Matthew Cordell writes:
The WFP has announced a new twist in its successful program using mobile phones to alert Iraqi refugees in Syria about available food aid… [Quoting Reuters] “Iraqi refugees in Syria will this week start receive U.N. text messages they can redeem for fresh food in local shops. “…
FP’s Joshua Keating notes the strangeness of a world in which people don’t have access to food but own mobile phones. I hear what he’s saying, and the situation may even be more shocking than he knows. According to the UN’s International Telecommunications Union, worldwide at the end of 2008 there were 4.1 billion mobile phone subscriptions, buoyed by developing countries, where two-thirds of those subscriptions were used. The WFP’s work in Syria is just one of the many projects taking advantage of the ubiquity of mobile device to affect change in the developing world. A report last year from the UN Foundation and the Vodafone Group Foundation details a series of case studies that are fascinating.
On a related note, Barbara Demick’s profile of a North Korean refugee and famine in North Korea is horrifying. It is, indeed, very possible to live in a society with all sorts of modern amenities but no food.
Moreover, hunger worldwide is growing as food prices continue to rise, despite the recession and advances in technology.