Irish Examiner view: Millions facing famine deaths

UN plea to world leaders

Millions of people across the continent of Africa and South America may die of hunger unless the more privileged — luckier — world intervenes.

Though it’s just over two decades short of two centuries since our famine — An Gorta Mór — changed this island, the place and role of Irish people all around the world, that catastrophe is all but a living presence. It can still provoke a debate that is barely civil, especially if charges of genocide are made. That charge is often levelled, though a growing number of professional historians suggest that, in the context of the European genocide of the last century, this island’s catastrophe cannot be described as such.

Semantics hardly provide that kind of wriggle room around many of the unfolding catastrophes today. In a letter published yesterday in support of the UN Call for Action to Avert Famine in 2021, hundreds of aid organisations warned: “People are not starving — they are being starved.” World leaders have been asked to avert multiple famines. The list is long, sobering, and challenging. Millions of people spread across Yemen, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, South Sudan, Burkina Faso, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Honduras, Venezuela, Nigeria, Haiti, Central African Republic, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Sudan may die of hunger unless the more privileged — luckier — world intervenes.