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30 August 2009 at 11:34 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
By Sovereign Hager
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America
JOCOTAN, Guatemala - According to UNICEF, almost half of Guatemala's children are malnourished, with that number reaching eighty percent in largely Indigenous, rural populations. Guatemala has the sixth worst rate of chronic malnourishment in the world. The food crisis is attributed to higher food prices, a twelve percent fall in remittances from family members in the United States and a severe drought in Eastern Guatemala.
The government and aid donors estimate that the 300,000 people that food aid reaches represent less than half of the people in actual need of food. The incidence of "stunting", a non-genetic and key indicator of malnourishment, is twice as common in Guatemala as it is in Haiti, despite the fact that Haitians make on average, a quarter of the income that a Guatemalan makes. Mayan populations in Southern Mexico are actually taller than Mayans in Guatemala, as a result of "stunting". Aid groups say that Guatemalan children eat tortillas and pasta, rather than eggs and beans. This leads to malnutrition, most evident in "stunting" rather than emaciation.
Responsibility for the food crisis has been traced to the ineffectiveness of the Guatemalan government. The Guatemalan GDP is not overwhelmingly low, though inequality is extremely high. Socioeconomic indicators show that the Indigenous populations in Guatemala that have been historically oppressed, remain victims of extreme inequities. Guatemala is the second to last country on a new index, published by the World Bank, measuring inequality of opportunity in Latin America.
Aid groups also point out that government programs target aid towards feeding stunted infants, rather than trying to address the extreme disparity that leads to malnutrition. The top ten percent of Guatemalans control fifty percent of the country's wealth. A 2007 Report Compiled by USAID stated that it will take eighty-three years for Guatemala to solve the stunting problem with its current rate of progress.
Some have argued that the United States has a responsibility to help Guatemala because it supported the 1957 overthrow of Guatemala's democratically elected government to aid The United Fruit Company. The civil war that followed lasted thirty years and involved the "disappearance" of over 200,000 people. Rural Guatemala has never completely recovered. However, Guatemala most likely does not qualify for the United States current development program due to corruption and lack of government work on behalf of the poor.
"These people were totally abandoned in the mountains with no infrastructure, no education, no health," says the vice-president of Guatemala.
For more information, please see:
The Economist - Malnutrition in Guatemala: A National Shame - 27 August 2009
The Atlantic - Hungry in Guatemala - 26 August 2009
Costa Rica Daily - Guatemala on Malnutrition-Famine Alert - 19 August 2009
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