The Global Famine Begins
UN Announces That The Worst Food Crisis
Since World War II Is Happening Right
Now
By Michael Snyder
We always
knew that this would start happening.
Earlier this month, I wrote about the
severe economic problems that are
plaguing
South America,
but up to this point I have neglected to
discuss the horrific famines that are
breaking out all over Africa. Right now
there is a desperate need for food in
South Sudan, Somalia, northeast Nigeria,
Eritrea and Kenya. And Yemen, even
though it is not technically part of
Africa, is being affected by many of the
same factors that are crippling nations
all over eastern Africa. The United
Nations says that more than 20 million
people could die from starvation and
disease if nothing is done. When I
write about
economic collapse,
this is the kind of thing that I am
talking about, and we are starting to
see alarming conditions spread across
the globe. Many believe that we could
never possibly face this kind of food
crisis in the western world, but
unfortunately wishful thinking will only
get you so far.
The United
Nations was formed in 1945, and the UN
has just announced that what we are
facing this year is “the largest
humanitarian crisis since the creation
of the UN”. The following comes from a
CNN article entitled “20
million at risk of starvation in world’s
largest crisis since 1945, UN says“…
“We stand at
a critical point in history. Already
at the beginning of the year we are
facing the largest humanitarian
crisis since the creation of the
UN,”
UN humanitarian chief Stephen
O’Brien said Friday.
“Now, more than 20 million
people across four countries face
starvation and famine.
Without collective and coordinated
global efforts, people will simply
starve to death. Many more will
suffer and die from disease.”
It would be
hard to overstate the level of human
suffering that we are witnessing in many
parts of Africa at this moment. In
Somalia, the UN estimates that more than
6 million people
are in desperate need of food aid…
As Somalia inches closer to a
calamitous famine, the prospect of
utter devastation and colossal loss
of human life is once again becoming
an imminent reality. The
humanitarian situation in Somalia is
deteriorating by the day with
up to 6.2 million people in
need of urgent aid. People
across Somalia have been forced to
walk hundreds of miles in search of
food, water and shelter- with women
and children disproportionately
affected. Over 300,000 children
under the age of five are severely
malnourished, with over 200,000 more
children at risk of acute
malnutrition.
In South
Sudan, close to half the population is
in dire need of assistance, and things
have gotten so bad there that people
will literally eat grass
if they can find it…
Across South Sudan
more than one million children are
believed to be acutely malnourished
and UNICEF have said that if urgent
aid does not reach them, many of
them will die. “There is no food, we
eat anything we can find,” one South
Sudanese mother told ITV.
“We will find
grass, we will eat it. That’s just
the way it us for us now.”
Over in
Yemen, there are about seven million
people in need of food help, and
authorities are warning that if nothing
is done
“millions of children” could starve to
death…
“The numbers affected are absolutely
extraordinary,” said Mark Kaye, Save
the Children’s Yemen spokesperson.
“We keep on talking about a country
that’s on the brink of famine, but
for me these numbers highlight that
we’re at the point of no return. If
things are not done now we are going
to be looking back on this and
millions of children will
have starved to death, and
we’ll all have been aware of this
for some time. That will shame us as
an international community for years
to come.
Eritrea was
not specifically included in the recent
UN alert, but it should have been. Much
of the country has been hit by a
crippling drought, and
approximately half of all children in
Eritrea are stunted…
But we cannot understand why Eritrea
is not included in the appeal.
Unicef has confirmed what we know
from our friends and families inside
the country. In a report in January,
the agency said that the El Niño
drought has hit half of all
Eritrea’s regions. Acute
malnutrition is widespread. As
Unicef put it: “Malnutrition rates
already exceeded emergency levels,
with 22,700 children under five
projected to suffer from severe
acute malnutrition in 2017 …
Half of all children in Eritrea are
stunted, and as a result, these
children are even more vulnerable to
malnutrition and disease outbreaks.”
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We have
been warned that there would be
famines in diverse places
in these times. But here in the western
world we tend to be lulled into a false
sense of security by our comfortable
lives, not realizing that the massively
inflated standard of living that we have
been enjoying has been fueled by the
largest mountain of debt
in the history of the planet.
In Kenya, a
national emergency has been declared due
to drought and famine. For those of you
that are parents, what would you do if
your children were crying out for food
but you didn’t have anything to give
them? The following story
from Kenya
is beyond heartbreaking…
Emmanuel
Ayapar is three years old and can no
longer walk. The flesh on his legs,
which dangle from his mother’s hip
as she carries him around, is
wasting away.
He seems listless and sad, tongue
flicking repeatedly in and out of
his mouth.
‘We do not have enough food,’ said
Veronica, his 28-year-old mother.
‘We eat only once a day.’
The little boy is suffering from
severe malnutrition and is at risk
of starving to death. He
weighs just 15lb – half the typical
weight for a boy of his age.
I
don’t even know what to say after that.
In
the western world we can be so
incredibly self-absorbed that we don’t
even realize that children are literally
starving to death on the other side of
the planet.
Hopefully those of us that live in
“wealthy” western countries will step up
to the plate and aid those in need, and
hopefully this crisis will also help us
to understand that we need to prepare
for the day when things get difficult in
our own nations too.
This article was first published at
The Economic Collapse
Copyright ©
2017
The Economic Collapse
