The reports of the United Nations speak of the great problem of humanity, which the international organization is trying with great difficulty to solve by 2030: poverty and hunger. Author: rebellious youth
Some ominous news on this day comes from the capital of Sweden, where the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) is based. An important research institution indicated that global arms spending in 2022 reached its highest level in eight years, at least $2.2 trillion, or 2.2 percent of the world’s gross domestic product (GDP), with an increase of 3.7 times. percent. European countries have greatly added to them.
Nothing has changed in terms of which countries top the list of top spenders: the US, China, Russia, India and Saudi Arabia, which account for 63 percent of that waste, as arms production contributes nothing to satisfying production. the needs of Mankind, but at the same time they are instruments of destruction and death in a world where imbalance and confrontation are “daily bread” that does not feed.
Although the trend towards armament is general, the SIPRI report points out that the Russian military operation in Ukraine is the reason for such an increase in military budgets, which may be obvious. However, this is not the only armed conflict in the world, and it is clear that the United States and the countries that follow it in the so-called Western world are engaging in other clashes that would also revive their economies through military spending, like the Case of Provocations against China.
US spending rose 0.7 percent to $877 billion, while Russian spending was able to grow 9.2 percent to $86.4 billion, and in the European Union, Finland was bigger at 36 percent and recently joined the Organization. the North Atlantic Treaty (NATO); Lithuania, 27; and Sweden with 12; as well as Poland from 11, according to Telesur, citing a SIPRI report.
In contrast to these costs, which are not only unproductive but also destructive, the reports of the United Nations speak of the great problem of humanity, which the international organization is trying with great difficulty to solve by 2030: poverty and hunger.
The United Nations report on global hunger numbers has risen to 828 million in 2021, which means there are 46 million more since 2020 and 150 million since the COVID-19 pandemic.
How the current inflation, which consumes a world that can barely consume, has had an impact remains to be seen in the statistics, but it leaves the tables empty or does not reach what is needed every day, and therefore stomachs with ever-increasing food insecurity and malnutrition .
FAO claims that about 2.3 billion people in the world29.3 percent) were moderately or severely food insecure in 2021, i.e. 350 million more people than before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Near 924 million people (ie. 11.7 percent of the world’s population) are facing serious levels of food insecurity, which means an increase 207 million with an interval of two years.
However, the geographical distribution is not precisely in those areas of waste of wealth, although its population also suffers from the consequences of inflation with a decrease in living standards.
More than half of the hungry live in Asia and more than a third in sub-Saharan Africa. In Latin America and the Caribbean 7.4 percent of the world’s population is hungry.
Add to this panorama of extreme injustice the fact that poverty affects more than just food. More than 50 percent of the poor have no electricity or clean fuel for cooking; almost 40 percent do not have drinking water and sanitation; and over 30 percent are also homeless.
Thus, when bombings are carried out in Europe or Syria, the Palestinian people are annihilated in the territories occupied by apartheid Israel, when conflicts flare up in Africa or tensions rise in Asia, the oligarchs of the military industry fill their pockets, and a large part of the earthlings empty their stomachs.
Source: Juventud Rebelde