25,000 Starving Kids Can’t Be Wrong
By Hamid Golpira
15 July, 2009
Tehran Times
Today, 25,000 children will die of hunger or poverty-related illnesses on this benighted planet.
25,000 starving kids can’t be wrong. You and I can be wrong, but 25,000 starving kids can’t be wrong.
In a statement issued just before the opening of the G8 summit, which was held in L’Aquila, Italy from July 8 to 10, the London-based charity organization Save the Children said that over 75,000 children would die unnecessarily during the three-day meeting of eight major industrialized countries.
That means 25,000 children died unnecessarily every day of the summit -- and continue to die at that rate every day.
Save the Children said that “the G8 leaders are failing to do enough to save the lives of the 9.2 million children who die every year from easily preventable diseases.”
It seems the G8 leaders are more concerned about how the global economic crisis is affecting the global ruling class.
Save the Children said that if the G8 countries and other rich nations do not double the amount of money they donate annually for maternal, newborn, and child healthcare to at least $7 billion by 2012, they will have no chance of achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing child mortality by two thirds by 2015, and at the current rate of progress, the target will not be reached until 2045.
“It is outrageous that 9.2 million children are still dying every year,” Adrian Lovett, Save the Children’s director of campaigns, said in the statement.
Indeed, it is more than outrageous. It is a crime against humanity. It is genocide.
In reality, a silent genocide campaign is being carried out against the children of the Global South.
Yet all the officials and citizens of the countries that signed the Genocide Convention are also silent. Nobody is being brought to the International Criminal Court to face charges of crimes against humanity and genocide. All the people who endlessly say “Never again” are doing nothing. Maybe they should change their slogan to “Again and again and again” because that’s what’s really happening on this planet.
“Hunger is not a natural phenomenon, as some believe. Neither is it a disease, or an unwanted consequence of weather conditions. It is a human invention which is as lethal and fearsome as the chemical weapons Bush and his allies had said they were looking for in Iraq. As every other instrument of mass destruction, it is applied in a rational and selective fashion over certain areas of the planet and it aims to exterminate the surplus races and sectors of the world’s population,” wrote Miguel A. Seman in an article entitled “The hunger factories” which was originally published in Spanish on the web site www.pelotadetrapo.org.ar and republished in English by the Tehran Times on November 24, 2008.
In an article entitled “Hearing the grass grow” which was originally published in Spanish on the web site www.pelotadetrapo.org.ar and republished in English by the Tehran Times on December 24, 2006, Oscar Taffetani wrote:
“Yet, according to the last FAO report, current agricultural output could feed 12 billion people, about twice the population of the planet, providing each person with 2,700 calories a day. But this is not done. For that reason, when a child dies of hunger anywhere in the world, it is because he or she has been murdered.”
And Mr. Taffetani is right. When a child dies of hunger anywhere in the world, it is because he or she has been murdered.
And the killers of those children are the members of the global ruling class, whose only “sacred” value appears to be the maximization of profit at all costs, with no thought about the consequences for the starving masses of this planet.
And the accomplices of the killers are all the global haves who are indifferent or oblivious to the plight of the starving global have-nots because they are entranced in the spell of mindless consumerism and meaningless mass entertainment cast by the evil magicians of globalization.
Maybe somebody should produce a reality TV show entitled “Watch the World’s Children Starve to Death”.
And some people would actually enjoy the show. A large segment of the global ruling class would probably enjoy such a TV show.
This is a very sad state of affairs.
So what should be done to remedy the situation?
First of all, every individual must work to elevate his or her consciousness and encourage others to do the same. There must be a global paradigm shift in thinking. Stop thinking so much about your minor personal problems. Understand that your problems are nothing compared to the fact that 25,000 children are dying unnecessarily every day.
Work together with like-minded people to create a better world.
Visualize the global paradigm shift in thinking.
Acknowledge that there must be a just dispensation for all the people of Earth.
Fight against wrong thinking.
For example, some heartless people say that they are not responsible to help the deprived children of the world because their suffering is a result of the actions of their parents. These senseless people say that their parents had too many children when they knew they couldn’t afford to take care of them, or their parents started the wars that caused their suffering, or their parents are responsible for the economic problems that made life difficult for them.
But this is a specious argument. Why should children have to pay for their parents mistakes?
Most religions -- and even most secular humanist schools of thought -- say that the punishment for the sins of the parents should not be visited upon the children.
Globalization and the neoliberal economic model have caused all this suffering, and the nightmare will never end until the world takes another path.
So we must fight against globalization and the neoliberal economic model till the bitter end.
We can -- and we must -- formulate a better economic model, an economic model in which people come first and not capital and profits, an economic model based on fair trade not free trade, an economic model which has social justice as its foundation.
Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 10, 1948, states:
“(1) 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 and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control. (2) Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.”
We should do everything we can to ensure that Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is put into practice.
If we have no compassion for our fellow human beings, we have lost our humanity. So let us not lose our humanity. And let’s work hard to help those who have lost their humanity regain their humanity.
And let’s make serious efforts to end starvation and deprivation on this planet and to create a more just world.
25,000 starving kids can’t be wrong. You and I can be wrong, but 25,000 starving kids can’t be wrong.
