Give Us ... Our Daily Bread
Unless you were watching closely, you would have missed it. Seventy-five years ago this week, the United Nations Charter was released to the world on June 26, 1945. World War Two had just ended and the world had experienced enough bloodshed to last a generation – the most violent era in world history. It was signed by participating members in San Francisco – an exercise of military exhaustion as much as hope.
Ultimately, the Charter wasn’t so much a military, political or economic document but a humanitarian one, calling for the refinement of humanity’s collective character in respect to race, religion, sex and language. A crucial element to this global thrust was the requirement of proper nutrition in a world recovering from war and facing a crisis of millions of refugees. It was in that year that the UN created the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to achieve this end. If very first meeting was held in Quebec City.
How is the Charter faring now, all these years later in the midst of a pandemic? If there was a time when the world rose to the challenge of feeding billions, it isn’t the present.
While it’s true that. COVID-19 seems everywhere these days, there is another threat that could cause far more death. By the end of this year, the United Nations, despite FAO, estimates that some 265 million people will be on the brink of starvation. Yes, Africa stands at the top of the list of continents on the brink of food security disaster, but there are others in Asia and Central America.
The causes aren’t just COVID-related, and include conflict, climate change, economic shocks, pestilence and forced displacements. The Democratic Republic of Congo has 15 million people in acute hunger and on the verge of death – a disaster made more confounding by the possible resurgence of Ebola.
What is the most food insecure nation in the world? It’s Yemen, where 53% of its population is in food crisis and near starvation. That’s over half the country, thanks, in most part, to three years of civil war.
It might surprise many to learn that Afghanistan is on the verge of something devastating. When some 138,000 refugees returned from Iran and Pakistan in a three-month period, the rise in population subsequently left 11.3 million people in critical food insecurity.
And it’s not just all about helping people, but assisting those agencies responsible for providing food security around the world. With COVID-19 hammering national governments, cutbacks in relief and development likely mean that feeding organizations will have to pull back from their normal levels of assistance. The World food Program warns that if this occurs, some 300,000 people a day will perish for lack of food – a catastrophic problem.
The response to humanitarian emergencies lies at the heart of the United Nations mandate and its Charter and when people think of its efforts, health and food are its core. COVID-19 will confront the Charter in one of the greatest challenges in its history. While individual nations concentrate on the own food supply chains, the UN must think of everyone, of every threat, of every possible solution on a global scale. The Charter is now as vital as it was 75 years ago this week.