what happens everyday in our world .

While it is normal to expect high levels of hunger and poverty in a developing country, it may come as a surprise to observe a similar epidemic in one of the richest countries in the world. The Food Bank for New York City recently reported that nearly 20 percent of children in the city rely on free food to survive. According to statistics from Bread for the World, 13 million children went to bed hungry in the United States in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available. More than 1.4 billion people live in poverty so extreme that they can barely survive, and around 25,000 people die from hunger each day whilst a new billionaire is created every second day. The call for a global safety net has never been so urgent - and compels the international community to transform economic priorities and guarantee the universal securing of basic human needs. Children and Economic Growth While economic growth can be a powerful tool for lifting people out of poverty, increases in GDP often fail to trickle down to much of the population. Alternative measures of well-being are required to ensure issues such as inequality and redistribution are put on the development agenda, say Save the Children. 100 People Every Minute Pushed Into Poverty by the Economic Crisis Poor countries across the globe are struggling to respond to the global recession that continues to slash incomes, destroy jobs and has helped push the total number of hungry people in the world above 1 billion, writes Oxfam. Year of the Hungry: 1,000,000,000 Afflicted One billion people will go hungry around the globe next year for the first time in human history, as the international financial crisis deepens, according to the United Nations "This World Order Is Not Just Murderous, It Is Absurd" Fighting against the imbalance in the world, in his book the ‘Hatred of the West' Jean Ziegler calls for a new social contract based on global solidarity and dialogue between the South and the West.