World Poverty: Most Aggressive Humanitarian Crisis...

It is saddest and most of the times forgettable fact that every day 25000 people die due to hunger or hunger related diseases, which means one death occur per every three and half seconds due hunger and related diseases. Most of them are children from Asia, Africa and Latin America.

These saddest incidents take place on the earth not due to lack of resources to satisfy their needs, but due to the fact that they have lack of income to buy foods. Hunger is the most dangerous disease on the earth that has caused largest number of human deaths than any other diseases.

United Nations World Food Program states this fact as follows:

There are 1.02 billion undernourished people in the world today. That means one in nearly six people do not get enough food to be healthy and lead an active life. Hunger and malnutrition are in fact the number one risk to the health worldwide — greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined". (http://www.wfp.org/hunger)

Natural disasters, poverty, lack of agricultural infra Structures and civil wars are the major causes of hunger deaths in recent times according to World Food Programme. In addition to that the colonization over the centuries, a huge portion of resources acquired by empirical powers from the third world nations, actions of developed nations and the MNEs with the sole self interest, corruption in the state management and internal conflicts are the major causes of the hunger related problems in these nations.

Apart from hunger deaths, indirect hunger is also dominating the world, especially, almost half of the world population earn less than just 2.5$ of income.

Deseases, problems in the body and mental growth, which reduces efficiency and productivty and work capacity, are the other impacts that poverty creates. In addition to students who discontinue their studeis mid-way due financial inability to continue, it is also noted that the acheivement of those who continue education at the financial burden is greatly effected by poverty and related problems.  

The income inequality and the impact of which is not only a dilemma between third world and first world countries, but also it is a problems inside among the country's population itself, even in developed nations. This kind of imbalance has created a situation of 'untouchability' based on the economic prosperity and dignity.


It is nearly impossible for average people to come out of this social dilemma, which will definitely lead to a class struggle and might disturb the world peace in future. This situation should be compared with the class struggles in developed nations where 'poors' are earning much more than that of in developing nations and are enjoying much quality life standard.

It should be assured that basic needs of every individual is satisfied and there is a distribution system that ensure the equity and justice alike. It is not possible to introduce an economic system by using only market mechanism as well as by using only central planning system.

Poor nations should be allowed to design appropriate policy measures that ensure the justice and equity. Widely sited problem is, rich nations are forcing the poor nations to adopt policies that satisfy the needs of the rich nations. Doubtlessly, this is a moral crime against all established democratic principles and humanity.

Measures Taken to Eradicate Poverty

United Nations has taken poverty eradication as an important goal in its millennium Development Goal. The goal states that poverty should be eradicated by the year of 2015. However, it still not sure weather it will be possible to reach which goal within the above mentioned time frame work.

Hundreds of NGOs and UN affiliated organizations such as UNICEF and World Food Programme have aggressively engaged in poverty eradication programs. Still poverty remains as an unsolvable problem, which may be due to number of reasons.

1. The level of Contribution of the rich nation is not Sufficient: The first world countries have a moral responsibility towards the poor countries to help them to escape from the vicious circle of poverty. However, the level of contribution gained from rich nations are not sufficient. Contrastingly, the support rich nations providing is associated with selfish missions in the region, specifically mentioning, it is a well known secret that most of the aids provided to African Continent is targeting at the minerals belonged to Africa.
   Such kind of assistance are negatively effect the countries instead of supporting them.

2. Wastage of Resources: Most of the world's wealth is spent on luxury and unnecessary consumer products while half of the world population is earning just below three dollars per day. Some portions of the wealth spent on consumer items and the heavy advertisement campaigns be saved, it will be enough to take out the poors at least from the hunger deaths.

3. Inefficient Utilization of Resources: poor governance and inefficient management of resources in the poverty affected countries is also remaining as a major barrier of eradicating poverty. On the other hand, some voices are rising recently weather the resources are used efficiently in the hands of NGOs as well.
4. 
   
   Plans that do not looks root causes of the problems: The plans to abolish the poverty does not address the problems of imperialistic behaviours of rich nations or the fears profit oriented nature of multinational organizations. Therefore, plans do not meet the in depth requirements of the problem and therefore eradicating poverty still remains as a nightmare.

world hunger/ poverty is the undeniable truth and unforgettable reality that is not given due importance in the main stream medias. Poverty is one of the largest problems that world has come across today. Of course, it is not possible to eradicate poverty all of a sudden, but needs a long term solution to solve the root causes of the problem.


Eradicating poverty should be the priority in the list of international conferences and in the minds of who ever loves humanity, justice and equity. At least, when we we spend one extra dollar, if we can remind the most part of the people who live in absolute poverty, we can satisfy that we still have the humanity in our mind.