This past week, the World Bank began its Spring Meetings with the primary focus: The food crisis.
In an effort to visualize the too-often invisible victims of this crisis, the World Bank installed a "World Hunger Clock" that counts not the hour but the number of hungry and malnourished people as it rises second by second.
At the time of writing, this same clock on the World Bank's website reads:
935, 269, 800
In his opening remarks, World Bank president Robert Zoellick stated that 44 million people entered into poverty since last June and that, “If the Food Price Index rises by just another 10%, we estimate that another 10 million people will fall into extreme poverty where people live on less than $1.25 a day,” Zoellick said. “The world can do something about this.”
The World Bank recommends multilateralism, working with world governments through development banks and the G20 on new projects for "safety-nets." The World Bank proposes more information, transparency, and oversight on and investment in food production, distribution, and purchasing.
We know how these institutions function. We've seen the results, and consequences, for decades. And we've seen how calls for action to end poverty and hunger- including the monumental Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations - are bolstered internationally at the idea stage then strangled by bureaucracy and drowned in apathy.
As Juan José Hoyas, journalist from El Colombiano writes, (my translation), "It is a cruel paradox: while thousands of millions of people suffer from hunger, a few businesspeople get richer buying food products and speculating with their prices. On July 16th, 2010, one single British investment fund bought 7% of the world production of cocoa in one day....And meanwhile, in the elegant streets of Washington, bankers, politicians, and magnates walk each day under the Hunger Clock, without realizing that its numbers continue jumping."
For me, the solution really comes down to ethics, it comes down to the values we learn as children - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. The same ethic that Jesus taught in his life and words - Love your neighbor as yourself.
How easy it is to forget that that "victim", that "other", that number, could very well be you. How simple to ignore your neighbor when that neighbor is in Tunisia or Indonesia or Bolivia, places so foreign and exotic. So far from our reality.
Can we really do something to change this situation? Absolutely. But its about time we realize the change cannot come from a clock or a speech if it is not infused with sincere conviction. It can't be filtered through systems that are designed to benefit the few and disadvantage the many. Poverty cannot be eradicated through agreements made among rich governments interested in their "national security". Hunger cannot be ameliorated by financial institutions with profit motives.
Change can only happen when people commit to the interpersonal ethic to treat others as they would be treated. To see each "neighbor" - near or far - not as a victim or a number but as a mirror of ourself.
And we are now: 935, 272, 813.
