High Food Prices Are Killing Children Around the World.

But Americans will merely need to spend less on Christmas gifts.

High food prices, due to environmental or political reasons, are going to turn the world upside down. While Americans are just now feeling a small pinch of inconvenience at the grocery store, much of the world has seen a decade of protests, civil war, famine, and death.

So while we bemoan the fact that our Thanksgiving turkey will cost a few extra dollars this year, let’s review what isn’t happening in our country.

Child Brides of Afghanistan

While child brides are not new in the Middle East (and it’s an abomination that I can even truthfully write that introduction), the problem is getting worse. CNN had a video crew at a refugee camp and filmed a 9-year-old girl, Parwana Malik, being sold to a 55-year-old man.

Now, this technically wasn’t a marriage, and the man claimed that she would be protected. But come on. This is Afghanistan we’re talking about, and any old man that literally buys an elementary aged girl isn’t paying for her to wash dishes, or sweep the floors, or wash the clothes.

He’s going to rape her.

He may not do this right away. He might actually wait until she reaches a double digit age, but that’s doubtful. In the end, she is going to end up as a comfort girl (i.e. sex slave) until he gets tired of her.

Why is she getting sold off?

Food.

More than half the population [of Afghanistan] is facing acute food insecurity, according to a United Nations report released this week. And more than 3 million children under age 5 face acute malnutrition in the coming months. All the while, food prices are soaring, banks are running out of money and workers are going unpaid.

Her dad can’t find work, food is scarce, and prices are only going higher. So he sold off his daughter for roughly $2,200.

The scary part is that Parwana isn’t the first daughter to be sold from the family, and probably won’t be the last. Earlier in the year, her 12-year-old sister was sold. If the money from selling Parwana doesn’t last, then her father will need to sell off another daughter, and it’s looking like he’ll have to unless things drastically change. This winter, if economic conditions stay the same, “millions of Afghans will be forced to choose between migration and starvation.”

“As I can see, we don’t have a future — our future is destroyed,” he said. “I will have to sell another daughter if my financial situation doesn’t improve — probably the 2-year-old.”

Parwana isn’t alone.

10-year-old Magul is waiting to be sold to a 70-year-old. She is already threatening suicide if the sale goes through.

4-year-old Zaiton is waiting to be sold along with her 9-year-old sister. Zaiton seems merely resigned to being sold, “[because we are a poor family and we don’t have food to eat.”

Child Refugees of Syria

Unless you were hiding under a rock in 2015, you probably saw the pictures of Alan Kurdi washed ashore on a beach on the Greek island of Kos. The photos create a haunting juxtaposition: the lifeless body of an innocent 2-year-old, dressed in everyday clothes, as if preparing for a beach trip.

The immediate response was intense, but like most things, got lost in the news cycle and slipped from our collective memory.

What no one remembers is that Alan wasn’t the only Syrian refugee to die that day, nor even the only child. His older brother, Ghalib (who looks to be 4 or 5) and their mother, Rehanna.

The deaths of Alan and Ghalib gained the most notoriety, but they were certainly not the only drowning deaths from the Syrian civil war. By some estimates, 70 other children drowned while trying to flee Syria in the two months following Alan and Ghalib’s drowning. ABC estimates 409 children died in the 12 months following the Kurdis’ deaths.

The reason so many refugees left Syria was because of the Civil War that start in 2011, and one of the main causes of that war was the historic drought that started in 2006.

Food prices skyrocketed, people got desperate, and war broke out. It sounds eerily like what might happen in Afghanistan today.

Omar Daqneesh and his older sister. (Image courtesy of Politico)

And maybe you didn’t leave the country. Maybe you decided to ride it out, hoping to avoid the conflict. If that was your choice, then you risked your child ending up like 5-year-old Omran Daqneesh, whose neighborhood was bombed by the Russian Air Force.

Fortunately, Omran and two of his siblings survived, but his 10-year-old brother, Ali Daqnessh, died from his wounds just three days after the air strike.

Another story even more horrific than these occurred four years earlier to 13-year-old Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb. He was part of the initial protests in early 2011 when he was detained by the Syrian military. Instead of merely releasing an underage protestor, Syrian Air Force Intelligence decided to beat, torture, mutilate, and murder the teenager.

Hamza’s torture included having his jaw and both kneecaps broken, cigarettes put out over his entire body, being whipped by a cable, shocked with electricty, his genitals mutilated, and finally killed by being shot several times.

Child Starvation in Yemen

One of the most under reported stories in recent years is the civil war and outright humanitarian crisis in Yemen. Like many of the countries under duress, Yemen’s problems started in 2011 during the Arab Spring, but the underlying issues were years in the making prior.

The main problem facing Yemen was, and still is, water. Yemen has one of the lowest levels of water available per person in the entire world, and it’s only getting worse. In 2015, Time magazine ran an article opining that Yemen might be the first country ever to literally run out of water.

If people get desperate when hungry, imagine what actions they’ll take when there’s no water. That’s what we’re seeing today, and it should terrify all of us.

The lack of water was a large reason for the civil war, which, unlike “official” wars, has many more civilian casualties. One example is the little girl Shahd, who was killed by being shot in the face during a battle in al Hasba. The sad thing is that her fate might actually be preferable.

So far this year, 400,000 children are “at imminent risk of death” in the country. What that look like? It looks like a 13 year old who weighs only 33 pounds being considered a “success” because she was admitted to the clinic at only 20 pounds.

And that’s just the beginning. Less funding to the World Food Program means more children will starve to death.

With one thousand people a week dying from a lack of food and nutrition, the senior WFP official warned that if $800 million is not received in the next six months, the need to cut rations could lead to the death of 400,000 children under the age of five next year.

The Takeaway

How dare we bitch, moan, and complain about the stupid bullshit we face.

America will be among the last to face the horrors of war on our own soil and the nightmare of trying to rebuild a semblance of normal life while facing the collapse of our environment.

Half our country is having a “let them eat cake” moment while the rest of the non-first world goes to complete shit. The other half just wrings their hands, writes a blog post (yes, I’m pointing the finger at myself), then goes back to the mostly pointless jobs they were doing to pay the mortgage, trying to find “a little more distraction.”

How dare we.

How dare we ignore the millions of people, so many of them children, that are being bought, sold, enslaved, raped, conscripted into militias, forced into starving, and literally dying while we bitch about the dwindling purchasing power of our retirement accounts.

The answer is not to donate ourselves.

The answer is to literally spread the wealth.

Yes, government can be draconian in its bureaucracy, glacial in its execution, and wasteful in its spending. But I ask you, what good is it doing just sitting on someone’s personal balance sheet, not doing anything except increasing their (digital) personal wealth?

Yes, I’m saying tax the rich and soak the wealthy. (I’ll defer to Chris Rock to explain the difference between rich and wealthy.)

Yes, I’m saying increase the shit out of foreign aid.

Yes, I’m saying that America should help solve the world’s problems.

Damn right I’m saying that.

Why? Because we can, we should, and we owe it to the world.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, and right now the US wears the mantle of leading the free world. Sure, it’s slipped quite a bit in the 21st century, but that doesn’t mean we should just abdicate our power.

It’s time for the US to give back and finally be that “shining beacon on a hill”.

Realizing we can stop the horrors faced by people too young and too helpless to do anything should be too much for our collective selves to bear.