Is this a holy thing to see
In a rich and fruitful land,
Babes reduced to misery,
Fed with a cold and usurous hand?
If the poet William Blake was angry when he wrote those lines about late 18th century England, what would he think about the world today?
The latest study, People, Poverty, Possibilities, from the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) shows that hunger continues to ravage the lives of hundreds of millions of people, a large proportion of them infants and children. The good news, says UNFPA, is that those developing countries which have invested in education and health care especially reproductive health care have reaped considerable benefits: family size decreases, while savings, investment in wealth creation and productivity increase.
These findings dont carry any new lessons for policy makers. But the study reinforces the message that poverty is a present hideous reality, and makes clear the daunting scale of the challenges of the UN Millennium Development Goals. Because the bad news is that many of the countries most in need of investment in health and education are not getting it.
So where to start? Well, take a piece of paper. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (adopted 54 years ago this week) states:
- Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care
- Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children shall enjoy the same social protection.
A rough translation of some key elements here: it is wrong for people to starve, especially children. The article universalises values found within every major tradition, but sometimes not extended by those within a given tradition to those outside it. Thats the whole point. As the atheist Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw put it, I have no enemies under six [years old].
Previously, Globolog has looked at some of the history of famines. Why do children waste away today, in an age of unmatched global prosperity? This week Globolog gives snapshots more questions than answers of three very different cases: Argentina, Ethiopia and Palestine.
Argentina
Argentina is, potentially, one of the richest countries in the world. It produces enough food to feed its own population nine or ten times over. But since the economic crash at the turn of the year more than half the countrys 36 million people have been living in poverty that is, chronic uncertainty, widespread hunger and continuous misery. In recent weeks, children have been dying of malnutrition in northern provinces.
When the economic crisis began late last year, the Argentine currency the peso, which had been pegged to the US dollar, rapidly lost two-thirds of its value. Food prices rose by two thirds in a few months. Millions lost their jobs. Peso-denominated savings lost their value. Savings in dollars were frozen. The special characteristic of this situation has been the impoverishment of all classes of society, said one resident of the capital Buenos Aires. Its like a war without bombs.
Protests, and a rapid rotation of top politicians, sporadically captured the attention of the international press. But the media paid less attention to an evolving culture of social solidarity and self-reliance. Argentineans began to organise bartering, soup kitchens, and other self-help systems flourished. In some cases workers took control of bankrupt factories, and, with support from courts, have successfully kept them ticking over and people employed.
Meanwhile, export agriculture one of Argentinas great success stories went from strength to strength. Argentina is the worlds fifth-largest exporter of agricultural produce much of it animal feed for use in the rich industrialised countries. The country desperately needs the foreign exchange, not least to help meet its massive dollar-denominated debts.
Because they are priced in dollars, agricultural exports became even more lucrative for farmers as the peso fell. Those who might previously have sold domestically became even more reluctant to sell on the domestic market.
Emiliano Ezcurra, a lead author on Greenpeace Argentinas report Record Hunger Record Harvest (which I edited) argues that a concentration on genetically modified crops for export came at the expense of livelihoods at home. Emiliano is among those involved in a National Institute of Agricultural Technology scheme known as Pro-Huerta, which is helping around three million people grow some of their own food.
But self-help schemes and some worker-managed factories with no new investment are unlikely to be enough to keep the country afloat. A new economic policy from the government is also needed. In the spring, the development economist Joseph Stiglitz argued that Argentina should focus on how to increase domestic output rather than on trying to persuade international capital markets that the countrys problems are solved.
There have been elements of this approach in government economic policy to the extent that there was some talk this autumn of a veranito a little summer in the domestic economy. Things genuinely seem to be getting better. Optimists include some companies working in Internet-based operations. And earlier this month people were allowed to start withdrawing cash from banks for the first time in almost a year.
But the financial situation is far from stable. The country remains heavily in debt. Two weeks ago the government, which only has $10bn in foreign reserves, failed to re-pay a $805m World Bank loan (instead, it paid $79.2m in interest). And this weekend the government, which has seen six economy ministers and five presidents during the last year, faces a fresh deadline to make a repayment on its debt to the World Bank. Failure to do so could bring down the full wrath of the Bank, which might freeze Argentinas existing loans.
Last week, thousands of piqueteros (picketers) marched peacefully against hunger in Buenos Aires. They stopped at supermarkets and government offices to request food donations for schoolchildren. They aimed to collect 500,000 kilograms (1.1 million pounds) of food.
We are pacifists, but what happens later depends on the government, an organiser told the Argentine newspaper, Clarin. Some have asked why crowds dont descend on the docks and seize food destined for export.
Ethiopia
Ethiopia has almost twice as many people as Argentina, living on less than half the amount of land. This autumn the rains failed in many parts of the country. The United Nations World Food Programme says almost six million people need food assistance to keep them alive until the end of this year. This threatened to be one of the biggest famines of modern times. The crisis is largely being met with effective, large-scale international assistance.
Ethiopian farmers have managed to feed a massively growing population.
© Adrian Arbib/Christian Aid/Still PicturesBut something that is often overlooked is that Ethiopian agriculture for all its many serious problems is a success story. It is an extraordinary achievement that, in years when the rains do not fail, Ethiopians are able to feed themselves. This, after all, is not just a country with 89 registered ethnic groups, about 140 recognised languages and 3000 years of continuous civilisation its population has doubled to around 65 million in under twenty years.
The immediate cause of Ethiopias current food crisis is climatic. But political factors play a role. The 19982000 border war with Eritrea has had entirely negative effects. Now the governments agricultural policies are increasingly coming under attack.
The governments Agricultural Development-Led Industrialisation (ADLI) policy, begun in 1992, aims at putting agriculture and farmers before everything else (85% of the population lives in rural areas) and is a central component of economic policy. It has delivered in many respects since its inception a rapidly growing population has not starved.
But critics say it is time to move on, that there should be more emphasis on diversification of the economy away from agriculture and that land should be privatised. All land is still owned by the government, and taxation on it remains a problem for many farmers. According to the Financial Times, the tax raises negligible sums for the government but inflicts serious harm on the most vulnerable. The government argues that privatisation of land would lead to a social crisis, with farmers selling their last assets and migrating to over-populated urban areas already suffering high levels of unemployment.
Would more free trade help? Earlier this month, the Ethiopian government hosted an annual conference to discuss how Africa is affected by economic globalisation. Those in favour of globalisation, such as the former International Monetary Fund head Michel Camdessus, said that with better economic management and more trade liberalisation, globalisation would bring great benefits and help increase economic growth.
Others were not so sure. The African director of the International Labour Organisation, Regina Amadi-Njoku, says globalisation is responsible for the decline in Africas status in the global economy. Foreign non-governmental organisations (NGOs) such as Action Aid and Oxfam say that so-called free trade, especially in agricultural produce, has worked to threaten or destroy the livelihoods of millions of farmers and to keep people poor. Many African leaders accept globalisation as a long-term goal, but say it must be accompanied by reform by the developed countries to make the terms of trade fairer to Africa (see an earlier openDemocracy article).
If the terms of trade really were fair and if the Europeanswere not undercutting local markets in developing countries with subsidised food would NGOs be happier? Is such a state of affairs possible?
A piece by chief US trade negotiator Robert Zoellick in the last week's edition of The Economist says it is. In Unleashing the Trade Winds Zoellick affirms that Americas goal in farm negotiations is to harmonise subsidies and tariffs while slashing them to much lower levels, on a path towards elimination The US wants to eliminate the most egregious and distorting agricultural payments, export subsidies [and] advocates agreeing on a date for the total elimination of agricultural tariffs and distorting subsidies.
Together with a plan for zero tariffs on manufactured goods from the poorest countries, this would seem to be a page out of the book of many trade campaigners(see an earlier openDemocracy article). So what is wrong with Zoellicks argument? 0penDemocracywould love to hear a good case from a serious critic.
With regard to places such as Ethiopia, at least two other points arise. Firstly, the country is likely to remain heavily dependent on export commodities such as coffee for the foreseeable future (coffee originates in Ethiopia, and 15 million people - almost a quarter of the population - rely on it for their livelihoods). But while the world price of commodities such as coffee remains so low (currently, it is at a thirty year low), no plausible amount of export-led growth will meet the countrys needs (see an Oxfam report).
Secondly, climate change means that the rains could fail more often in future. So even with the best agricultural policies, Ethiopia is likely to find it increasingly hard to continue to feed its growing population. At some stage mass migration perhaps to Europe, where low birth rates in countries such as Italy and Spain mean that, on present trends, indigenous populations will fall to around an eighth of their present size by the year 2100 may have to be part of the solution.
Palestine
Arabic-speaking parts of the world are another region with rapidly growing populations. Most of the Arab nations are already close to an environmental ceiling on food production capacity water shortage. So it is hard to see how localisation of all food production, a stated goal of some anti-globalisation campaigners, could ever work across this extremely dry and increasingly populous region. It takes around 1,000 tonnes of water to grow one tonne of wheat, and, even with more efficient production methods, water consumption in agriculture will remain high. It makes sense to import food to the Middle East.
Democracy may be a remote possibility in almost the entire Arab world, but as the UN Arab Development Report makes clear, social solidarity is strong in many Arab countries. Even in the most deprived areas, collective action guided by custom and religion ensures that the poorest do not starve.
"When do we eat?"One of the exceptions is in the territories known to some people as Palestine. And here the figures are truly shocking. According to datarecently published by the UN Agency for Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), more than 20% of Palestinian children in the West Bank and Gaza Strip are suffering from acute malnutrition. 80% of children have inadequate iron and zinc intake, deficiencies that cause anaemia and weaken the immune system. Over 50% of children have inadequate calorific and vitamin A intake; 50% have inadequate folate intake.
The United States is concerned about its reputation around the world a matter discussed in another article published this week on openDemocracy.It clearly doesnt help when its closest ally in the region destroys even if unintentionally food aid intended for Palestinian children (see report by BBC).
A majority of Americans believe more of their taxes should be spent on foreign aid and world hunger (see a study of US public attitudes by the Program on International Policy Attitudes). This conviction makes sense in its own terms. It is consistent with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It points towards an intelligent use of resources in long-term efforts to protect the security of people around the world as well as that of Americans themselves. Finally, it represents an ethical universalism expressed in the work of another English poet, W.H. Auden, which gained increasing relevance after 11 September 2001, and has not yet lost it: We must love one another or die.
Do you have a story about globalisation? Are you outraged or elated? Contact globolog@opendemocracy.net