Hello, Ladies and Gentlemen.
As we all know, we are here to discu ‘Mapping of the Global Future’.But before doing that, let me give you just one figure15 million children a year, that is 29 children every minute, leave us because they have nothing to eat.
Now tell me, what kind of ‘Global Future’ can we talk about when we still have such problems? It is easy for us to be here, in warmth and satiety, and discu the poibilities of the world’s development.But think about all those children that will go to bed tonight without nothing in their stomachs.Some of them will be asking for food, not able to understand that their parents simply have nothing to give them.And some of them will simply be too weak to even cry.
For most of the starving children, famine will not be lethal.Neverthele, the lack of vitamins and minerals will most likely give them blindne, deformities or brain damage, which they would never be able to cure.
Today in the world, there are more than 150 million starving children and most of them live in the countries of Africa.The reasons for their starvation are not military operations, draughts or floods.It is poverty, pure and simple.
And poverty means not only famine.Poverty also means that most of those starving children have to work full-time jobs because it is the only way for them to support their families.More than 250 million children all over the globe are working nowadays.
Poverty also means that those countries have no money to fight the natural disasters that strike their continent.It is questionable that the floods and hurricanes are the result of the developing technology, but it is clear that almost the whole continent of Africa is so poor that it cannot fight those catastrophes.
Poverty also means that most of the developing countries have no money to prevent or cure even the most widespread illnees.Such diseases as measles or chicken pox, which hardly worry anybody today, account for millions of children deaths in the developing countries every year simply because nobody gave those children a shot.And this is not to mention AIDS, which is so widespread in Africa, that it accounts for 50% to 60% of all children deaths in such countries as Botswana or Zimbabwe.
Poverty also means that those children will never be able to get decent education, which makes it a vicious circle, because without education these children will never get a good job and thus are destined to starve throughout their whole life.
Of course, you will ask mea lot.Let us leave alone any political aspects of helping the starving people get some food.Today they hardly receive any help at all.The world community is too slow to react when something happens, and the last years prove it.In 2005, for example, no country reacted in time when people of Niger had faced seve
re food shortage.At the same time, the existing organizations created to help starving people are so poor themselves, that they have to ask for public donations, which definitely do not give much.
What is the most stupid and absurd about this whole situation is how cheap it is to help the needy.For example, a bowl of soup for a hungry child costs only about 2 cents, and the set of all neceary shots costs le than a dollar.So, as you can see, not much is needed to prevent children from all over the world from dying from famine and diseases.How can we look those people in the eyes when all it takes to stop the starvation in the whole world is for one country to underproduce ten planes?
I’m not trying to convince you in something or make you change your point of view on certain iues.All I’m trying to do is tell you the bare facts about what is going on in the distant corners of our world, so that you can make your own choice.But let us not forget the words of John Kennedy, who said that ‘if a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich’.
And before I finish, let me remind you once again, while we here discu the global future, 15 million children this year will not have any future at all.
