Saturday, October 20, 2007 Editorials: Global war against poverty
THERE are 50 million people dying everyday because of extreme poverty and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, so the United Nations (UN) reveals. This means that, translated into debilitating terms, death was due to dehumanizing hunger and starvation. In a planet that is sustaining a steadily increasing number of humans that now run up to billions, the pressure on regularly feeding hungry mouths could be truly great.
The current data from the UN, however, appears positive and optimistic. In 1990, the UN revealed that about a billion inhabitants of Planet Earth were surviving only on less than $1 a day. It was a gruesome indicator of extreme poverty at the time. This year though, according to the UN-Asian Development Bank report, the number has gone down to 641 million, and is projected to further decrease by one-half in 2015.
In 2006, 24 million people from 87 countries reportedly took a stand against poverty around the world. India led the Asian group, “with nine million people, followed by Nepal with three million and the Philippines with 2.4 million.” The campaign for pledges to stand against poverty actually form part of the UN campaign “to promote the Millennium Development Goals that include eradicating extreme poverty and hunger…”
The UN report pointed out that among the nations with people experiencing extreme poverty, China is the one making the most headway. With one out of every three Chinese living in poverty in 1990, China now has only one in 10. The rest of the other nations are reportedly lagging behind, including the Philippines, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The Philippines has to import 1.4 million metric tons of rice to preempt shortage.
Open war
Thus, the UN declared last Wednesday, Oct. 17, as the World Day for Overcoming Extreme Poverty, In a manner of speaking, the UN’s declaration of an open war against hunger and starvation that millions of people on Planet Earth had long suffered and continue to suffer day in and day out, not necessarily of their own choice. The widening gap between Earth’s rich and affluent, and the millions of poor, has to be narrowed.
Fortunately, however, nations such as the Philippines are conscious of the need to ease the pressure of poverty among its less privileged population.
The Philippines is one of the 191 countries that signed the UN’s Millennium Declaration, thus it is committed “to fight poverty, hunger, disease, environmental degradation and discrimination by year 2015. Indeed, about 40 percent of the 88 million Filipinos do live in poverty.
It is clear then that we should not only wage the jointly and collectively with the rest of the nations of the world. We should also strive as one people to contain extreme poverty in our midst, as a matter of national obligation and responsibility, disparate and independent from the collective efforts of the other nations of the globe.
