When The World Can’t ‘Let Them Eat Cake!’

We’re human = we get hungry.

As AUCians, we take that feeling as a cue to walk out and grab a snack or lunch from one of the multiple food outlets on campus.

If none of those suffice, there are dozens of other options within a convenient two-kilometer distance of the campus.

But for an alarmingly large number of people in Egypt, hunger is a persistent, gnawing struggle.

To take this back a mere four years ago, the main slogans of the January 25 Revolution were ‘bread, freedom, and social equality’.

The UN estimated that in 2011, 13.7 million Egyptians or 17 percent of the population suffered from food insecurity.

Data from the World Food Program (WFP) showed that after the revolution, shocks in the Egyptian economy caused a major rise in food prices that affected an average of 74.7 percent of households. People in rural areas were more adversely affected than those in urban centers.

That year, most Egyptians spent 40.6 percent of household income on food – a percentage that rose to 51 percent for the poorest decile.

But the WFP finds that the problem in Egypt is access rather than availability. In other words, there is enough food in Egypt but not everyone has access to it.

Instances of uneven distribution, inequality, and income disparity are development issues that plague most countries in the economic periphery.

Year after year, the UN tries to bring an end to world hunger and poverty.

Under the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) whose timeline ended this year, the world was able to reduce the population living in extreme poverty by 47 percent in 74 countries.

Still, a report published earlier this month by the World Bank estimates that 702 million people worldwide will live under the poverty line of $1.9 a day in 2015.

That is no small number.

October 16 marks World Food Day – a celebration that commemorates the establishment of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) of the UN.

Every year, it carries a different theme under which FAO and similar organizations work to find different solutions to end world hunger. This year’s theme is ‘Social Protection and Agriculture – Breaking the Cycle of Rural Poverty’.

The last time Egypt celebrated this day was back in 2011, when due to the political turbulence the celebration was pushed back to January 2012.

We all know that Egypt’s economic and political woes did not stop in 2012.

The Egyptian Food Bank aims to eradicate hunger by 2020, and the organization claims that this is a realistic goal.

When the masses are hungry, the world cannot let them eat cake.

Nadine Awadalla
Editor-in-Chief
@nadinetweetstoo