The Importance Of Hunger

Hunger is defined as the lack of food whether in quantity or quality, where it is no more sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, or contains adverse substances, or it is unacceptable within a given culture; and if the accessibility of such food in ways that are unsustainable and interfere with the enjoyment of other human rights. (The Rome Declaration and Plan of Action, 1996)

Hunger combat is addressed in the U.N. as the Right to Adequate Food. Adequate food definition has been a debate world-wide and universal agreement to the term has remained elusive. This was defined in The Rome Declaration and Plan of Action of 1996 as the “right to adequate food is achieved when every man, woman and child, alone or in community, has

The money required to obtain adequate food should be at a level that would not compromise other basic human rights or needs.

Hunger has various reasons and impacts that the international community represented by the United Nations tried to eradicate and developed many strategies, all the latter will be discussed in this report.

One of the first major famines recorded in history is the Russian famine of 1921. This famine started after World War I and what triggered its breakout was economic instability cause by the war and also the instability caused by civil war in Russia. Along with the severe lack of food, droughts also occurred frequently. This state of critical food insecurity and lack of water caused the death of 6 million people. However, there were signs that a famine was about to occur even before the First World War. Peasants and farmers were relied upon for growing crops and producing food for everyone, but the grains they produced were bought from them by the government at an unfairly low price. As a result, the farmers withheld their crop production, and that led to the government taking the food by force and even confiscating the farmers’ own food. The government refused aid from outside the country and that drove the people to starvation. (Russian famine of 1921,

It was caused by natural disasters and instability in the economy because of changes in agriculture. During this period there was a movement in China called the Great Leap Forward. The Great Leap forward was started as an attempt to industrialize and modernize China by collectivized agriculture and letting the government own all the properties in the country. Many farmers were pulled away from their farming work and made to work in industries for the production f iron and steel. The people owned nothing and they were supposed to be in the care of the government. Like the previous examples mentioned, the government in China abused this power and oppressed the people. Yang Jisheng, a Chinese journalist, even mentioned that people starved to death when grain houses were mere steps away. Apart from the Great Leap Forward, changes in agriculture had a large effect on the crop yield. Crops in fields were planted very close together under the pretense that that would help in the production of more grains. This had the complete opposite effect, as plants crowded together could not grow as properly. Moreover, the Great Sparrow Campaign was started, in which citizens were permitted and encouraged to kill sparrows that came near their crops. This, in turn, triggered a radical increase and spread of certain insects that are eaten only by the sparrows. The spread of these insects coupled by the crowding of plants caused