UN Cuts School Children's Meals

http://www.smh.com.au/ffximage/2008/04/23/haiti_wideweb__470x313,0.jpg

Helping hand … students in Haiti rely on aid programs for their school lunch.
Photo: AFP

Jeremy Lovell in London
April 24, 2008
A "SILENT tsunami" unleashed by costlier food is threatening 100million people, the United Nations has warned, revealing that its World Food Program has begun cutting the provision of school meals to some of the world's poorest children as the global food-price crisis worsens.

Aid bodies said there was enough food to go round but the key was to help the poor afford it, and urged producing nations not to curb exports to stockpile food at home.

In London, the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, said Britain would seek changes to EU biofuels targets if it was shown that planting crops for fuel was driving up food prices - a day after the bloc stood by its plans to boost biofuel use.

Britain has also pledged $US900million ($947 million) to help the UN World Food Program alleviate its immediate problems and address longer-term solutions to "help put food on the table for nearly a billion people going hungry across the world".

In a meeting of experts which Mr Brown called on Tuesday to discuss the crisis, the head of the World Food Program, Josette Sheeran, said a "silent tsunami" threatened to plunge more than 100 million people on every continent into hunger.

"This is the new face of hunger; the millions of people who were not in the urgent hunger category six months ago but now are," she said.

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http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/un-cuts-school-childrens-meals/2008/04/23/1208743039992.html

I have no love for the UN. No particular hatred either.

Back when I was a youngster ( 3+ decades ago) I knew enough to predict what the world would suffer because of over-population. Everything I dreaded has happened. I haven't contributed more people to an over-populated world.

Did anybody else ever read Jonathan Schell's "lifeboat' articles in the New Yorker magazine long ago?

No need to feel guilty. Too many people have too many kids even when they can't take care of them.

Are you suggesting something here?

Maybe folks in the "industrial" countries are using too much.

What it appears you are suggesting goes into very wicked corridors.

Do we throw the children overboard?

Maybe it's those traveling first class that are the problem.

You can only work to prevent that happening in the future. As it is now, we have countless starving throughout the world. We shouldn't let them starve for the lack of foresight of their parents' generation.

There is a direct correlation between the average educational level of a country's women and its birth rate.

If the average woman in a country has the equivalent of a high school education, that country's birth rate falls to 2 children per woman or lower. Examples are Western Europe and the industrialized countries of Asia.

If the average woman in a country is illiterate, that country's birth rate is five to seven children per woman. Haiti is one of those countries.

When women are well-informed, they choose to have fewer children.

Self-righteous Westerners who tut-tut about people in the Third World having too many children should instead give to organizations that promote education for women and girls, and meanwhile do what they can to feed those children who already exist.

Lydia leftcoast, I agree with you 100%.

As to the others: yawn. This Native American is too old to feel guilty for being born into a 'first world' nation. I haven't done wrong by anybody nor have anybody in my whole family.

people in thirdworld nations who have 10 children in non-arable lands with no economies or viable governments will just have to learn the hard way. Nobody gave my native American ancestors anything at all. In fact they took away our country in what is now called Cochise County Arizona. On my GA born father's side were Creek and Cherokee Indians.