America Must Provide Foreign Aid to Poor Countries Essay examples --

America Must Provide Aid to Poor Countries         Ã‚  Ã‚  Eliam Diamond lives on the shores of Lake Malawi.   Diamond is a weaver, making mats out of dried palm leaves.   A six-foot sleeping mat takes him four days to make and sells for as little as four cents, not enough to buy what little food there is in Malawi.   So he relies on handouts.   A few days ago, Diamond picked up his monthly ration of donated U.S. corn from the World Food Programme (WFP) at the Ngodzi distribution center near his village, carrying home the 110-pound bags tied to his bicycle (Harman).   Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   Malawi is one of six southern African countries - along with Mozambique, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Lesotho, and Swaziland - in which 14.5 million people face severe food shortages.   The spread of famine on the entire African continent now threatens well over 30 million people and is overwhelming the capacity of relief agencies to address the problem.   Floods last year followed by poor rains across the region caused two successive years of poor harvests.   Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Jacques Diouf expresses the tragedy that this situation could be reversible: "Wed on not have the excuse that we cannot grow enough or that we do not know enough about how to eliminate hunger."   He notes that a public investment of $24 billion a year - less than ten percents of what developed economies spend on agricultural subsides per year - would be sufficient to "jump start" a campaign against hunger (Caso n).      Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚  Ã‚   The increasing rates of poverty in Africa, south Asia, and Eastern Europe, and the fact that we could indeed give more to the poor "without thereby sacrificing anything of comparable moral significance... ... as Southern Africa seeks food."   Christian Science Monitor.   13 Nov. 2002: 12-13.   <http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1113/p12s01-woaf.html> * "Income Distribution and Poverty."   <http://www.finance.gov.pk/survey/pover.pdf> * "The effects of poverty on early childhood."   UNICEF's State of the World's Children Report. http://www.unicef.org/sowc01/short_version/poverty.htm * "The Singer Solution to World Poverty."   5 Sept. 1999.   The New York Times.   <http://www.fordham.edu/economics/combs/savechild.pdf>   * Singer, Peter.   Practical Ethics: Second Edition.   New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993. * World Bank.   World Development Report 2002. <http://www.worldbank.org/poverty/wdrpoverty/report/overview.pdf> * "World Aid Trends: never richer, never meaner."   <http://www.devinit.org/ktrends.pdf>