20p a week to end starvation
Time to stop the pandemic from causing further havoc Brown asks PM to ‘lead the world & not turn back on impoverished’
IF you are one of the world’s poorest children, today could be the worst day of your life. You are hungry. You don’t know where your next meal will come from. Your school is shut so your chance for an education has vanished.
You will work to help your parents put food on the table. If famine comes to where you live, you might die of starvation.
There is good news though. The person reading this can save your life.
For decades, with the Daily Mirror often in the lead, Britain has been at the forefront of efforts to fight hunger and famine. Wealthier nations such as the UK can do something about it in 2021. But unless we act, the pandemic will continue to wreak havoc.
In low-income countries, the stats are grim, with 270 million on the brink of starvation – double the number this time last year.
Without action, 168,000 children under the age of five will die of malnutrition this year.
In a few months, hunger can stunt a child for a lifetime. Malnutrition can stunt a country’s economy for a generation. A society that is hungry can never thrive.
The lifeline of school has been broken. One and a half billion children have missed time in the classroom since the start of the pandemic. It is the poorest children who have been hit hardest by closures. For many, schools provide their only meal of the day.
SOLUTION
June’s G7 summit, chaired by the UK, should commission a long-term plan to address this dramatic escalation of need.
Perhaps also a closer partnership between the UN and the one wholly global organisation capable of raising substantial funds on a sustained basis: the World Bank.
There is a simple common sense solution to the immediate crisis.
New international money – at least £430billion from special drawing rights – can be issued and allocated to poorer countries; debt relief of up to £57bn can be agreed on condition the money goes to education health and nutrition; and the World Bank and regional development banks can rapidly expand their offer of grants and loans.
With around £7bn this year, the world could stave off famine in many countries and avoid mass hunger in several others.
It may sound like a lot but it is the equivalent of each citizen in the richest countries contributing only 20p a week.
Preventing hunger is not just a moral imperative. Doing so, and educating our future workforce, makes economic sense.
The pandemic is a reminder that we are all connected. A global pandemic calls for global solutions. Let us not wait until we’re watching children dying. If we want to do something about it, this is the moment.
SAVING the world’s hungriest from starvation would cost Britons only 20p a week each.
Ex-Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Mark Lowcock, former top civil servant in the recently axed International Development Department, have issued a plea for Boris Johnson to help the globe’s most desperate.
The pair, respected across continents, urge the PM to lead the world at June’s G7 meeting of the world’s richest nations rather than turning his back on the impoverished.
Arguing the Covid pandemic has proved countries are connected and can’t fight problems alone, Brown and Lowcock assert it would be in Britain’s selfinterest as well as a moral cause.
Praising Daily Mirror readers for always supporting aid for the poorest, the pair list around $700billion – around £500bn – in initiatives for struggling nations.
“It may sound like a lot,” write Brown and Lowcock. “But it is the equivalent of each citizen in the richest countries contributing only 20p a week and represents a fraction of the stimulus package wealthy countries have put in place to save the global economy.”
The coronavirus has killed more than 2.4 million people around the planet and wrecked economies.
Johnson slashing £4bn from Britain’s aid budget, reducing it from 0.7% to 0.5% of national wealth, was condemned by all five living former PM’s: Tories John Major, David Cameron and Theresa May plus Labour’s Tony Blair and Brown.
The current Prime Minister has been challenged to use June’s meeting in Carbis Bay, Cornwall, with new US President Joe Biden attending, to champion the world’s
poor. Brown and Lowcock say that the issues we face at home are often shared abroad and both can be resolved simultaneously.
“The pandemic is a reminder that we’re all connected,” they write.
“A global pandemic calls for global solutions. Children need food and education wherever they are
“Let us not wait until we are watching children dying or bemoaning the lack of opportunities for young women in lowincome countries.
“If we want to do something about it, this is the moment. It was Britain that led the way in staving off famine in four countries in 2017.
“As this year’s chair of the G7 and also the COP26 climate change conference [in Glasgow] it has the power if it now has the will.”
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With an exclusive DK Pocket Guide to Bird Spotting inside tomorrow’s Daily Mirror, you’ll be able to identify 50 of the most common bird species within the UK and Ireland from the chiffchaff and finch family to the gorgeous red kite.
This handy guide folds down to pocket size, perfect to take on your daily strolls.
Whether you’re in the countryside, city or by the coast, the DK Pocket Guide to Bird Spotting ensures outdoor or windowsill entertainment wherever you are.
Perfect for adults and kids alike, this guide has beautiful illustrations and notes from household name DK and is available inside tomorrow’s Daily Mirror.