Naturkatastrofer, fødevarepriser på himmelflugt, krig og konflikt rammer alt sammen hårdest på verdens fattigste.
Ny Oxfam-rapport efterlyser nu større villighed blandt donorer, regeringer og det internationale samfund til at dele risici og begrænse ulighed i kampen mod sult.
(IRIN og U-landsnyt.dk) – The hunger afflicting millions of people in the world’s poorest regions will not end unless there is radical shift in governance and development work toward narrowing the gap between the rich and the poor, says a new report by the aid agency Oxfam.
Risk-sharing
According to the report ‘No Accident: Resilience and inequality of risk’ the current focus on building resilience among the poorest women and men is promising, but more could be achieved if “risk is more equally shared globally and across societies”.
“This will require a major shift in development work, which for too long has avoided dealing with risk,” the report says. “More fundamentally, it will require challenging the inequality that exposes poor people to far more risk than the rich.”
The key solution
Since 1970 the number of people exposed to floods and tropical cyclones has doubled, according to the report. Volatility in food and commodity prices has returned, the number of weather-related disasters has tripled in 30 years, 100 million people are pushed into poverty every year and more than 1,5 billion people now live in countries that face repeated cycles of violence.
“The key solution is to redistribute risk. Rich countries need to take responsibility and pay for the consequences of the risks they create elsewhere”, says Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in the report.
The poorest bear the brunt
The underlying message of the report is that those hardest hit are always the poorest – partly because they do not have access to insurance or social protection schemes.
“Nor do they have a political voice to demand that their governments, private companies or the international community do anything about this”.
The report gives recommendations on building resilience among the poorest and on reducing inequality. And it calls for national governments to provide leadership as well as for international donors, the UN and NGOs to “turn their rhetorical support for resilience-building into sustainable action”.
