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Where’s Our Outrage for the World’s Hungry, Dying Poor?
The retreat from global development by wealthy nations is an insult to the founding vision of the United Nations. But the problem of ending poverty is not a lack of data or policy solutions; it’s the fact that so few people are standing behind the cause of sharing the world’s resources.
Dec 12, 2025
This year, the United Nations turned 80 years old. But as Secretary-General António Guterres launched his latest reform effort, the ‘UN80 Initiative’, there was little to be celebrating. At the same time as commemorative events praised the UN Charter and its foundational importance for peace, development and human rights, the UN system was facing draconian funding cuts that threatened to wipe out liquidity and undermine core operations. The Trump administration had dramatically withdrawn from the World Health Organisation earlier in January, then completely dismantled USAID shortly after. These were criminally inhumane acts when America is the UN’s largest single donor, and USAID—despite its flaws—still spent billions on vital health services, disaster relief and anti-poverty efforts.
The impact on the world’s developing nations is already devastating. Hundreds of aid organisations have shut down, leaving the humanitarian system at breaking point. The head of OCHA, the UN agency for coordinating emergency relief, spoke of funding cuts as a ‘seismic shock’ to a sector that suddenly contracted to one third of its size. The World Food Programme faced an alarming 40 percent drop in funding compared to last year, causing an unprecedented crisis for tens of millions across the globe reliant on food aid. UNICEF warned that the liquidity crunch is jeopardising lifesaving work, threatening to roll back advances in reducing child mortality. The UN refugee agency, UNHRC, announced that up to 11.6 million refugees and forcibly displaced people are at risk of losing access to direct humanitarian assistance. Many other UN health programmes that depended on U.S. funds received termination notices, including for HIV treatment, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.
Global development in reverse
But the blame for this crisis doesn’t rest with the cruel, heartless Trump administration alone. Two dozen of the world’s richest nations are pulling back from their obligations for global development, with many slashing aid budgets and funds channelled through multilateral lenders. Here in Britain, the Labour government is cutting its foreign aid budget from an already meagre 0.5 percent to 0.3 percent of GNI, amounting to a 40 percent reduction in coming years. The Lancet medical journal estimated in June that cuts to USAID alone could result in more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030. A recent study by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health says the combined US and European cuts could lead to 22.6 million additional deaths by 2030, reversing decades of progress in global health and poverty reduction.
We cannot end hunger or poverty when the yawning gap of inequality continues to increase every year, and our political institutions are skewed to the demands of the super-rich.
These decisions by our governments to drastically scale back the sharing of global resources is an insult to the founding vision of the United Nations. All year long, the UN has warned of a major hunger emergency with acute food insecurity set to worsen in 16 low-income countries, putting millions of lives at risk. Six are at the highest risk of famine or ‘catastrophic hunger’: Sudan, Palestine, South Sudan, Mali, Haiti and Yemen. Other countries of very high concern include the Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, and Afghanistan. Children in these ‘hotspots’ are particularly vulnerable as malnutrition weakens immunity, making them more susceptible to disease and death. Even before the aid cuts, the latest Global Report on Food Crises revealed that the number of starving people more than doubled in 2024 (mainly due to the horrifying weaponisation of hunger in the Gaza Strip and Sudan).
The causes of increasing food insecurity are complex and largely driven by an unrelenting wave of global crises including conflict, economic instability and climate-related emergencies. It is not due to a lack of global resources or population growth: FAO statistics show there is enough food produced to feed the world’s eight billion people, and a further three billion more. Indeed, the WFP estimates that less than one percent of the $21.9 trillion spent on military budgets over the past decade would be enough to end world hunger. Yet global military spending surged to a record high of $2.7 trillion in 2024, nearly 13 times the amount of official development assistance from the world’s wealthiest nations, and 750 times the UN regular budget in 2024. As Guterres remarked in a landmark UN report on The Security We Need: Rebalancing Military Spending for a Sustainable and Peaceful Future: ‘A more secure world begins by investing at least as much in fighting poverty as we do in fighting wars.’
An ‘inequality emergency’
This points to the basic reason why 733 million people face chronic hunger: they lack the money or resources to buy food. Almost half the world’s population (48%) live on less than $3 a day, the official extreme poverty line, meaning they are unable to meet basic survival needs like food, clean water, shelter and healthcare. One in four people globally (2.3 billion) face moderate or severe food insecurity, an increase of 335 million since 2019. No doubt, all the 3.4 billion people who live on less than $5.50 per day also struggle to provide themselves or their families with a varied and nutritious diet.
But there is approximately $432 trillion of total wealth in the world. It is often noted that the top 1 percent of the global adult population collectively own about half of that wealth; the bottom 50 percent own less than 1 percent of global wealth. Oxfam recently estimated that the richest 1 percent have seen their wealth surge over the past decade by around $34 trillion, which would be enough money to eliminate annual poverty 22 times over. A G20 committee of independent experts led by Joseph Stiglitz were right to describe these worsening trends as an ‘inequality emergency’, when 90 percent of the world population live under the World Bank’s definition of ‘high income inequality’. We cannot end hunger or poverty when the yawning gap of inequality continues to increase every year, and our political institutions are skewed to the demands of the super-rich.
The problem is not a lack of data or policy solutions. We know how the lowest-income nations can provide their populations with basic social rights, such as essential healthcare and income security, but the costs are out of reach due to heavy debt burdens. African governments spend an average of 17 percent of their revenues on servicing debts; as campaigners for Debt Justice Now argue, surely it is possible to cap the amount at 10 percent, unlocking enough money to provide clean water and sanitation to millions of people and avert roughly 23,000 under-5 deaths each year.
The UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Olivier De Schutter, has long campaigned for a global fund to provide poor countries with finance to cover basic social protection schemes. All the financing tools needed are meticulously detailed in a UN-endorsed policy roadmap, from upscaled official development assistance to international tax reforms, ‘solidarity levies’ and other innovative global measures. As Oxfam persistently argue, if global private wealth has grown by $342 trillion since 1995—eight times more than global public wealth—isn’t there a reasonable case for taxing that wealth to fund health, education and other public services?
The politics of hunger
If we’re talking about the politics of ending hunger, right-minded thinkers like the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems (IPES) also tirelessly detail the pathway forwards by confronting and reversing gross inequities in wealth, power and access to land. Brazil under the Lula government is showing the way by implementing ‘people-first policies’ to guarantee food access like cash transfers to vulnerable families, support for farmers to transition to agroecological production, and improved access to affordable food in urban areas. Brazil is now officially removed from the UN Hunger Map, a historic achievement after years of rising hunger across the country. The larger picture, as IPES make clear, also requires challenging unfair trade rules and export patterns that trap poorer countries in dependency on food imports, making them vulnerable to price shocks.
The real problem, however, is that so few people are standing behind the cause of sharing the world’s resources to end life-threatening deprivation. A wave of ‘Gen Z’ protests against austerity may be sweeping the world, calling for a renewal of publicly funded services in healthcare, education and social protection within their respective countries. But we still lack a global movement to uphold the United Nations and its frontline agencies at a time when international law itself is under attack, leaving us with nothing but empty promises to ‘leave no-one behind’ and eradicate poverty and hunger by 2030. Many of these noble ambitions were repeated at the Second World Social Summit for Social Development in November, although they will remain implausible until governments fulfil the UN Charter’s intention to craft binding mechanisms and ‘employ international machinery for the promotion of the economic and social advancement of all peoples’.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is fast becoming a forgotten pledge of the international community since 1948, especially the 25th Article that proclaims the most basic right to an adequate standard of living. Where is our outrage for the 900 million children that still experience multidimensional poverty in the 21st century? Or the staggering 318 million people who, at this moment, are facing crisis levels of acute food insecurity? That’s why the time has come for millions of people to participate in huge, worldwide demonstrations that uphold the long-agreed rights of Article 25. It may be our last and only hope of saving the UN’s vision of promoting social progress and better standards of life for everyone.
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Trump Grades Economy 'A+++++' as Americans Skip Medical Care and Struggle to Afford Essentials
"God help us when we have a B+++++ economy," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Dec 10, 2025
President Donald Trump's launch of a nationwide "affordability tour" this week may look to some like an admission that Americans are struggling under the weight of the administration's tariffs and rising utility and grocery costs—but Trump assured one reporter on Tuesday that he would acknowledge no such thing.
"I do want to talk about the economy," said Politico's White House bureau chief, Dasha Burns, in a sit-down interview. "I wonder what grade you would give to your economy."
"A-plus," said the president without hesitating. "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus."
He spoke to Burns the same day he addressed Pennsylvania voters at a rally where he was flanked by large signs reading, "Lower Prices" and "Bigger Paychecks." Burns pointed out that she had spoken to one woman in Pennsylvania who identified herself as a Trump supporter who "loves" the president.
"Here’s what she said about the economy. She said, 'Groceries, utility, insurance, and the basic cost of running [a] small business keep rising faster than wages,'" said Burns. "She also says that not enough is being done. Mr. President, this is one of your supporters."
On social media, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) chimed in, cataloging a number of features of the economy Trump is overseeing, including the rising rate of homelessness and food prices.
"God help us when we have a B-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus economy," said the senator, a frequent critic of Trump and economic inequality.
At the event in Mount Pocono, Pennsylvania, as in his interview with Burns, Trump said he "inherited a mess" from former President Joe Biden—a frequent claim that economists have vehemently refuted this year as grocery prices and household electricity bills have gone up, the latter fueled partially by the artificial intelligence data centers whose expansion Trump is demanding in communities across the country.
While centering the tour on affordability, Trump also called the concept a "hoax" that's been perpetrated by Democrats like New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, who focused heavily on making the city more livable for working people by reducing costs.
"They use the word affordability. And that’s the only word they say. Affordability. And that’s their only word. They say, ‘Affordability.’ And everyone says, ‘Oh, that must mean Trump has high prices.’ No. Our prices are coming down tremendously from the highest prices in the history of our country," the president said.
The Trump administration didn't release the November Consumer Price Index as scheduled last month, but previous releases this year have shown price increases for groceries. Democratic lawmakers on the Joint Economic Committee in November found that American households are spending roughly $700 more each month to pay for essential items, and as Common Dreams reported in August, large retailers are using the president's tariffs on countries including Brazil, Mexico, and Canada to pass higher costs onto customers, who are being asked to pay as much as 40% more for some groceries at major stores like Walmart.
Along with dismissing the idea that affordability is an issue for Americans at the event in Pennsylvania, the president sought to blame working people for their perception that tariffs have helped make life too expensive—repeating an earlier suggestion that the US doesn't need to import certain goods.
“You know, you can give up certain products. You can give up pencils... You don’t need 37 dolls for your daughter,” Trump said. “Two or three is nice, but you don’t need 37 dolls. So, we’re doing things right. We’re running this country right well.”
Trump: "You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don't need that many. You always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we're doing… pic.twitter.com/aHYTqkg5jy
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 10, 2025
While haranguing families about needing to do without, emphasized Media Matters for America senior fellow Matthew Gertz, the president's own wealth has grown by $3 billion in the past year "thanks to various corrupt schemes" such as his investment in cryptocurrency.
Despite his new focus on affordability, wrote economist Paul Krugman, Trump's set out on the first stop of his tour with the apparent aim of continuing to "gaslight the public" into believing any financial struggles they're having are they're own fault—with some blame to be shared by immigrants and Democratic lawmakers.
"The problem can’t possibly lie with him—so it must lie with you. 'The American people don’t know how good they have it,'" wrote Krugman, quoting a recent speech given by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
But despite the president's deflections, Krugman wrote, the facts don't support the notion that Trump has delivered on his campaign promise to bring down consumer prices starting on "day one" of his second term.
"We’re now 11 months in, prices are still rising, and voters who believed him feel, with reason, that they were lied to," wrote Krugman. "Last night Trump insisted that prices are, in fact, coming way down. Again, 'Who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes?' is a self-destructive political strategy."
Krugman continued:
Trump would be in much better political shape right now if he had basically continued Biden’s policies, with only a few cosmetic changes. When he took office inflation was on a declining trajectory. Consumer sentiment was relatively favorable at the start of 2025. Americans were still angry about high prices, but the inflation surge of 2021-3 had happened on Biden’s watch and was receding into the past...
Instead, he brought chaos: Massive and massively unpopular tariffs, DOGE disruptions, masked ICE agents grabbing people off the street, saber-rattling and war crimes in the Caribbean. Many swing voters, I believe, supported Trump out of nostalgia for the relative calm that prevailed before Covid struck. They didn’t think they were voting for nonstop political PTSD.
And there’s more to come. Health insurance costs are about to spike, because Republicans refuse to extend Biden-era subsidies. Inflation may pick up in the next few months as retailers, who have so far absorbed much of the cost of Trump’s tariffs, begin passing them on to consumers.
So the “affordability tour” is off to a disastrous start. And it won’t get better, because while Trump insists that the problem is you, it’s actually him. And he isn’t going to change.
While Trump hammers home his claim that the economy is working for Americans, polls continue to show that households are basing their negative outlook on the matter on their lived experience. Nearly half of those polled by Politico and Public First in a survey released Wednesday said they are finding groceries, utilities, healthcare, housing, and transportation difficult to afford, and 55% of respondents said they blame the Trump administration for rising costs.
Twenty-seven percent of people said they have skipped a medical appointment in the last two years due to high costs, and 23% said they had rationed prescription doses to save money. Half of those surveyed are having difficulty paying for food.
Trump's self-described "A-plus-plus-plus-plus-plus" economy is also forcing people to forgo travel and leisure activities, with 37% of people saying they wouldn't be able to afford tickets to a sports event with family or friends and nearly half saying they couldn't pay for air travel.
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said that as Americans struggle with the impact of Trump's tariffs and other policies that have prioritized corporate profits over the needs of working families, the president's response was to deliver a speech "full of NOTHING."
"No new policies. No new benefits for families," said Jayapal. "Just telling people that everything is amazing when we can see with our own two eyes that it’s not. It’s a complete betrayal of the American people."
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Richest 0.001% Now Own Three Times More Wealth Than Poorest Half of Humanity Combined
"The choices we make in the coming years will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity."
Dec 10, 2025
A landmark report on global inequality published Wednesday shows that the chasm between the richest slice of humanity and everyone else continued to expand this year, leaving the top 0.001%—fewer than 60,000 multimillionaires—with three times more wealth than the poorest half of the world's population combined.
The global wealth gap has become so staggering, and its impact on economies and democratic institutions so corrosive, that policymakers should treat it as an emergency, argues the third edition of the World Inequality Report, a comprehensive analysis that draws on the work of hundreds of scholars worldwide. Ricardo Gómez-Carrera, a researcher at the World Inequality Lab, is the report's lead author.
"Inequality has long been a defining feature of the global economy, but by 2025, it has reached levels that demand urgent attention," reads the new report. "The benefits of globalization and economic growth have flowed disproportionately to a small minority, while much of the world’s population still face difficulties in achieving stable livelihoods. These divides are not inevitable. They are the outcome of political and institutional choices."
The richest 10% of the global population, according to the latest data, own three-quarters of the world's wealth and capture more income than the rest of humanity. Within most countries, it is rare for the bottom 50% to control more than 5% of national wealth.
"This concentration is not only persistent, but it is also accelerating," the report observes. "Since the 1990s, the wealth of billionaires and centimillionaires has grown at approximately 8% annually, nearly twice the rate of growth experienced by the bottom half of the population. The poorest have made modest gains, but these are overshadowed by the extraordinary accumulation at the very top."
"The result," the report adds, "is a world in which a tiny minority commands unprecedented financial power, while billions remain excluded from even basic economic stability."
The report comes as the world's richest and most powerful nation, led by President Donald Trump, abandons international cooperation on climate and taxation and works to supercharge inequality by slashing domestic and foreign aid programs while delivering massive handouts to the wealthiest Americans.
Jayati Ghosh, a member of the G20 Extraordinary Committee of Independent Experts on Global Inequality and co-author of the forward to the new report, said in a statement that "we live in a system where resources extracted from labor and nature in low-income countries continue to sustain the prosperity and the unsustainable lifestyle of people in high-income economies and rich elites across countries."
"These patterns are not accidents of markets," said Ghosh. "They reflect the legacy of history and the functioning of institutions, regulations and policies—all of which are related to unequal power relations that have yet to be rebalanced.”
Reversing the decadeslong trend of exploding inequality will require the political will to pursue obvious solutions, including fair taxation of the mega-rich and bold investments in social programs and climate action, which is disproportionately fueled by the wealthy.
"The choices we make in the coming years," the report says, "will determine whether the global economy continues down a path of extreme concentration or moves toward shared prosperity."
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