The writer of the Letter to the Hebrews assures his readers that “Faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” I live in that faith.

I live with the assurance that we can end hunger in our lifetime. I live in the conviction that the statistics below can be changed to reflect the love of God.

Hunger is the greatest obscenity of our age. The following facts are a graphic indicator of the immorality of those of us who refuse to stand up for those most in need.

Working together, we can achieve a world without hunger. The facts that follow show we have a lot of work to do. But, I have the faith that working together we can make it happen.

• World hunger is projected to reach a historic high in 2009 with 1,020 million people going hungry every day.
  
• “A dangerous mix of the global economic slowdown combined with stubbornly high food prices in many countries has pushed some 100 million more people than last year into chronic hunger and poverty,” said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
  
• The number of hungry people increased between 1995-97 and 2004-06 in all regions except Latin America and the Caribbean. But even in this region, gains in hunger reduction have been reversed as a result of high food prices and the current global economic downturn.
  
• The urban poor will probably face the most severe problems in coping with the global recession, because lower export demand and reduced foreign direct investment are more likely to hit urban jobs harder. But rural areas will not be spared. Millions of urban migrants will have to return to the countryside, forcing the rural poor to share the burden in many cases.
  
• While food prices in world markets declined over the past months, domestic prices in developing countries came down more slowly. They remained on average 24 percent higher in real terms by the end of 2008 compared to 2006. For poor consumers, who spend up to 60 percent of their incomes on staple foods, this means a strong reduction in their effective purchasing power. It should also be noted that while they declined, international food commodity prices are still 24 percent higher than in 2006 and 33 percent higher than in 2005.
  
• The number of hungry has increased from 825 million people in 1995-97, to 857 million in 2000-02 and 873 million in 2004-06.

“Jesus comes in our human life as the hungry one, the other, hoping to be fed with the bread of our life. . . In loving and serving, we prove that we have been created in the likeness of God.“  ~~ Mother Teresa

All of us have the opportunity to be the “good news” to those around us. Our world is filled with those hoping to be fed with the bread of our life. We don’t have to get into a pulpit or hand out religious tracts to preach the love of God. All we have to do is to reflect the love we ourselves have already received. We do that by loving and serving the God who comes to us as the hungry one.

The following short prayer is from well-known Christian minister and author, Max Lucado. Although brief, the prayer is powerfully focused and gets to the heart of the Gospel. It is reprinted here from for they shall be fed, edited by Ronald J. Sider.

Holy Father,

        Grant us eyes to see, a heart to feel, tears to weep, and courage to go. As you have given to us, let us now give to others.

                                                                 Amen

An Ethiopian News Forum post states that the battle against hunger is being lost in the Horn of Africa. In a post from Nairobi, Mehret Tesfaye writes that the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) has said the world is slowly losing the battle against hunger in the Horn of Africa.

The IFRC issued the stark warning as it renewed its call for support to assist nearly 2.5 million food insecure people in Djibouti, Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia with emergency food, water and recovery activities.

 

“The battle against persistent, chronic malnutrition and hunger is at risk of slowly being lost. Our message to the world is simple: in the Horn of Africa, hunger, a result of chronic, major deficit in calorie intake, kills,” Dr. Asha Mohammed, head of IFRC’s Eastern Africa zone said in a statement issued in Nairobi on Wednesday.

 

During 2008 IFRC reached and now has continued to assist more than 465,000 people in the four countries. But, serious lack of resources and adequate assistance has already resulted in conflicts between neighboring communities in Kenya, confirming earlier IFRC warnings.

 

The organization said the coordinated work of authorities and the Red Cross Red Crescent in these very regions has been further complicated by outbreaks of Acute Watery Diarrhea and cholera.

 

“These are a result of increased concentration of semi-nomadic populations and their animals around the few water points that still function following several years of prolonged drought in the region and poor sanitation,” it said.

 

Clashes have taken place in Red Cross operation areas around Mandera, in northern Kenya and on the fluid borders with Ethiopia and Somalia. It said lives have been lost and people displaced during these conflicts that risk being replicated elsewhere in the Horn of Africa.

 

Across the region desperate pastoralists converge with their exhausted livestock from long distances towards the few remaining water sources.

 

“After having walked for days, people and cattle have to wait an additional three to four days before being able to access an already overused borehole. We need the means to do more,” says Abbas Gullet, secretary general of the Kenya Red Cross.

 

His message was echoed by his Ethiopian counterpart Fasika Kabede who said: “Unless we are able to offer people sufficient aid and livelihood alternatives, their situation will only worsen. We have the choleracapacity and the skill to do more. But we need more resources to continue this battle.”

 

In Djibouti, the IFRC is teaming up with WFP to assist some 50,000 destitute pastoralists affected by four consecutive droughts. In Somalia, where the WHO estimates that in 50 percent of under-five mortality malnutrition is an underlying factor, the Red Crescent is ready to add eight health clinics to its existing network of 50 mobile and fix health facilities.

 

“In Somalia child mortality rates due to Acute Respiratory Infections (ARI), diarrhoea, measles and malaria are among the highest in the world. These are further worsened by poor nutrition. We need to reach these children before it’s too late,” said Dr. Ahmed M. Hassan, president of the Somali Red Crescent.

 

“Food assistance is only a fraction of the solution to peoples’ problems. Food-aid is critical but its impact ends as soon as it gets digested,” said Roger Bracke who is leading IFRC’s work in the Horn of Africa.

 

“This operation urgently needs more support to enable it to assist the worst affected to develop alternative and additional sources of income that will allow them to become self-sustainable without total reliance on animals or rains.”

[The following is an excerpt from a United Nations report describing the growing number of hungry around the globe. I included the first part of the report in my last post.]

    Josette Sheeran of the World Food Program, another UN food agency based in Rome, said hungry people rioted in at least 30 countries last year. Most notably, soaring food prices led to deadly riots in Haiti and the overthrow of the prime minister.

    ”A hungry world is a dangerous world,” Sheeran said. “Without food, people have only three options: They riot, they emigrate, or they die. None of these are acceptable options.”

    Even though prices have retreated from their mid-2008 highs, they are still “stubbornly high” in some domestic markets, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization. On average, food prices were 24 percent higher in real terms at the end of 2008 compared with 2006, it said.

    ”Malnutrition kills through the fact that it weakens the immune system of a child,” said Andrei Engstrand-Neacsu, a Nairobi-based spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in East Africa. Some 22 million of the 1 billion hungry people counted by the UN are in the drought-stricken Horn of Africa, he said.

    Engstrand-Neacsu said he had just returned from a corner of southern Ethiopia on the Kenyan border where the food situation is dire, and had been speaking to a family who lost a child to malaria in February. The parents said they were told their son couldn’t be saved because he was malnourished.

    Engstrand-Neacsu called on donors to act before “skeletal African children are shown on the television screen at dinnertime” in the West.

    The number of hungry people is estimated to have reached 1.02 billion - up 11 percent from last year’s 915 million, the Food and Agriculture Organization said. The agency said it based its estimate on analysis by the US Department of Agriculture.

    The UN agency said that the hunger rate is rising, too - that is, the number of hungry people is growing more quickly than the world population. Officials did not provide a rate but said the trend began two years ago.

    Almost all the world’s undernourished live in developing countries. But all regions of the world have registered two-digit increases in hunger from last year.

    The world’s most populous region, Asia and the Pacific, has the largest number of hungry people - 642 million, up 10.5 percent from last year. Sub-Saharan Africa registers 265 million undernourished, an 11.8 percent increase. Even in the developed world, undernourishment is a growing concern, with 15 million in all and a 15.4 percent increase, the sharpest rise around the world, the UN agency said.

The following news article is reprinted from the World News Forum, and points out the severity of the global security concerns I mentioned in my last posting.

ROME — The global financial meltdown has pushed the ranks of the world’s hungry to a record 1 billion, a grim milestone that poses a threat to peace and security, U.N. food officials said Friday.

Because of war, drought, political instability, high food prices and poverty, now affects one in six people, by the United Nations’ estimate.

The financial meltdown has compounded the crisis in what the head of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization called a “devastating combination for the world’s most vulnerable.”

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the agency said.

“No part of the world is immune,” FAO’s Director-General Jacques Diouf said. “All world regions have been affected by the rise of food insecurity.”

The crisis is a humanitarian one, but also a political issue. Officials presenting the new estimates in Rome sought to stress the link between hunger and instability, noting that soaring prices for staples, such as rice, triggered riots in the developing world last year.

Josette Sheeran of the world food Program, another U.N. food agency based in Rome, said hungry people rioted in at least 30 countries last year. Most notably, soaring food prices led to deadly riots in Haiti and the overthrow of the prime minister.

Over the past decade of working with the world’s most hungry and destitute I have learned that wherever you find hunger and poverty, you also find HIV/AIDS. The three are an inseparable trinity of horror.

HIV/AIDS isn’t caused by poverty. Hopefully we all know that. But, the poor are especially vulnerable to this sexually transmitted disease, and AIDS and hunger are closely linked in a number of ways. 

We live in a global economy where every nation’s economic health impacts all the others. The global AIDS crisis has already devastated the economies of a growing number of poor and developing countries. The global financial crisis has only made their situation even more precarious.

This impacts all of us. For instance, due to its impact on economies and governments, the CIA has identified the global AIDS crisis as a threat to the national security of the US.

Any serious effort on behalf of the poor and hungry has to also address the global AIDS crisis as well. Working to help limit the spread of HIV/AIDS is an important facet of helping to end hunger in our lifetime.

The truth about hunger is as simple as it is ugly. Over 960 million of our human family are in a daily struggle to find enough food to eat while we who claim to love God ignore their plight.

There is a major disconnect between what we think we believe and how we live. Until we get our heads on straight (that means aligned with our hearts), the number of those dying every day from hunger and related causes will remain the same.

Ending hunger begins with loving one another as God loves us. In the New Testament, the writer of the First Letter of John put it very simply. His words cannot be misunderstood.

We do not allow those we love to die of hunger. Every child that dies of hunger is an indictment against those of us who says, “I love God.”

We love because He first loved us.

If someone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for the one who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen.

And this commandment we have from Him, that the one who loves God should love his brother also.