Oxfam, a global aid organization has exterminated G7 nations for having pledged a small amount to combat the global food shortage.
The G7 countries are “Millions of people starving and the planet being cooked,” global aid group Oxfam’s head of inequality policy Max Lawson has declared in a statement issued on Tuesday condemning the mere $4.5 billion the industrialized nations have pledged to fight the worst hunger crisis in decades.
Lawson argued that “At least $28.5 Billion More” was needed to “Finance food and agricultural investments in order to stop hunger and meet the enormous UN humanitarian appeals gap.” G7 countries have pledged about $14 billion to fight global food insecurity this year, including the amount pledged on Tuesday.
However, it’s not clear how much of that money has actually been distributed to its intended recipients. While the US Congress passed a major weapons and aid package for Ukraine last month that included $5 billion to “fight global hunger,” none of the hunger money had been sent out as of this past weekend, according to Politico.
With even wealthy G7 countries facing economic difficulties in the wake of two years of Covid-19 shutdowns, the Oxfam rep suggested there were other ways they could fight hunger among the world’s most vulnerable. “They could also cancel the debts of nations in distress” or “Tax the profits from food and energy corporations that exceed their income,” he argued, or “ban biofuels,” which divert crops that could be used for food to producing energy instead.
I think they should have dealt with the poverty and environmental degradation that drives this hunger. This was despite the fact that they were able to.
Lawson noted that while the world faces its worst hunger crisis “A generation,” the rich have seen their profits soar at the same time. “Covid-19 saw a surge in profits for corporations and billionaires have been created in less time than 23 years.,” he said, noting that the food industry alone has produced 62 new billionaires and calling the hunger emergency “big business.”
The UN World Food Program begged the G7 nations to “Get on board now before record levels of hunger continue and more people are left starving” last week, declaring that it had a plan – “the most ambitious in WFP’s history” – requiring $22.2 billion to “Both save lives and help build resilience in 152 millions of people by 2022.”
It’s not clear where they obtained that figure, as the G7 countries themselves have said that 323 million people are on the brink of starvation because of this year’s dire food crisis, with 950 million expected to go hungry in total in 2022.
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While the G7 countries have been reluctant to open their wallets to solve world hunger, tens of billions have been pledged in economic and lethal aid to Ukraine, where the war has interrupted a wheat harvest that typically accounts for a fifth of the world’s “high-grade” wheat and 7% of all wheat. The UN’s food program normally buys half of its grain from the country.
Record droughts all over the globe are exacerbated by the current supply crisis. East Africa is particularly affected. Oxfam estimates that one person will starve every 48 seconds in Ethiopia Kenya Somalia. These countries are experiencing the worst drought in 70 years.
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