UNDOING THE NORMALISATION OF STARVATION

On average, 125 people a day die in the USA as a result of gun shootings, the majority (about 60%) being suicides. That's 46,000 deaths a year. Another 40,000 a year die in US road accidents.

In the UK, every two days a woman is murdered, most likely by someone she knows. But, apart from those directly affected, no one seems to take much notice. It's the same with starvation, which worldwide kills more than 30,000 people, each and every day.

The news media don't report it because it's not news. The academic community doesn't include these people in its development models because it's become detached from reality.

Academic solutions to fixing the world's problems are worked out in ivory towers or at grand conferences, and have so far been totally abstract. It's not surprising that none has led to any reduction in the number of people starving to a premature death. What can we do about this?

How can we get the media to report it? How do we get the Aid industry to make solving routine starvation its primary work, its core aim? Maybe we should start with the general public, who I think would be concerned if they knew the truth.

We need to show the silent catastrophe that is engulfing huge parts of our world. We are capable, as humans, of great solidarity, of great love, of compassion. People in the West need to see that through our actions in managing the planet to suit ourselves, whether we wish it or not, between 11 and 12 million people a year die because they are deprived of the most basic of all elements of life, food.

It is our systems of power, and of finance in particular, that have created the conditions for most of the starvation, whether we are prepared to accept it or not. The solution is not the occasional grand event, such as Live Aid, Band-Aid or Comic Relief, but a long-term steady commitment to the welfare of poor people in other parts of the world.

We should feel it our responsibility to treat them as part of our common humanity and not as subjects to be exploited. We need to talk more openly about the truth, even when it's inconvenient.

The publication in 1993 of the infamous 'The Vulture and the Little Boy' photo, of a Sudanese child being watched by a vulture waiting for him to die, was a step in the right direction. But it was not accompanied by any effort of explanation; it must have shaken a few people and then they moved on to the next photo or article in the newspaper.

The establishment seriously criticised the photographer (who took his own life four months after this photo won a Pulitzer Prize) saying it was inappropriate to show the image at all. There was no discussion of what we need to do to stop the famine; just a vacuous series of discussions about whether it was decent to show the photo.

The voluntary agencies are those most able to address the problem, to help the powerless to become better able to produce more food, against a scenario of ever worsening degradation of the soil, decrease in rainfall and lack of interest by their own governments.