Choosing Who to Save
One rarely thinks that Eenie, meenie, minie, mo is a game to be played when looking at the global food crisis, let alone when staring into the eyes of malnourished children. Therefore when you’re faced with immense amounts of people in need, but you can only help a few, who do you, choose to help?
The scale of poverty is global, while the dilemma however is becoming more local and even more personal, as illustrated in the Guardian article today; In a time of famine, who should be saved?. The article illustrates the Ethiopian nations growing disparity and almost seemingly prejuditual food price scale. The questions raised in a time when the food crisis continues to spread across the globe, thus leaves one to ask the very personal question; Could I choose who should be saved?
No one wants to be the savior so to speak, but the reality of it is you cannot save everyone…can you? It brings me back to my first time in Russia in the mid-late 90’s, I was a struggling student I had surely seen people in need and begging on the street, but it was different, I knew they had no other option there was no pension, most I saw were elderly and disabled….and I began to give a bit here and there…all I could think of was how cheap it was (6,000 rubles to a $1, it was less than $3 to get a bottle of good vodka), then one day a friend stopped me and said stop, what are you doing you cant save them all and your going to run out of money over guilt. So I did I stopped, they were right I couldn’t save them all. But if I had begun and had to choose one who would I have chosen? the guy with no legs or arms that marveled me just be the shear fact he managed to get around, the old woman who looked near blind with the small disabled child, the old man who tried to sing sweet songs but was never on key?
Thinking back I am not sure I could have picked and if I had begun that way maybe I would have never even tried to save anyone so to speak. So if I were lined up in front of a bunch of starving children would I be able to choose if I were forced to play favorites?
Part 1 of 2
August 29th, 2008 at 1:15 am
[…] As a child of the 80’s when the word famine is mentioned I can distinctively hear my mother telling me to ear my entire plate of my despised broccoli, because “there are starving children in Ethiopia”. I know wonder if more than 20 years later I will soon find myself uttering those same words at my next meal. Once again the children of Ethiopia are starving on a grand scale, and while they may not be suffering on the immense scale of the 80’s, and be drawing the critical mass cries of support from the international community to bring forth the calls of Live Aid and Band Aid. The famine reached its peak with the drought of 1984, which at its height took more than a million lives. Sadly Ethiopia historically and continually remains one of the world’s most starved nations. The current plight of famine and malnutrition in Ethiopia, which is caused in part by; drought, various natural plagues, a substantial population increase, and the armed conflict in the Somali region; has been compounded by global inflation which has doubled the price of food. Regardless of the historical famines, the issue today cannot be disregarded as according to UNICEF estimates some 6 million children under five may be at risk of malnutrition in Ethiopia. While Ethiopia became the face of famine for a generation, it is but one country struggling to provide the basic necessities for millions of men, women and children. As sadly the children of Ethiopia are not alone, the exact number of children across the globe who are severely malnourished and undernourished is unknown, however according to the FAO State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006 report, there are some 854 million people around the globe who do not have enough to eat. The fight against famine is global and regardless of what state the crisis is in, millions of children are in critical need of food aid. At current it is estimated that some 7 million Ethiopians rely on food aid for survival, and while food aid it obviously not new, it is only a band aid to a larger problem. The crisis in Ethiopia, which is significantly affected by the low levels of investment in food deficit areas and skyrocketing food prices, has left an imbalance in the population. As mentioned in Choosing Who to Save, this is causing an uneven balance of the country’s population, leaving urban Ethiopians to benefit at the cost of their rural counterparts. […]