Wednesday, 8 May 2013

A Case of Global Mismanagement.

I was thinking about poverty today, and I remembered a chilling statistic I read recently. Imagine this. Seriously, imagine this:

A five-year-old-child is sitting in the baking sun. He owns nothing; his parents own nothing. He has no prospects to think about because he has no future. He has no strength to flick the flies away because he’s weak from having had nothing to eat. And he isn’t going to get anything to eat. There is nothing to eat. He doesn’t know why this is happening; it’s just life. All he knows is that it hurts. But not for much longer. He’ll be dead soon, and then it will stop hurting. That’s the good news.

Multiply that by approximately 150,000 and you have the situation in Somalia over the two years of the famine there.

Don’t you think we humans could find a better way of running our bloody planet?

Yes, I know it’s complex. And yes, I know there are many people and agencies doing their damndest to help. And yes, I know their efforts are often hampered and the situation exacerbated by people with political ends to fight over. But I still think we could do a lot better, if only we would develop the universal will to share.

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