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Mahatma Gandhi had said that there are people in the world so hungry that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. Hunger is one of mankind’s worst enemies and has driven millions of people to desperation; it has also provided the subject matter for some powerful literature, an outstanding example being the French writer Victor Hugo’s classic ‘Les Misérables’.
In her article ‘Let Them Eat Bread: The Theft That Helped Inspire Les Misérables’ which appeared in the ‘npr’ (National Public Radio) in March 2017, Nina Martyris wrote:
“On a bitterly cold day in February 1846, the French writer Victor Hugo was on his way to work when he saw something that affected him profoundly. A thin young man with a loaf of bread under his arm was being led away by police. Bystanders said he was being arrested for stealing the loaf. He was dressed in mud-spattered clothes, his bare feet thrust into clogs, his ankles wrapped in bloodied rags in lieu of stockings.”
“It made me think,” wrote Hugo. “The man was no longer a man in my eyes but the spectre of la misère, of poverty.” In his novel, Hugo portrays the family’s circumstances in these few, short lines: “A very hard winter came. Jean had no work. The family had no bread. No bread literally. Seven children!”
Jean Valjean is sentenced to five years’ hard labour for stealing a loaf of bread! He attempted to escape four times, and each time his sentence was lengthened by three years; he also received an extra two years for once resisting recapture during his second escape. After nineteen years in prison, he was released, but by law he had to carry a yellow passport that announced that he was an ex-convict, an outcast. Hugo uses that loaf to attack society’s criminal indifference to poverty and hunger and to highlight the injustice of the penal system.
Impact Shorts
More Shorts‘Les Misérables’ should have awakened mankind’s conscience, but one must ask oneself if it has succeeded in doing that. As former US President Dwight Eisenhower said, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”
As the humanitarian organisation Mercy Corps puts it, “Hunger and malnutrition are the biggest risks to health worldwide—greater than AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined. Globally, food deprivation still claims a child’s life every three seconds, and nearly half of all deaths in children under five are attributable to undernutrition.” Eveyone.org, another charity organisation, says, “Every hour of every day, 300 children die because of malnutrition. It’s an underlying cause of more than a third of children’s deaths—2.6 million every year.”
There is an urgent need to take action on war footing against such a situation.
Sadly, the global famine-related situation is only worsening. According to a United Nations report released on October 31, 2024, acute food insecurity is set to increase in both magnitude and severity across 22 countries and territories. The report—‘Hunger Hotspots: FAO-WFP Early Warnings on Acute Food Insecurity’—issued by the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) calls for urgent humanitarian action to save lives and livelihoods and prevent starvation and death in hotspots where acute hunger is at high risk of worsening between November 2024 and May 2025.
According to the report, Palestine, Sudan, South Sudan, Haiti, and Mali remain at the highest alert level and require the most urgent attention. Conflict is the primary driver of hunger in all these areas. All hotspots of the highest concern have communities already facing or at risk of famine or facing catastrophic conditions of acute food insecurity. Chad, Lebanon, Myanmar, Mozambique, Nigeria, the Syrian Arab Republic, and Yemen are hotspots of very high concern, with a large number of people facing critical acute food insecurity, coupled with worsening drivers that are expected to further intensify life-threatening conditions in the coming months. It warns that the La Niña weather pattern could impact climates through March 2025, threatening fragile food systems in already vulnerable regions.
The report also warns that the spread of conflict, particularly in the Middle East, coupled with climate and economic stressors, is pushing millions of people to the brink of famine. The report spotlights the regional fallout from the crisis in Gaza, which has seen Lebanon engulfed in conflict.
The need to end the humanitarian crisis in Gaza cannot be overstated. The official death toll in Gaza now stands at 43,259 people, with 101,827 wounded, but the real number of casualties is believed to be much higher. Moreover, if people don’t die from Israeli bombardment, they will die of hunger. The UN report asserts that about 495,000 people (20 per cent of Gaza’s population) are already facing starvation, and 96 per cent of Gaza’s population is facing high levels of food insecurity. Furthermore, 41 per cent of the population, or 876,000 people, will face “emergency” levels of hunger from November until the end of April.
Ceasefire hopes appear to have faded as the Israeli onslaught on Gaza and Lebanon continues with deadly strikes, killing hundreds more almost every day and displacing countless others. Hamas reportedly received a proposal from mediators Egypt and Qatar for a short-term truce in Gaza but rejected it as it does not include a permanent cessation of aggression, nor does it entail the withdrawal of the Israeli army from the Gaza Strip.
According to the Israeli military’s own figures, a little over 26,399 tonnes of food aid entered all of Gaza in October, compared with nearly 76,000 in September and an average of 95,513 tonnes allowed in each month this year, and not all of those shipments have reached people inside. More than 500 trucks remain trapped on the Gaza side of the border, where the UN says it has difficulty retrieving the cargo because of Israeli military operations, lawlessness, and other obstacles.
The Israeli Parliament’s decision on October 28 to ban the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) has further impeded the delivery of critical aid to Gaza as Israel continues its assault there. Set to take effect over the next three months, the ban is part of an effort by Israeli officials to dismantle it following Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. Israel accused 19 UNRWA workers of involvement in the attacks; a UN investigation concluded that 10 may have been involved and fired those individuals, but it did not find evidence supporting the other cases. Gaza’s humanitarian crisis is worsening due to the ban on the UNRWA.
Cindly McCain, Executive Director of the World Food Programme, has said, “It’s time for world leaders to step up and work with us to reach the millions of people at risk of starvation—delivering diplomatic solutions to conflicts, using their influence to enable humanitarians to work safely, and mobilising the resources and partnerships needed to halt global hunger in its tracks.” QU Dongyu, FAO Director-General, has echoed these sentiments: “If we are to save lives and prevent acute hunger and malnutrition, we urgently need a humanitarian ceasefire and to restore access to and availability of highly nutritious food, including reactivating local food production.”
World leaders must prioritise conflict resolution to protect the most vulnerable populations on the brink of famine. We need longer-term stability and food security. Peace is a prerequisite for food security. Access to nutritious food is not just a basic need—it is a fundamental human right.
In conclusion, we, as individuals, also have responsibility. We should not ignore the sight of hunger whenever we see it. In such trying times, the words of Mother Teresa should guide us: “If you cannot feed a hundred people, then feed just one.”
The writer is a retired Indian diplomat and had previously served as Consul General in New York. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.
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