1 child every 10 seconds

[AliceA2021]

1 child dies every second in the world of starvation. Most in sub saharian Africa. That's 3.1 million children per year. Somalia has the highest rate of starving children in the world.

You probably know about Gaza since on the news daily. Starvation of children in other countries continues and at a higher rate.

Why don't we care more? The sheer numbers in some countries Somalia, Yeman, Sudan.

Is it a problem that cannot be sorted. War, high birth rate, low food production.

AIBU that the world's doesn't care for most of these children?

People give personally what they can, which is quite a lot of aid per year.
Real change would occur if attitudes changed within the society and government of the starving countries.

Access to birth control, health care and education would go a long way to reducing the populations that don't have enough food, water or infrastructure to support it's people.
Their governments seem more interested in conflict.

Care alone isn't enough, words and feelings don't change anything. I think what we see for the most part are behaviours and belief systems that allow people to rationalise and justify what's going on.

I think causes are multitude but generally revolve around the concentration and wealth and power in the world. Also, the hegemony of humans on the planet, with the aid of technology and cognitive abilities and without natural predators and other controls on population we're in overshoot. It's probably impossible for everyone to live the kind of life that the richest on this planet live today, at least with the kind of values and ideologies which guide how we organise socially and politically which kind of brings us back to power and wealth.

It's kind of why I have massively cooled in terms of my relationship with technology and the kind of science that powers it. We're defining "progress" in terms of what we invent and it's not my idea of progress anymore. Quite the opposite, I think some of it is actually regressing us in terms of our social and political organisation, helping to concentrate power in fewer hands and also distract huge numbers of people from the fact. Entertainment and technology is providing us with a much more complicated and insidious kind of "bread and circus" to keep us occupied. With some luck, the climate and ecological crisis that its causing will collapse the whole mess and leave enough of us alive to build a better human civilisation.

My exact thoughts on this varies whenever I think about it, its such a big and complicated subject, and of course I don't have the time or money to research and be sure of the accuracy of what I feel is going on. It makes me sad to see people look around this world, though, and genuinely feel "this is the best, or thereabouts, that we can do" :-s

There's enough food to go round. There's enough wealth to go round.
The problems lie with corrupt Govts and greed.
Doesn't help any but that is the cause.

Yet they keep having children

education about contraception in the main doesn’t work because without welfare provision your only chance to surviving old age is having lots of children who will support you.

I think people do care but there is realistically very little anyone on an individual level can do about it.
Of course its awful knowing children are dying from a preventable cause however I have to focus my energy (what little I have) on my own children and family. I am not physically or financially in a position to start a battle to help children on the other side of the world, I have enough going on in my own small part of the world to deal with.

Everything we do is to the detriment of all other species on the planet. We are overpopulating at an alarming rate.
At present about 220,000 more people are born than die each day. So, there's another million and a half of us each week.
In turn, that leads to more of the planet being covered in concrete as houses, schools, hotels, hospitals, etc, etc are built.
We have manipulated ourselves into believing we have more right to survive than every other creature. We are conquering diseases to ensure we live twice as long as perhaps we were meant to.
No other creature "needs" holidays, employment places, trips to the seaside, electricity, vehicles to move around, sweatshops, etc, etc.
Our entire existence is just wrong. And no, I'm not in the queue to refuse healthcare, employment, electricity....

I'm with you OP. I read "The life you can save" by Peter Singer in my early 20s and it really changed my perspective on the world and on effective altruism. He does a great Ted talk on this subject.

What a strange post. Of course people care, but apart from donating what money we are each able to afford, there’s pretty much nothing we can do. As individuals we donate money, and as a government the UK gives money too, but beyond that we have no control over how that money is spent, and whether it actually makes a tangible difference.

There’s no point shouting at us on MN. We’re powerless.

So agree about overpopulation and build, build, build.

So agree full stop.

I'll look for this.

Thank you.

Ultimately, these countries need to do more for their own countries. The amount of money and resources that are sent to these counties is huge. It is corruption in these Govs that are causing this.

We never cared. Not for long. Thats the problem.

Every now and then something big happens, and we all get upset about it, sign some petitions, post on instagram, until we move onto the next thing.

Also because cognitive dissonance.

And because selfish. There was a thread here the other week about the horrendous working conditions women face to produce flowers to be shipped to the UK, especially for valentines day. There was a fucking pile on that people were still going to buy flowers, because fuck those women, I deserve my shit roses from Tesco from my husband.

Well people like Jeff Bezos could end this problem with no consequence to themselves. They actively choose not to, which in my eyes is manslaughter.

And how would they do that exactly?

oh that told us then, didn't it.

What do you want from a) this thread and b) world governments / NGOs?

I would prefer that nobody died unnecessarily (starvation, war, senseless murder, accident) and i would prefer that everyone can live their best lives.

My circle of things i care about centres on my DCs, widens to my DH and my parents & siblings, widens to my more distant relations and friends, to people in my community that i live in, country, etc etc.

I pay my taxes in the hope that my government won't squander them (!) and i donate to organisations that either catch my eye (something i care about) or there is a specific appeal in reaction to a war/natural disaster.

But do i sit at home wailing and gnashing my teeth because there is famine in Sudan? Frankly, no. Why would i?

I am going to be really brutal and portably shot down (rightly so).

I think a lot of people find coping hard... so caring about everything is impossible.

It's the same for climate change - it's just too big to put on peoples plates.

Unfortunately they can't, despite this sort of thing being oft-repeated.

These famines are not caused solely by lack of wealth, or corruption, or poor harvests, or overpopulation, or over zealous exports etc. There are complex and multi-faceted issues, not all of which can be solved by spending money.

Exactly. I actually don't understand why people still insist on having 3-4 children, or more. I see it on here all them time - posts like 'should I have a third child, a fourth?' No, you shouldn't. We really don't need so many humans! That goes for everyone everywhere, regardless of which country they live in. Stop having so many kids!

They can't particularly, though.

In many of these regions, the leaders are not helping their own people, they are exploiting them in one way or another. They have authoritarian and corrupt political systems where an elite dominate.

What are governments and aid agencies going to do about this? They can try and apply some pressure but mostly it is not very effective.

Take out the political leaders? Ethically questionable in many ways, and almost always not very effective. In fact often leading to even worse people taking over.

In general a fairly stable economy is needed to prevent this kind of mass starvation, depending on influxes of aid is never going to really solve the issue. Solutions need to be largely domestic. But much of Africa is hobbled economically due to over-regulation and corruption, as well as war and tribal conflict.

It's difficult, but I don't think outside aid has ever really resulted in a lasting, stable way out of these kinds of problems. And while I don't think I would be happy with the results of not helping, I also have a suspicion that the kind of outside aid that comes from the west can create a situation which ultimately props up the political regimes that are keeping the situation so dire.

You may think that's a cruel horrible way to think, op, but I think insisting on measures that make us in the west feel better and more virtuous, if they are actually exacerbating the underlying problems, is pretty selfish too.

My news feed today -
Dozens shot dead in Papua new guinea ambush.
Torrential rain kills dozens in Bolivia.
Despair in Ukraine front line towns.
"Without painkillers we leave patients to scream for hours"
Gaza likened to holocaust.

Tell me what we're supposed to do.

The factors that are affecting Somalia particularly are:

• drought (climate change)
• crop failures (see above)
• pests (locusts)
• conflict / civil war between the govt / US and the Islamic State militias - the government is not actually in control of large swathes of the country and obviously this has huge logistical repercussions.
• huge numbers of displaced people (see: conflict and drought)
• import restrictions, meaning price of food is higher

This is notwithstanding the wider economic impacts of COVID-19, which are still being felt around the world.

The solution really is not as simple as Jeff Bezos bunging them a couple of billion.

I agree, it is a desperately sad situation and I didn't realise it was as high as that! Those poor children.

I don't know what the solution is though due to the corruption of governments and some aid organisations.

Perhaps ask the questions what happens to all the foreign aid?