Niger’s food emergency has reached the world’s headlines, but the crisis there is only one part of a much larger disaster. On an extended trip this summer through rural areas of Asia, the Middle East, and Africa on behalf of the United Nations, I visited countless villages afflicted with extreme hunger and struggling to survive against the odds.

The villages that I visited – in Tajikistan, Yemen, Mali, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malawi, Cambodia, and elsewhere – reflect the condition of hundreds of millions of impoverished people worldwide. Whether caused by drought, exhausted soils, locusts, lack of high-yield seeds, the results were the same: desperation, disease, and death.

Incredibly, the actions of the richest countries – which promised solidarity with the world’s poorest people at the G-8 Summit in July – have intensified the hunger crisis. Even today, donor governments’ aid efforts are poorly directed. They respond to hunger emergencies such as Niger’s with food relief, but fail to help with long-lasting solutions.

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