MDG #1
The first Millennium Development Goals (MDG) is to eradicate poverty and hunger from a country. There are three parts to the goal. The quintessential step that the UN must take is to decrease the percentage of people who are living only on $1,25 a day by fifty percent. The second step is to balance employment rates of females and young people by twenty-five percent. The third part states that by 2015 the number of people suffering from food shortage and hunger will be decreased by 50 percent. Around the world, an estimated amount of 870 million people are in a shortage of food. More than 500 children below the age of 5 lack the nutrients they need. This is the first MDG and we will correlate it in terms of Zimbabwe.
Poverty and hunger in Zimbabwe have increased in the past years. Most fear that this may problem will only magnify as time goes by. In a Zimbabwean city, a reporter reveals that some of the Zimbabweans are relying only on porridge. The reporter also stated that some children are no longer going to school due to the hunger they are suffering. Not only is hunger a very nation wide prevailing issue another horrendous problem is poverty.
Today, most of Zimbabwe’s population lives in poverty. The numbers of people that are under the Total Consumption Poverty Line in Zimbabwe have exponentially increased. The percentage was 72% in 2003 but it has worsened due to the long economic crisis that occurred. The crisis that lasted for eight years had damaged this percentage. It has decreaseld by 40% according to the GDP (Gross Domestic Product). These numbers has not increased by much for the last five years. This reduction not only affects the money but it has also affected living conditions.
The number of people who li...
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The eight Millennium Development Goals proposed by the UN during the Millennium General Assembly of 2000 will not be reached in Africa by 2015 if international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund continue to impose unethical and punishing economic policies through the Structural Adjustment Program (SAPs) on the poor and undeveloped countries of Africa and if the wealthy old core countries continue to break promises and hesitate to donate enough financial aid to Africa to help it recover from the destructive effects of the SAPs and the AIDS pandemic, and to also ensure gender equality and rights of women in Africa.
Muhammad Yunus, a civil society leader and Nobel Peace Prize recipient, once said, “Once poverty is gone, we’ll need to build museums to display its horrors to future generations. They’ll wonder why poverty continued so long in human society — how a few people could live in luxury while billions dwelt in misery, deprivation and despair.” Hunger can be defined as the physical state of desiring food. Hunger may ultimately lead to malnutrition, where one is unable to eat sufficiently enough to meet basic nutritional needs. According to the World Food Programme (2014), hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to health worldwide — even greater than the combination of AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis. There are over 842 million undernourished people who are suffering from hunger and malnutrition worldwide, everyday. That means that one in eight people do not receive enough food to be healthy and lead active lives (World Food Programme, 2014). Fortunately, hunger and malnutrition are easily solvable, though everyone must work together to permanently bring an end to it.
United Nations Development Programme. Poverty Reduction and UNDP. New York: United Nations Development Programme, Jan. 2013. PDF.
There are many causes to hunger in Africa and other developing countries some include; weather conditions, poor agriculture, limited resources, natural disasters, and economy. (Robbins, 2012). The hungry people are not censurable. Hunger isn’t just the issue, the gist of the issue in its self, is economy. Close to one billion people live in deep penury, in the world today. (Robbins, 2012). If you don’t have money then you don’t have food, it is as simple as that. Poverty, food prices, and hunger are inextricably linked (Anderson, 2007). So the real question is; how can poverty be solved to stop hunger? One sixth of the world does not have enough food to be healthy and active. (Robbins, 2002). It takes 30 billion dollars to feed the hungry for a year. (Boren Project, 2013). If every person in the United States gave ten cents, world hunger could be stopped for a whole year. (Boren Project, 2013 and USC, 2014). Eve...
Entering the 21st. Century – World Development Report 1999/2000. World Bank 2000. Oxford University Press. New York, NY 2000.
In 1798, the political economist Thomas Malthus referred to extensive hunger as a natural system that ensured a properly sized population that was balanced with the food supply, and the global population adapted this idea as their view on world hunger (Dando 197). It was not until the 1970s when this idea began to be truly challenged. Today, commercials displaying starving African children are no rare sight. In Sub-Saharan Africa, more than 33 million children under 5 are malnourished (Stanford 46). Everyone is aware of the hunger crisis, especially in Sub-Saharan Africa, but what causes this extreme hunger is not quite as well known. Hunger has stemmed from several political, economic, and environmental issues: poverty traps, climate change,
When the topic of world hunger is broached, the majority of people’s minds will automatically equate the two words with an impossible-to-solve problem affecting only Africa. However, to make that connection is inaccurate, and ultimately damaging to the actual efforts being made towards eradicating hunger. There are more than 870 million individuals in the world who suffer from chronic undernourishment, with the majority of undernourished individuals residing in Asia or the Pacific. While Africa understandably rises to the forefront of the mind when hunger is discussed, the statistics prove that hunger permeates into a plethora of regions, and affects a wide range of countries, cultures, and age groups. Despite its wide reach, global hunger is a solvable problem. The fact that a solution has not yet been implemented speaks loudly to the lack of cooperation being exhibited throughout the world. There is more than enough food to end world hunger; it is merely a lack of proactivity and cooperation among those in power that continues to allow the problem to grow. Solving world hunger may seem to be a daunting task, but a solution is within reach as long as a more cohesive semblance of cooperation throughout the globe (including both developed and developing countries) is achieved. This cooperation would embrace the sharing of excess goods to countries in need of them, as well the establishment of sustainable agricultural systems in countries currently lacking them—goals which are only achievable through recognition of the problem and an increased involvement by the entire globe.
To the United Nations, nearly a quarter of children under the age of five are expected to remain underweight in two thousand and fifteen. The World Health Organization has reported hunger and related malnutrition as the greatest single threat to the world's public health. Improving nutrition is widely regarded as the most effective form of aid. Nutrition-specific interventions, which address the immediate causes of under nutrition, have been proven to deliver among the best value for money of all development interventions. In Africa, rates have been increasing for malnourished people (Hanson 204-5). For hundreds of millions of people, starvation is a daily threat. In the poor nations of Africa, Asia, Latin America, billions of hungry people face starvation. It begins with an ache in your stomach that eventually weakens your heart and stops beating. Today about five billion of the world’s five point nine billion live in poor nations. (“Hunger and Malnutrition” web).
The majority of starving people live in developing countries, mainly located in Asia, the Pacific, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Starvation is also mostly found in low-income, rural areas. However, hunger has been on the rise in urban areas as well (“Frequently” 2). One of the major causes of world hunger is the significant lack of food security, or the ability of people to have access to healthy, nutritional food at all times, in many areas of the world (Marsh, Alagona 254). Due to this major lack of food security, the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) estimated, “that 25,000 people die each day from hunger [, and]… between 1998 and 2000, there were 840 million undernourished people in the world—nearly a sixth of the world’s population,” (“Hunger” 2). Hunger is now a larger health risk than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined, and it has become a serious problem (“Frequently”
United Nations, (2013) the millennium development goals report 2013 [ONLINE] United Nations. Available at: http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/publications/mdgs-report-2013.html [Accessed on 26 December 2013]
Hunger and malnutrition are very serious issues in many different countries throughout the world. Hunger and malnutrition stem from one problem, the lack of sustainable agriculture. The United Nations has set forth a series of goals that aim to reduce the effects of hunger in the world. The first of these goals was Aba Grangou, which is a program that aims to end world hunger. The second of these goals has to do with the sheer volume of people that experience hunger, both adults and children. The United Nations has recognized the problems that come with the lack of food stability, and they have also come up with some programs that help to combat the lack of sustainable food sources. Throughout the world, millions of men, women, and children
United Nations Development Program (UNDP). (2000). Human development report 2000. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Millions of people die each year, all over the world because of hunger and disease, many of whom are children (Global issues, 2010). Millions of other people suffer because of hunger, many of whom are in Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia. However, there are several thousand tones of food that is wasted every year. This occurs when people through away food, during harvest, during storage and when crop is destroyed by pests, insects, diseases and animals. Food wastage in the poor countries is due to lack of technology and infrastructure and result to as much as quarter of harvest getting lost (Global issues, 2010). According to Global issues (2010), world hunger results from poverty. World hunger is an issue of concern and continuous efforts should be made in order to save millions of people around the world. Solving the real cause of poverty is crucial towards permanently solving the world hunger problem.
World Hunger The persistence of hunger in a world of plenty is immoral. In a world of 5 billion people, more than 1 billion are desperately poor and face food insecurity. 800 million are chronically malnourished. Every day, 35,000 children under age five (14 million a year) die of malnutrition and related preventable diseases. Millions more become blind, retarded or suffer other disabilities that impair functioning for lack of vitamins and minerals (micro-nutrients), robbing the human community of valuable gifts and talents. Hunger increases pressures that lead to a growing tide of refugees and migrants. Hunger and poverty are at the base of much political turmoil and armed conflict.
The United Nations recently published a list of goals they hope to accomplish by 2030 called the Sustainable Development Goals. These goals will replace the Millennium Development Goals, which were set in 2000, when they expire at the end of 2015. Some of these goals include ending poverty, promoting gender equality, and improving water and sanitation conditions. Arguably, the most important goal is to “end hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture” (in text citation- NY Times Article). Hunger was also an important goal on the MDG list, yet it was not fully accomplished (in text citation- Progress chart). The goals was to reduce hunger by half, and yet, the number of people who go to bed hungry