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Freedom from hunger

(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-08-08 07:52

Democracy is at stake when people's stomachs growl with hunger.

Mauritania has turned out to be the latest case in point.

The junta took over Mauritania in a military coup as a protest against the government's poor management over spiralling oil and food prices. It promised "free and transparent" presidential elections in "the shortest possible period".

The military move, which put Mauritanian President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi in custody, was widely condemned by the international community.

The largely desert country has a history of coups since gaining independence from France in 1960. It has been hard hit by the global food crisis as it imports more than 70 percent of its food needs. The country has got stuck in growing economic and social unrest.

The global food crisis has now reached every corner of the world, pushing millions of people living in poverty to the edge of disaster.

Africa is the world's poorest region - more than 210 million people live on less than $1 a day; more than 400 million live on less than $2 a day, and by 2015 that number is projected to reach 600 million.

It is no surprise that the effects of the current food crisis have been most acute in Africa. With food prices up by 57 percent in March compared to a year ago, more than half of the countries in which social unrest has happened are in Africa. They included Somalia, Cameroon, Senegal, Mozambique, Cote d'Ivoire, Morocco, Mauritania, Egypt, Guinea and Burkina Faso.

The widespread episodes of social unrest and now the military coup in Mauritania underline the extreme urgency of the food crisis and its capacity to destabilize African countries.

To identify and provide long-term solutions, the underlying causes of hunger and poverty must be better understood.

To help those most severely impacted, the international donor community must provide sustained quantities of emergency food aid. But the only real long-term solution to the problem of chronic food deficits and hunger is the development of programs to promote food security, adequate nutrition, improved incomes for farmers and urban dwellers, and overall economic development.

The military coup in Mauritania and food riots in many parts of the world signal the need to rethink global stability and the critical role of those who till the land and feed us all.

(China Daily 08/08/2008 page10)