Escape from fear

Source: Reuters
Recently arrived refugees from Somalia prepare to bury the body of Sahro at the Kobe refugee camp

(ES)

We all have fled and hidden sometime in life.

For many millions of people, fleeing is not an option, is a matter of survival. No choice, no alternatives. For them to escape is the only option and involves difficult decisions. They have lost everything, yet, very reluctantly, have a huge responsibility and power, which forces them to decide on the death of their children and their elders.
Decide who undertakes the journey through the desert for weeks with little food or water, exposed to attack by hyenas and armed militias. Deciding which child is more likely to arrive alive to the refugee camps. A superhuman power in the hands of a humble people. The same power that allows them to move forward after seeing their children and relatives to die on the road. And despite this immense power, can do nothing when, after the hardship of the road, having reached the goal, as in a dream, it vanishes in their hands the lives of children who managed to arrive. Exhausted, dying. The sad toll that pay those who have nothing and need everything.

Facing certain death, fear of losing their lives, is perhaps the greatest fear of human being.
Millions of people in the Horn of Africa are faced daily with their fears and harshly survive without losing hope of winning the battle to the death. That is their power. That is their lesson to the rest of the world.

People in rich countries also flee and hide from their fears. Fear of a reality too complex and hard to face it. The fear of losing their privileges. Fear of an empty and meaningless life. Escape those fears also requires making decisions, choosing among alternatives. Alternatives of life, not of death. Look the other way, build walls, imagining threats, build prejudices, consuming without measure. Human responses that increase the inequality gap. There is still hope, we are taught daily by millions of people living in poverty thresholds. Just have to make the right decisions.

Live without being ashamed of a privileged life. Die without regret not having done anything by the underprivileged.



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The system earns, they die

(ES)

The media repeat like a mantra that the UN has declared famine in different regions of Somalia. They talk of drought and rising prices of staple foods such as triggers, and armed conflict as an element that hinders access to humanitarian aid. But this monotonous chant lulls us until lose our sense of reality.

According to the FAO Cereal supply and demand brief published in July 2011, this UN agency indicates that although much improved prospects for cereal production and supply availabilities have exerted considerable downward pressure on international cereal prices, in June the FAO Cereal Price Index is 39 percent above the corresponding period last year.
FAO’s latest forecast for world cereal production in 2011 stands at nearly 2 313 million tones, 3.3 percent higher than in 2010.
World cereal utilization in 2011/12 is forecast to grow by 1.4 percent from 2010/11.
World cereal trade is forecast to remain close to the previous season’s level.
If grain production increases and demand remains almost the same compared to 2010, why the prices are 39% more expensive than a year ago? Would have to ask hedge funds that speculate on the price of grain in futures markets, financial operations that inflates as a bubble the prices of staple foods for the benefit of large institutional investors.

This increase in prices in international commodity markets have a devastating effect on poor countries that must import most of their food. However, companies such as Compact AS (Norway) and Nutriset SAS (France), continue to import products such as peanuts, milk, oil and sugar to produce therapeutic foods (RUTF) that are distributed in areas of famine without escalating basic food prices seem to affect their business.

According to UNICEF, in its Supply Annual Report 2010, the trading volume of nutritional supplies was $ 117 million. Stand out, among other products, 20,700 tons of therapeutic food (RUTF) purchased during the same year. The demand for this type of food has risen from 3 tons in 2000 to 20,700 tons in 2010, an increase of about 700,000%.
In 2010, UNICEF contracted supplies with Nutriset SAS worth of $ 45.8 million and Compact AS for $ 4.4 million.

As reported Nutriset SAS on its Web site, employs 120 workers, with a turnover of 52 million euros in 2009 and a total purchase budget of 25 million euros (milk, peanuts, oil, sugar, cardboard boxes, etc.). Its production capacity of therapeutic food (RUTF) is 31,000 tons (38,120 tons with a network of producers in different emerging countries). And despite the increased demand and rising raw material prices, leading providers of therapeutic food (RUTF) have reduced prices by 11%.

The ownership of land and natural resources is in the hands of large corporations, so local communities have no assets with which to trade, and also their subsistence economies become more vulnerable to adverse weather becoming more frequent. The occupation of productive land usually requires the displacement of communities that have traditionally lived and exploited its resources. The various militias fighting for control of territory are causing the movement of people, who leave their villages in search of safety. According to the EFA (Education For All) Global Monitoring Report, annual military spending of the rich countries is 1.5 billion USD and is 9 times greater than spending on international aid. Precisely the armament industry in these countries is the one that weapon these militias.

The inhabitants of the world's poorest countries have become the hostages of a system that excludes them, that robs them of their wealth, their hopes and opportunities. The system earns, they die. Every $ donated saves lives. Every $ of donor countries creates wealth to their business conglomerates. Every $ lent to poor countries brings benefits to the big banks. A perverse system that is both the cause and solution of the problem, and is designed to benefit economically to the powerful, the big banks and big industry.

It is paradoxical to think that arable land in countries that are starving is in the hands of large multinationals that export their agricultural production to industries in Europe, which process these raw materials into therapeutic food and then sell to UN agencies and NGOs that fight against hunger on the ground.

At the market everything has a price. And those who own nothing, have to pay with the lives of their children.

Saturn devouring one of his sons

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de
1746 -1828