We are entering a new age of inequality, especially within countries and especially in the emerging powers     Editorial      guardian.co.uk,

Friday 30 December 2011
Now is the time for making and not breaking new year’s resolutions – and resolutions don’t come bigger than global goals for human development. Discussions have begun on replacing the millennium development goals (MDGs), the world’s framework for fighting poverty. But that fight has not been going as well as it should. Global poverty statistics can be deployed in all kinds of ways, but the essential story of the last 15 years has two elements. Hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty. Yet more people – about a billion – live in extreme hunger than ever before. We are entering a new age of inequality, especially within countries and especially in the emerging powers. Continue reading →

YES Magazine

Millennium Development Rights would transform the global struggle against poverty and provide accountability for governments, corporations, and others who deny those rights.

by Phyllis Bennis

President Obama’s speech at the UN’s summit on development acknowledged the “progress that has been made toward achieving certain Millennium Development Goals,” but cautioned that “we must also face the fact that progress towards other goals that were set has not come nearly fast enough. Not for the hundreds of thousands of women who lose their lives every year simply giving birth. Not for the millions of children who die from the agony of malnutrition. Not for the nearly one billion people who endure the misery of chronic hunger.” Continue reading →

New Internationalist

Pregnant women from indigenous communities face multiple layers of discrimination. As leaders gather in New York to discuss progress on the UN’s Millennium Development Goals (including reducing maternal and infant mortality), Cheryl Gallagher explains why statistics only tell half the story.  Continue reading →

Common Dreams

by Kristin Palitza

Somalis carry sacks of food aid distributed by the World Food Program near Mogadishu in 2008. Global food production, already under strain from the credit crunch, must double in the next four decades to head off mass hunger, the head of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation said. (AFP/File/Abdurashid Abikar)

ROME – Almost five million children under the age of five die of malnutrition every year in the developing world. Food aid – which mainly contains nutrient-poor carbohydrates – does little to address the absence of a diverse diet that would prevent the condition.

Humanitarian relief organisation Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) is therefore urging policy makers to boost food security and improve the quality of food aid that feeds the world’s hungry. To fight malnutrition in the long-term, however, African governments need to invest in small-scale farming to create food autonomy.

More than 20 million children suffer from severe, acute malnutrition in the developing world. Half of the 9.7 million deaths of children under five each year are caused by the condition, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). It will cost $5 billion a year alone to feed children under the age of three in developing countries, MSF said. Continue reading →