both food and income, leaving them vulnerable to natural disasters that can quickly strip them of their livelihoods. Drought — as a result of climate change and increasingly unpredictable rainfall — has become one of the most common causes of food shortages in the world. It consistently causes crop failures, kills entire herds of livestock, and dries up farmland in poor communities that have no other means to survive.
What is our duty to get to the target of #ZeroHunger by 2030? Every Nation must take necessary steps to improve their agricultural system. All farmers must be trained to work out with advanced and eco-friendly technologies to get high yield. No country, must stock more food grains than their needs. The surplus should be exported to the countries in need. It would be better to gift tonnes of food grains rather than weapons. We must not limit ourselves to just agriculture but we must further go for improving productions in field of poultry, animal husbandry and fisheries. All these are the responsibilities of a nation or a larger group. But what can be done by us as an individual to combat this problem.
The answer mostly lies within ourselves and our inner conscience. It is our moral duty to watch our surroundings before sleeping whether there is a hungry person or not. If there is a hungry person living in our locality it is the Joint Duty of all of us to feed him/them before sleeping. The quality of kindness and compassion in fact, can be learnt from animals and even insects like ants who share their food. We humans, a self proclaimed race of superiors, arguably more developed minded than all these small creatures must learn the art of caring and sharing from such creatures. Going a step ahead to solve this problem, it would be considerate for all the authorities and organisations to come forward and collect the leftovers of the parties and hotels and take it to the “empty stomachs”. Moreover, it should be the moral duty of the hotels to help this food reach to the needy with the help of these organisations. If everyone with filled mouth will take such little steps to fight the problem, the year 2030 will not be too far to reach the target of #ZeroHunger. Going deeper into the higher grounds of morality, it is my personal opinion that all persons privileged enough to keep their bellies full throughout, should voluntarily skip one time meal in a week for the persons who unfortunately don’t have access to the bread.
Yet UN has much more attractive and feasible programmes in its store to fight the battle against the hunger. But as the problem is social, economic and environmental, so no battle against the Giant Hunger can be won unless each and every person of the this global world will not committed for the purpose. The fight is a huge one, the goal is even larger, but as it is famously said that, “where there is a will, there is a way,” it is but not impossible to achieve the target one is determined to fulfil.
