Social Nutrition and Prohibiting Famine

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Author(s)
De Waal, Alex
Publication language
English
Pages
5pp
Date published
01 Jan 2018
Publisher
World Nutrition
Type
Articles
Keywords
Food and nutrition

The world almost conquered famine. By the first decade of this century, we were at the threshold of abolishing this age-old scourge, for good. But in the last two years we have slipped back. Not only has the threat of famine returned—most notably to Yemen—but we are witnessing an unprincipled and dishonest assault on the norms and practices of progressive international humanitarianism, which could return us to a darker era of widespread starvation. Some nutritionists have seen their calling as social and political activists, as well as biomedical specialists. Forty years ago, the pioneers of nutritional programmes in food emergencies, John Rivers and his colleagues, identified the thresholds whereby extreme poverty became famine—as freezing water changes its state into ice—in both socio-economic and medical terms.1 Arnold Pacey and Philip Payne2 argued that reducing malnutrition in developing countries demanded socially progressive forms of rural development. More recently, Susanne Jaspars and Helen Young3 have placed the challenge of emergency nutrition squarely within the socio-economic and political vortex of factors that lead to humanitarian crises.