Tame the world

(ES)

[...]

What does that mean "tame"?

-It is an act too often neglected, said the fox. It means "to establish ties".

-To establish ties?

-Just that, said the fox. To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world...

-I am beginning to understand, -said the little prince-. There is a flower... I think that she has tamed me...

[...]

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

During this year ending, millions of human beings who suffer and die, innocent victims of an unjust system that excludes them, evicts them, denies them their opportunities, ignores them, condemns them to starvation, that restricts freedoms, that cuts their fundamental rights...

All of them are "flowers" that have tamed me.

Hopefully next year us to be millions who are determined to tame the world and being tamed by it. And so it will be as if the sun came to shine on our lives.

[...]

But the fox came back to his idea.

-My life is very monotonous, the fox said. I hunt chickens, men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life.

[...]

-One only understands the things that one tames, -said the fox-.

[...]

-Men have forgotten this truth -said the fox-. But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose ...

-I am responsible for my rose... -the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.

[...]

The Little Prince - Antoine de Saint-Exupery 

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Delusion of well-being

Boys work in a carpet factory in Quetta City, Balochistan. UNICEF currently estimates that 150 million children between the ages of five and 14 are engaged in labour of some sort. Although child labour is in decline globally, the economic crisis has forced many children into work earlier and in more hazardous roles.

© UNICEF/NYHQ2006-0352/Giacomo Pirozzi


(ES)

The transformation of a raw material into a finished product requires natural resources, economic, technological and human.
Natural, economical and technological resources are private property in the hands of employers, while human resources are only owners of the labour force that gives them a salary and generates surplus value to the capitalist.

Free market and competition make that employers seek ways of producing their manufactures, with the means of production they own and the labour force they hire, at the lowest possible cost. For what they delocalize their production to countries  with labor laws, environmental, commercial and tax less strict than in Europe and USA.

As a corollary to this, the transformation of raw materials into a finished product not only meets the needs of consumers but also transforms the feelings and lives of all those involved in the commodity chain.

In the consumerist society we live in, marketing has managed to create us fictitious needs and to associate happiness to consume. So, how do you transform a raw material in happiness? What is the price we have to pay, measured in feelings, for our consumerist "happiness" in the miscalled first world?

The solitude of a trafficked minor, away from his or her family, who grows cotton in Benin. The fear of being beaten by the landlord if fails to comply with their strenuous work. The frustration at not being able to attend school. The despair of a human being become beast. The pain of children's muscles fatigued by the hard work.

The fatigue of a Turkish worker who works twelve hours a day with a compressor that shoots a jet of sand and water on the denim from India, Pakistan or Bangladesh, dyed by children exposed to high-polluting chemicals. Silica in the lungs and lead in the skin.

The miner dehumanized, turned himself into stone, which extracts the cassiterite from the mines at the east of DR Congo. Exhausted, brutalized by a system in which prevails the survival of the fittest, his life is worth nothing to the militias that control the territory. Forced to work for nothing, enslaved, disheartened. Far from home, fleeing a forgotten conflict, he and his family dies every day from starvation, misery and fatigue.

To enjoy a stonewashed jean or the latest smart phone model have to pay a high price in suffering, because corporate greed knows no bounds, and has appropriated the only thing that did not belong so far, has seized life and labour force of millions of people living in abject poverty, lacking opportunities, and barely surviving on the product of their effort.

How long before also capital seizes our lives by cutting fundamental rights?

Discover that happiness is not what you have but what you give to others is the key to return stolen happiness to the millions of people who, through their suffering, transform our lives in a delusion of well-being. Would not be fair to reimburse them for so much misery that they have been condemned by all of us because of our sad desire to possess material things?

Ethical consumerism will break the chain of poverty and it will contribute to a more socially fair and egalitarian world.


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Honor and sacrifice

(ES)

Honor is a curtain that surrounds each individual. A curtain woven with the threads of social and moral standards defined for each community.
In some cases the tissue is dense and in others quite clear. And the curtain may be very close or very far away, making the existence of the individual is developed in an atmosphere oppressive, tyrannical, intolerant and distressing, or in an atmosphere lax, informal and relaxed.
Trespassing this curtain is dishonor to the individual. Dishonor that sometimes transcends the family and the other members of their community.

Consider for a moment in the clarity of the tissue and the proximity of the curtain that surrounds us. Is it not true, and universally accepted that the curtain that surrounds women in any society is more dense and is closer than that surrounding the men?

Trespassing the curtain for a woman is synonymous with sacrifice.

© Siegfried Modola/IRIN 

Tear the curtain and facing the world has never been, nor will be, an easy battle for women. Free themselves from oppression and tyranny to achieve equal rights and freedoms than man has been a historic struggle not without sacrifices.

But all curtain hides secrets, especially when the man from the outside is the one that breaks and pierces the dense tissue surrounding the women in some societies. When the victim becomes guilty, and the transgressor enjoys impunity, is when the sacrifice of the woman reaches its peak.

Women raped that are disowned by their husbands and forced to leave their communities. To the physical and psychological trauma of rape joins the circumstance of having to live away from their family because of the dishonor of having been raped. Abandoned women in a society in which a woman alone has little or no chance to survive, without rights, without the means to earn a living, and often, caring for the son or daughter result of the violation.

Women raped that hide in silence their grief to prevent rejection.

Women raped that are forced to marry the rapist. Fatal fate that forces them to live together with the sex offender and live with the stigma of having been raped.

Women killed to repair the honor of a family.

Society of perverse moral that to compensate for the lost honor requires a sacrifice whose victim is always the woman. Twice a victim: of aggression and of sacrifice.

An unjust system that blames the victim and protects the attacker. That is satisfied only with an extreme sacrifice: the death or a sentence for life.

Let us be even more the transgressive men who tear curtains that surround women to free them from the oppression and the tyranny of customs.

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The curvature of capitalism

(ES)

In physics, black hole is known as a finite region of space-time caused by a high concentration of high-density mass inside that creates a gravitational field so powerful that no particle of matter, even photons of light, can escape this region.
The curvature of space-time was studied by Einstein in his theory of General Relativity in 1915.

Let's imagine an elastic surface stretched by its four corners. If we place a small sphere but large mass in the center of the surface, this, by the action of gravity will bend and deform to form a funnel and at the bottom would be the sphere. Any object in the vicinity of the funnel will slide helplessly to the bottom of it.

When socialism and communism are a vague memory in history, only recalled by their excesses, capitalism becomes since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 in the prevailing system in our globalized world.

Since then, capitalism, as the sphere of the simile above, it becomes a black hole from which nothing can escape.

An economic oligarchy concentrating global wealth and whose force of gravity is greed.

An unstoppable force of gravity that drags toward poverty the rest of world. That evicts families without financial resources of their homes because they can not pay their mortgages. That evicts from their land to farmers who occupy them for generations in order to monopolize the means of production. That leads young people to an uncertain future because they can not pay their student loan debts to enter college. No work, no hope...
That speculates on food prices, condemning millions to starve. That speculates on sovereign debt, condemning millions to lose social rights. That makes credit flows difficult, condemning entrepreneurs to reject their projects for lack of funding.

Ultimately, a huge black hole from which nothing and no one escapes. Faced with a social and sustainable economy, a capitalist system whose survival is based on the unequal distribution of wealth, increasingly exacerbated, increasingly greedy and the source of many conflicts that plague our planet. But like a black hole collapses and leads to the creation of new stars and galaxies, perhaps it is close the collapse of capitalism and the birth of a new economic and social model more egalitarian in distribution of wealth, sustainable and respectful on the environment.

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Why do the acacias weep?

(ES)

The acacia is a tough and strong tree that lives in extreme conditions in the most dry and arid lands. Its branches are covered with thorns, and when in flower it is filled with bright yellow clusters. Where the acacia lives rarely grow other plants, so acacias always thought that thorns of its branches, lashed by the sun and wind, were common to all plants. They also thought that the injuries caused in its trunk by man to extract the sap were something natural. The cut on the branch was painful, but suffered in silence, because to every acacia men were doing the same thing every so often. Sometimes a bad blow with the ax has broken off a branch and the tree has died. The rest of acacias thought that fate was that way and that nothing could be done, had always been so.
The acacias never felt different or complained about his harsh existence until the time the rains came. Emerging out of nowhere, like a miracle, slender stemmed plants, neither a single thorn and brightly colored petals; and the acacias wept because their scars and their thorns were no longer seemed natural. Wept knowing that their appearance is different from other plants, and wept to find that their suffering only was useful to man satisfaction, and above all, wept when knowing that their thorns have condemned millions of girls and women to a fate similar to theirs.

Every year, three million girls and women suffer some form of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM).

The most severe form of FGM is infibulation, which involves the partial or total removal of the clitoris and the inner labia, and excision of the outer labia, which once cut are drilled with acacia thorns and stitched up to the healing in order to seal the vagina, leaving a small hole to allow passage of urine and menstrual flow. After the mutilation, the girl should remain with their legs tied to the knees until the wound heals. The age at which FGM is usually performed is between four and fourteen, although the operation of stitching the vagina can be repeated after each childbirth.
The first sexual act of infibulated women generally requires a previous incision usually done by the husband, thus ensuring his wife's virginity. Also during childbirth is necessary an incision to allow the baby out. Otherwise there is danger of tears or even death for mother and baby.

The lack of asepsis during the practice of FGM favors the occurrence of infections, which in the worst cases can end the life of the girl. Also the heavy bleeding during surgery can cause death. Women who have undergone FGM face physical and psychological scars for the rest of their lives, and every birth is a risk to themselves and their babies.

Nobody should die to fulfill a tradition. No one should suffer for a custom. The honor of a man or a family should not depend on the suffering of their daughters and wives.

It is true that acacias will go on weeping and only a few will dare to challenge the men, they do not want more injuries and more scars. But now I know that acacias are not alone in the desert, and somehow, those who know their pain, will do their best to make their thorns help them to fend off those who attack them, and not to hurt women and girls, strong and resilient themselves as acacias.

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Postponed childhood

(ES)

Drawings by children recruited in Sierra Leone

They can not erase the past, and its memory haunts them day and night, endless nightmare that it is impossible to wake up.
They are locked in a present without the possibility of looking to the future, because their memories of the past are the ballast that keeps them from moving forward.
Terrible memories of killings, rapes and mutilations. Of dehumanized life, full of hate and fear.
The vague memory of a happier time yet cause even more damage, because it was violently taken away.

A childhood of games, friends, family and neighborhood that was broken the day when the military arrived. They killed men and women, also the babies. Suddenly, the flames only. The younger boys and girls were taken with them, either fled and joined an armed group seeking safety and shelter. Children who have seen how their parents and siblings were murdered and their homes burned down.

Boys forced to kill a friend in exchange for their own lifes to show loyalty and courage. Girls used as sex slaves, raped over and over, pregnant and forced to abort. Minors beaten, tortured, raped, brutalized, scared ... and so a long list of abuses.

Fear, hatred and uprooting are the keys to turn a minor into a soldier. It is estimated that there are more than 300,000 worldwide.

The disarmament, demobilization and reintegration programs turn them again into civilians when they achieve to leave the army, whether regular or irregular. But it is not easy to return to civilian life when they have spent so much time as soldiers in armed conflicts. Orphans, homeless, rootless, with shame for the atrocities committed and the fear of not being accepted back by their communities. This, together with the strong links forged with military life, makes reintegration very difficult but not impossible. Many of these children return to study and learn a trade. Hopefully, they will be forgiven and accepted by their communities. Other re-enlist, unable to forget their past and find their future.

Any peace process requires to look forward, remember the innocent victims, to forgive and regret.

As we age we only left our memories. If stealing a life is death, stealing the memories is like dying in life. It is disheartening to think that child soldiers have died in life twice. The first when their families were snatched from them, the second when they were forced to kill or die in a forgotten war. Both memories are so heartbreaking that they prefer not to dwell on them. Memories stolen, postponed childhood.

©UNICEF/Olivier Asselin

"I remember the day I decided to join the mayi-mayi. It was after an attack on my village. My parents, and also my grand-father were killed and I was running. I was so scared. I lost everyone; I had nowhere to go and no food to eat. In the mayi-mayi I thought I would be protected, but it was hard. I would see others die in front of me. I was hungry very often, and I was scared. Sometimes they would whip me, sometimes very hard. They used to say that it would make me a better fighter. One day, they whipped my [11-year-old] friend to death because he had not killed the enemy. Also, what I did not like is to hear the girls, our friends, crying because the soldiers would rape them."

Jacques, from DRC, was recruited into an insurgent group (mayi-mayi) when he was 10 years old

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Helpless heroes

(ES)

Sometimes the answers to simple questions are harder to find. And the context of the question is as important as the answer itself.

I wonder why the heroes are those who decide to help the weakest. In our society most of us have sufficient ability and resources to do so.
I wonder why the courageous are those who defend their ideas. In our society the rights and freedoms are guaranteed constitutionally.
I wonder why the commitment and critical thinking are misfits attitude. In our information society, injustice, Human Rights violations, corruption and abuse of power are exposed to the public and are the source of the indignation from which commitment is born.

Is not this a distorted view of reality to keep alive a socially unfair and unsupportive system?
I wonder why social success is so away from commitment, activism and solidarity.

And ultimately, why we are not more supportive? Why commitment is the exception not the rule?

People of the global world we inhabit are also searching for answers. But only find silence, and silence is helplessness.
People who want democracy and whose governments use security forces that should protect them to suppress any peaceful demonstration, killing their sons and daughters.
People dispossessed of their lands, forced to become refugees in their own country.
People starving because their means of production have been stolen.
People whose natural resources are plundered and raped their sons and daughters.
Peoples enslaved and brutalized.
People looking for their dignity and freedom.
People who want peace and justice.
Braves to their chagrin. Heroes out of obligation.

Only those who are facing with the silence, oblivion and death, are chosen by fate to become real helpless heroes.

That their heroic gestures of every day for their survival, for their dignity, for defending their rights, for justice and for freedom that have at least a courageous response by those with the ability to choose.

Maybe I may never find answers to my questions, only silence, but while there are oppressed people is our duty to give them voice and not give up the fight to prevent the shadow of helplessness to be spread as a lethal blanket across our planet.

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Doubts allowed

(ES)

"Humanity follows two world-wide sects:
One, man intelligent without religion,
The second, religious without intellect."

"But some hope a divine leader with prophetic voice
Will rise amid the gazing silent ranks.
An idle thought! There's none to lead but reason,
To point the morning and the evening ways."

"A little doubt is better than total credulity"

The world was seen that way 1.000 years ago by Abul 'Ala Al-Ma'arri a blind philosopher and poet born in Syria.

The world remains intolerant, based on power relationships, governed by leaders who think they possess the truth and inhabited by subjugated peoples.

Subdued by the power of arms.

Subdued by the power of ignorance.

Subdued by the power of capitalism and consumerism.

And subdued by a system designed to the measure of the powerful, in any form of social organization and government. A system that does not support the doubt, because doubt is born of reason and the reason is the source of dissidence.

The change starts in each one of us; no one will lead us but the reason and the power of love.

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A stony humanity

(ES)

There is a common place inhabited by the worst feelings, far from ethical and moral principles, the native land of conscienceless careerists. Housed in its misery, coexist the wealth and poverty, some in its meanness and others in its misfortune. Inert and soulless place where the human intelligence, free from conscience, predator becomes the dignity, opportunities and hopes of the oppressed.

© Siegfried Modola/IRIN

Gaunt and soulless human beings inhabit there, their crimes go unpunished, its heart frozen.

Millions stare, silent witnesses to their barbarism, without realizing that their complicit silence, their busy life with passion for banal occupations, are nothing more than an unequivocal sign of their progressive dehumanization.

© Manoocher Deghati/IRIN

This common place of wealth and poverty is greed. A stony humanity goes into it, making the world a rocky wasteland. Only culture and education as a source of a true social progress will achieve to avoid the gradually desertification of humans.

"The Geology had lost a stone, and the society had won a man."
Marianela
Benito Pérez Galdós (1843 -1920)

4 years and 9 kilos

(ES)

© John Ndiku/OCHA

According to WFP, the situation in the Horn of Africa is as follows:

• Drought in the Horn of Africa, coupled with conflict in Somalia, has affected over 13 million people. 

• On 5 September, the UN announced that the famine in southern Somalia had spread to the Bay region. There was already famine in  Lower and Middle Shabelle, parts of Banadir and parts of Bakool.

• WFP operations in the region require US$767 million for the next six months. The budget shortfall, taking into account pledges and confirmed contributions, is US$215 million.

According to UNICEF, in the words of Anthony Lake, UNICEF Executive Director:

"The situation is terrible now.  Tens of thousands of people have already died. More than 300,000 children across the region are severely malnourished and at imminent risk of dying.

In Somalia alone, 1.4 million children are affected by this crisis.

Already, we estimate that 390,000 children in Somalia are suffering from malnutrition; 4/5 of whom are in the central south zone.  In some areas there, we are seeing historically high rates of severe acute malnutrition, which means that the number of children in that zone facing imminent death is approaching 140,000."

After reading these figures I have only read one that moves me even more:

4 years and 9 kilos

That is the age and weight of Natuso¹, a girl literally starving in Benassar Children's Hospital in Mogadishu.

If Natuso survives, she may suffer infibulation, she will never go to school, before reaching adolescence her father will agree on a marriage with a neighbor or relative. Until the wedding ceremony, she will remain a virgin, any suspicion of the opposite would be a dishonor to her family and her parents and siblings would have to satisfy the future husband with his fiancee's death.

In a country like Somalia, after more than 20 years of war, with armed militias out of control raping and looting in its path, Natuso might be raped, and therefore repudiated by her family. Will not be easy for her to live alone with her son engendered after have been raped. And if she decides to abort, her life would be jeopardized by the poor conditions in which these interventions are practiced.

Probably, Natuso will live  in the most absolute poverty and discriminated against by being born a girl. Although she recovers this time, it is likely that in a few months gets back to be admitted again. Perhaps a more serious illness that she was never vaccinated, or gunshot wound in one of the frequent shootings in the capital.

The only good owned by Natuso is her own life. And despite all the suffering and pain of a life of extreme poverty and uncertain future, she strives to fight with all the strength that her frail body allows in order to escape from death.

Natuso has discovered, no doubt, a powerful reason to continue living in a totally hostile world to her. She probably could not understand how we, the inhabitants of "first world" rich and civilized, we are not able to find million reasons to help them. However, I'm sure she, in his infinite love for life, endowed with the strength and resilience characteristic of the millions of women and girls suffering in the world, has forgiven us for our indifference and will live, just like me and many others, with the hope of a more humane and egalitarian world for herself and her children.



¹The average weight of a 4 years old girl is 15.5 kilos.

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Lost opportunities

(ES)

In our world there are so deeply rooted social inequalities that we live with them and hardly touch our hearts.

Discover that inequality and social injustice that we usually recognize around us, are a problem caused by the lack of opportunities for the sufferer. That there are customs that favor the entrenching of discrimination. That the delusion of happiness caused by consumerism is the food of our ego. And the more our ego and our greed are, the greater the gap in wealth distribution, and we become more tolerant of discrimination and inequality. Omitting that by choosing this hedonistic life, that by accepting the customs without further, we are stealing opportunities to the weak and underprivileged.

Only those who have the chance to choose can break the barriers imposed on us by the system, allowing the underprivileged to recover their lost opportunities.

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The next revolution

(ES)

"Men do harm or for fear or for hatred."
The Prince.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

When we hear of the detention and torture of Palestinian children by the army of Israel.
When we hear of the torture and death of children at the hands of the secret services and the Syrian army.
When we hear of children raped and killed in DR Congo by armed militias.
When we hear of Iraqi children killed by American troops during the assault on a house.
When we hear of indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

A boy practises walking with his prosthesis at the ICRC orthopaedic centre in Kabul, October 2010
© Kate Holt/IRIN

What do we think?

We try to find answers to some facts that shudder us. What leads a human being to commit such atrocities? There is no rational answer, a human behavior so contemptible only can be explained by the spiral of hatred and the abyss of fear. Irrational feelings that dominate the actions of those who suffer them.

How much hatred and fear are necessary to torture and murder a child. To tie his hands and shoot to head. To rape a girl in front of their parents and siblings. Impossible to explain. Impossible to understand for those who have never felt that way. Acts that can not go unpunished.

When an innocent child becomes an enemy, the question is not why a soldier or a mercenary is capable of torturing and killing him without mercy. The question is how prejudice and propaganda have influenced to fuel and amplify the hatred of one people to another. Why unfounded fears and nonexistent threats are a powerful means of governments to convince the public opinion of the unavoidable destiny of a people. How the rootlessness and fear of children being recruited against their will as child soldiers get them to become monsters.

The spiral of hatred has no end, and fear is a black abyss of unfathomable depths. The fight against violence starts in each of us, overcoming our prejudices, not getting pulled by the propaganda, being critical of our governments, and above all, forgiving.

Throughout history, we have lived many revolutions, perhaps, the next revolution to come, also the most necessary, is the revolution that is born in each individual so to give it greater social and emotional awareness.


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Escape from fear

Source: Reuters
Recently arrived refugees from Somalia prepare to bury the body of Sahro at the Kobe refugee camp

(ES)

We all have fled and hidden sometime in life.

For many millions of people, fleeing is not an option, is a matter of survival. No choice, no alternatives. For them to escape is the only option and involves difficult decisions. They have lost everything, yet, very reluctantly, have a huge responsibility and power, which forces them to decide on the death of their children and their elders.
Decide who undertakes the journey through the desert for weeks with little food or water, exposed to attack by hyenas and armed militias. Deciding which child is more likely to arrive alive to the refugee camps. A superhuman power in the hands of a humble people. The same power that allows them to move forward after seeing their children and relatives to die on the road. And despite this immense power, can do nothing when, after the hardship of the road, having reached the goal, as in a dream, it vanishes in their hands the lives of children who managed to arrive. Exhausted, dying. The sad toll that pay those who have nothing and need everything.

Facing certain death, fear of losing their lives, is perhaps the greatest fear of human being.
Millions of people in the Horn of Africa are faced daily with their fears and harshly survive without losing hope of winning the battle to the death. That is their power. That is their lesson to the rest of the world.

People in rich countries also flee and hide from their fears. Fear of a reality too complex and hard to face it. The fear of losing their privileges. Fear of an empty and meaningless life. Escape those fears also requires making decisions, choosing among alternatives. Alternatives of life, not of death. Look the other way, build walls, imagining threats, build prejudices, consuming without measure. Human responses that increase the inequality gap. There is still hope, we are taught daily by millions of people living in poverty thresholds. Just have to make the right decisions.

Live without being ashamed of a privileged life. Die without regret not having done anything by the underprivileged.



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The system earns, they die

(ES)

The media repeat like a mantra that the UN has declared famine in different regions of Somalia. They talk of drought and rising prices of staple foods such as triggers, and armed conflict as an element that hinders access to humanitarian aid. But this monotonous chant lulls us until lose our sense of reality.

According to the FAO Cereal supply and demand brief published in July 2011, this UN agency indicates that although much improved prospects for cereal production and supply availabilities have exerted considerable downward pressure on international cereal prices, in June the FAO Cereal Price Index is 39 percent above the corresponding period last year.
FAO’s latest forecast for world cereal production in 2011 stands at nearly 2 313 million tones, 3.3 percent higher than in 2010.
World cereal utilization in 2011/12 is forecast to grow by 1.4 percent from 2010/11.
World cereal trade is forecast to remain close to the previous season’s level.
If grain production increases and demand remains almost the same compared to 2010, why the prices are 39% more expensive than a year ago? Would have to ask hedge funds that speculate on the price of grain in futures markets, financial operations that inflates as a bubble the prices of staple foods for the benefit of large institutional investors.

This increase in prices in international commodity markets have a devastating effect on poor countries that must import most of their food. However, companies such as Compact AS (Norway) and Nutriset SAS (France), continue to import products such as peanuts, milk, oil and sugar to produce therapeutic foods (RUTF) that are distributed in areas of famine without escalating basic food prices seem to affect their business.

According to UNICEF, in its Supply Annual Report 2010, the trading volume of nutritional supplies was $ 117 million. Stand out, among other products, 20,700 tons of therapeutic food (RUTF) purchased during the same year. The demand for this type of food has risen from 3 tons in 2000 to 20,700 tons in 2010, an increase of about 700,000%.
In 2010, UNICEF contracted supplies with Nutriset SAS worth of $ 45.8 million and Compact AS for $ 4.4 million.

As reported Nutriset SAS on its Web site, employs 120 workers, with a turnover of 52 million euros in 2009 and a total purchase budget of 25 million euros (milk, peanuts, oil, sugar, cardboard boxes, etc.). Its production capacity of therapeutic food (RUTF) is 31,000 tons (38,120 tons with a network of producers in different emerging countries). And despite the increased demand and rising raw material prices, leading providers of therapeutic food (RUTF) have reduced prices by 11%.

The ownership of land and natural resources is in the hands of large corporations, so local communities have no assets with which to trade, and also their subsistence economies become more vulnerable to adverse weather becoming more frequent. The occupation of productive land usually requires the displacement of communities that have traditionally lived and exploited its resources. The various militias fighting for control of territory are causing the movement of people, who leave their villages in search of safety. According to the EFA (Education For All) Global Monitoring Report, annual military spending of the rich countries is 1.5 billion USD and is 9 times greater than spending on international aid. Precisely the armament industry in these countries is the one that weapon these militias.

The inhabitants of the world's poorest countries have become the hostages of a system that excludes them, that robs them of their wealth, their hopes and opportunities. The system earns, they die. Every $ donated saves lives. Every $ of donor countries creates wealth to their business conglomerates. Every $ lent to poor countries brings benefits to the big banks. A perverse system that is both the cause and solution of the problem, and is designed to benefit economically to the powerful, the big banks and big industry.

It is paradoxical to think that arable land in countries that are starving is in the hands of large multinationals that export their agricultural production to industries in Europe, which process these raw materials into therapeutic food and then sell to UN agencies and NGOs that fight against hunger on the ground.

At the market everything has a price. And those who own nothing, have to pay with the lives of their children.

Saturn devouring one of his sons

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de
1746 -1828

An asymmetrical world

© Serene Assir/MSF

(ES)

The threat of terrorism, after the attacks of 11-S, has served the governments of East and West to cut civil rights.
The economic crisis of recent years has served the governments, mainly Western, to cut social rights.

The war conflicts of this decade have been the pretext of the supposed war on terror, and the trace of death they have left, is the wick of the terror they want to fight.
The welfare cuts to fight deficit has mainly served to prevent the bankruptcy of big national banks, at the expense of subjecting states to credit pressure whose debt to the big banks barely will be able to afford.
The food crisis, announced in advance, is merely the prelude to what will happen in coming years on a larger scale resulting from the concentration of agricultural and livestock production, in short, the land owned by oligopolies speculating with prices in the market for staples.

Is this progress? Who benefits from the fear and hatred that comes from outside its borders? Who wins when states implement drastic adjustment measures to contain the budget deficit while central banks raise interest rates to contain inflation? When wealth is no longer tied to the means of production who is the greatest beneficiary of this bubble system?

Perhaps the main failing of this system is that the progress of recent decades has not been accompanied by a genuine social progress. West and some countries of the so-called emerging markets have achieved some levels of social and economic development without precedent in history, but forgetting that their wealth is based on an asymmetrical and unjust world. And now that Western prevalence is threatened, both economically and socially, fear makes us insensitive to the increased suffering of others.

When Western countries grew in prosperity, its citizens did not take advantage of the opportunity to move equally in social, demanding their governments greater effort in development cooperation. Now that the decline is unstoppable, fear paralyzes society and slows down any progress in the realm of social and cooperation. The progress has enriched Western and emerging countries at the expense of impoverishing the rest of the planet. Recession impoverishes us all, including the poorest, at the expense of enriching only a few

This social and economic climate makes that a terrible attack on Norway impacts us more than the humanitarian emergency of millions of people due to starvation in a remote part of East Africa. Again, another sign of the asymmetry of this world.
Any violent death is a tragedy, but is not violence a child death because of hunger?
It is in our hands to stop this violence, which will end when this world ceases to be asymmetric. Only social progress will be able to convert such asymmetry into virtue of all peoples.



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700,000 million euros

(ES)

The euro has been subject to speculative attacks on financial markets. The EU has responded in support of countries with debt problems providing a supportive response to strengthen the euro. Now it's about creating a permanent tool to anticipate and resolve possible future crises. It is the European Financial Stability Mechanism.

Finance ministers of the 17 euro-area countries have signed the Treaty establishing the European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The ESM's initial maximum lending volume is set at €500bn.This amount ensures the best credit rating in the financial markets to raise funds at low interest. Its capital stock of €700bn will ensure that lending can effectively be made up to this amount and consists of €80bn in paid-in shares and €620bn in callable shares.

As the number of hungry rises, more resources will be needed to meet the need for food assistance. WFP estimates that around USD 477 million is needed to address hunger needs in the region through to the end of the year. Currently, it has a 40 percent shortfall in funding, with about USD 190 million still needed.

EUR 700,000 million = USD 990,000 million
EUR 337 million = USD 477 million

The financial stability of Europe is 2,000 times the food needs of the Horn of Africa in the next six months. Or in other words, the necessary funds to protect EU countries from speculative attacks on financial markets, and thus can be financed at low interest, would cover food needs in the Horn of Africa over 1,000 years. Clearly, this simple calculation does not take into account the increase of the displaced population, the duration of the drought, armed conflict or the increase of food prices in the coming years.

The global economic crisis impoverishes us all, including the poorest. And we are now experiencing the consequences: in Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Kenya 10 million people, of whom 2 million are children under 5 die of hunger. Drought is not what kills, not the long marches through the desert for weeks with little food and water up to the crowded refugee camps. It is not lack of resources of humanitarian organizations, or inability to act in conflict zones.

They are killed by indifference, forgetfulness, good intentions and minimum actions. Because in the face, repeated over and over again, of the child dying, just skin and bones, we see only the face of one more child of the thousands who die in Africa every day. And it is not one more girl among others, she is Habibo. She is one year old and suffers severe malnutrition and is on the verge of death. His mother's name is Marwa Maalin and pray God to heal her little daughter.

The denunciation of injustice is the origin of the commitment. Photography is the witness of suffering. Both of us produce emotions such as anger, anxiety, compassion, helplessness, shame, despair ... let us convert these feelings into the engine of solidarity action.

Ten million people without food or water, walking weeks in the desert, they see their children die on the road and that are crowded into refugee camps deserve more than compassion. We can all do something to make the face of Africa is that of this girl in a refugee camp in Kenya.

A young girl in an IDP camp in Kenya’s Rift Valley © Jerry Riley/IRIN

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How does it feel when a flame goes out?

Dry earth in the desert plains of the Danakil depression in northern Ethiopia.
© Siegfried Modola/IRIN

(ES)

Suddenly, I had a small flame to look after. Its tender warm comforts me. Its warm light illuminates me. I stare, I can not stop staring at it. Every time it shines and smiles the cold and the dark loneliness is away from me. Its orange heart does not stop moving. Sometimes lengthens and sometimes stays quiet with a smooth sizzle. And the breeze. The air it breathes like a warm breath. I approach and stay quietly feeling it in my face. When the air fuels the flame, it laughs and stretches his arms. Asking nothing in return for its bright colors or its warm tenderness. Only, not to let the flame goes out. And it is not selfish I do not want the flame goes out, but for the generosity and responsibility of one who knows to be blessed with a gift that must be cared for, and that attentive care is gradually becoming the reason for my existence.

I distress thinking some day I will not be able to take care of my little flame. That Its brightness will wane and its warm breath only will be a painful cold breath that freezes my heart forever. It scares me to imagine the bluish light and the plaintive cry of the flame when it goes out. I can not do anything? I would rather die than to let the little flame goes out. But that's something I can not afford, without me, the flame would have no chance to live.

But how does it feel when a flame goes out? Hard to tell, but I guess the closer you've had it, the greater the gap it left. Darkness, cold, loneliness, memories ...

Two million flames are extinguished in Somalia, Ethiopia and Kenya. Drought, food shortages and diseases are the cause of two million children under five in need urgent humanitarian assistance. They are in danger of death.

I distress thinking that remoteness of those flames which are extinguished, will only freeze the hearts of their parents, and our hearts frozen for so many disheartening news, will not be able to feel the warm of two million small flames just asking not to let them extinguish. I would rather die than to let the little flames go out. But that's something we can not afford, without us, the flames would have no chance for enlighten us.



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The loneliness of Bikela

(ES)

"A spokeswoman for the agency, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, said about 170 women had been raped in the villages of Nakiele and Abala in South Kivu Province on June 11."

What makes men capable of committing such acts of violence against those poor women?
Is the power they wield weapons?
Is the hatred?
Is the impunity?
Is the recognition of his military commanders because of the control of natural resources, or fear of disobeying an order from their superiors?
Is to have lived with violence since ever?
Is to understand the looting and rape as the sole means of livelihood?
Or is the path with no return of who use violence to survive in an equally violent society?

Without wishing to debate about the immorality or amorality of the following statement, taking into account the time it was done, the answer to all these questions was summarized by a soldier of the Force Publique of the State of Congo to which Mr. Casement, author of the report that bears his name, asked why he had been so many years in the army. His answer was that due to problems with the rubber tax, he could not live in his native village, and laughing, confessed that he preferred to be among the hunters rather than among the hunted. This statement is included in Roger Casement's report dated 1903 that presented to the Marquis of Lansdowne, at that time Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the British government.

The language of the media, despite the mix of horror, anger and sadness that produces us this kind of news, insulates us from the real suffering of the Congolese people.

It is not only one more terrible story of many that come from this country in particular and from the African continent in general. It is the story of a life or a death. And that of millions of men, women and children who have been and are victims of violence.

And my question is: Can we be witnesses to such crimes and do nothing to avoid them?

Surely a considered response to this question leads us to even more questions, to explore alternatives until a combinatorial explosion, to build a world of illusory limitations. But sometimes the answers are not in reason, and it is solely an election. As the soldier would rather be among the hunters than among the hunted, I prefer to be among those who act that among those who mourn. And I'm not going to question the morality of those who act differently than mine.

It is not one more story, is the story of a life, like Bikela's life, whose testimony is contained in the statement to Mr. Casement in Ikoko, in the Free State of Congo, August 12, 1903. Here is a summary of their statements:

"My mother, my grandmother, my sister Nzaibiaka and I had fled to the jungle. The soldiers followed us and ran to where we were hiding. They took my grandmother, my mother, Nzaibiaka and another girl younger than us. Soldiers were discussing by my mother, for they all wanted her as a wife, and finally they decided it was better to kill her. She was shot in the stomach, and she fell to ground. She was pregnant and she had little time to give birth. Also killed my grandmother and they took my sister with them. I saw it all, I wept much, because they had killed my mother and my grandmother and I was alone."

Perhaps my contribution is miniscule in more than a century of violence, but if I have someone else to join me in this cause, my efforts and those of many other will not have been useless, and the loneliness of Bikela will find relief.


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The rubber quota

(ES)

Women raped in the DRC face several problems to access justice. The 43 year old woman raped in Kamina, in Katanga province says: "I cherish the clothes I wore when I was raped and used it to prove rape in front of the court. I've been asked to pay Fc 7000, 3000 Fc for typing and another 50 sheets of paper for printing. I also had to carry the costs of all medical expenses and still forced to live in Kamina. The rapists are now free, and I was asked to pay $ 20 for the complaint and withdraw the decision to appeal. I lost hope.
© Gwenn Dubourthoumieu/IRIN

Cries and suffers in silence. No one should know.
It hurts, but can not complain.
It's unfair, but it is useless to denounce.
Cries out but no way. Nobody listens.
Why? They ask.
Feels anger.
Feels guilty.
It is useless, feels helpless.
Be scared.
Feel shame.
What can they do? Nobody helps them.
Feel they die.
Why are they doing this?

THE HERITAGE: After the Berlin conference of 1884, the European powers divided the African continent. The Congo Free State became the private property of King Leopold II of Belgium, which gave trade concessions for the exploitation of rubber and ivory to companies like Anglo-Belgian India Rubber and Exploration Company (A.B.I.R.) or Societe du Commerce Anversoise au Congo from which Leopold himself was a shareholder. The binomial formed by the State and the concessionary companies of rubber farms became the Congo Free State in something like a huge concentration camp dedicated to the exhaustive exploitation of natural resources.

Each village had to meet weekly or biweekly provision of rubber and food to different stations of the state concessionary companies in return for ridiculous compensation compared to the benefits that these companies obtained from the rubber industry. In turn, the natives had to work for the State to build roads or maintenance of telegraph installation. Slave labor that forced many natives to leave their villages and seek refuge in neighboring villages in the French Congo.

Subject to conditions of forced labor, forced to abandon farming from which they had been living prior to colonization, living in miserable conditions that favored the emergence of fatal diseases, the story of the horrors suffered is enough to understand that during the Belgian rule, million of indigenous inhabitants died. Not only were victims of work in conditions of slavery or of diseases. When a man or a village could not collect the amount of rubber or foods that were imposed, they suffered all kinds of corporal punishment by the soldiers of the concessionary companies, or were kept in prisons far from their homes until their village paid a totally arbitrary fine for release them. The murder with impunity of offenders was also common practice, and to demonstrate to administrators of the concessionary companies that the bullet had been used to kill a man, soldiers should give the mutilated hand, foot or the genitals of the victim. As was often the bullets were used for hunting, soldiers used to mutilate men and children alive as punishment for not having collected the quota of rubber. Another way to ensure the collection was taken hostage the village women that would not be released until the men of the village managed to collect the allocated quota. In filthy prisons, women and their children starved, since they didn't receive food from their captors. The story of the horrors after more than a quarter century of Belgian colonization can not leave unmoved today's society, although there was a premeditated attempt to hide them from public opinion.

The militias that control the natural resources of the current DR Congo, State corruption, impunity of crimes, mass rapes, forced recruitment of child soldiers, abduction of girls as sex slaves, the uprooting, corrupt Justice, commercial interests are, 137 years later, the legacy of colonialism. A greedy colonialism that imposed an oppressive system based on a wild soldiery, under the control of commercial companies, which controlled a vast territory in the absence or in connivance with corrupt State administration.

I also feel ashamed, like the Congolese women.
I am ashamed of the curse the white man meant for the African continent.
I am ashamed of their infinite greed.
I am ashamed of the lack of historical memory of European people.

And I cry with Congolese women that has seen the death of their sons and daughters. Who has been raped savagely. That suffers in silence so as not to be repudiated. That is taking care of their own. That will not be able to conceive more children. Living in solitude, the solitude of shame and injustice.
And I shout for her, and for children mutilated. For those killed, for the enslaved, for those who have been orphaned.
And I also feel anger. For millions of murders and rapes with impunity.
And I feel guilty. For so many years of looking the other way, for so many years of not hearing his desperate cries.

I do not feel helpless, but rather hopeful. Fearless and committed to the cause of Congolese women, strong and resilient, like most African women.

A young girl raped in Bamenda, in the Katanga province, says: "before getting raped, I was betrothed. But the marriage was of course canceled. Now my father has to repay the dowry. The family of the rapist has promised to pay for it, but since then, they did nothing. As I got pregnant, the most urgent thing to do was to free the rapist so that he could support me during the pregnancy. It was inconceivable that he goes to jail. It is better that he remains free to meet my needs and those of the baby. But it is also important for him to marry me now because nobody wants me anymore.
© Gwenn Dubourthoumieu/IRIN

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