Poverty, you have heard of this term very often haven’t you? Well, it’s sad that in this era of technological advancement, booming fashion trends and the neck to neck competition of brands to maximise profit, there still exists a large number of people who cannot afford, rather are underprivileged to such an extent, that they cannot get proper food and water to sustain themselves.
Nearly half of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 (Dh9.18) a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 (Dh4.59) a day. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.
It’s so disturbing that world governments have time to talk about nuclear power, sending people to Mars and further improvement of lifestyle, yet they fail to find time to talk about poverty; about those people who can’t feed their children, who live at other’s mercy to get, not money; but daily food.
According to Food Aid Foundation: “Some 795 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That’s about one in nine people on Earth. The vast majority of the world’s hungry people live in developing countries, where 12.9 per cent of the population is undernourished.”
Why so? Don’t you think that our planet has enough food to feed all its inhabitants? Surprisingly, our planet has more than what is required to feed all the organisms that prevail on its surface. Then why do we have a large amount of poverty stricken population? We need to find the answer and a solution for this problem together.
- The reader is a student based in the UAE
