EUROPE
In November, 2014, judges in Italy’s Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that a homeless man who stole a sausage and some cheese did not commit a crime because his actions were fueled by an “immediate need for nourishment.”
“The condition of the defendant, and the circumstances in which the seizure of merchandise took place, prove that he took possession of that small amount of food in the face of an immediate and essential need for nourishment, acting therefore in a state of necessity,” said the court.
“The supreme court has established a sacrosanct principle: a small theft because of hunger is in no way comparable to an act of delinquency, because the need to feed justifies the fact,” he added.
According to an op-ed in Corriere Della Sera, the number of poor in Italy grows by an estimated 615 people every day.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
Facts about poverty and hunger in America
Even in the world’s greatest food-producing nation, children and adults face poverty and hunger in every county across America. In 2016: 41 million Americans struggle with hunger in the United States, including 13 million children. In 2015, 5.4 million seniors struggled to afford enough to eat.
Though they often go hand in hand, poverty is just one of several issues tied to hunger. Unemployment, household assets and even demographics can also make it difficult to access the nutritious food people need to thrive.
INDIA
A report by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has revealed that India has a higher rate of malnutrition than North Korea and Myanmar.
According to the World Economic Forum, India fared poorly on the Global Hunger Index (GHI, pdf) for 2017 as India ranked 100 out of 119 countries on the GHI. Only two Asian countries, Pakistan and Afghanistan, were hungrier than India in 2017.
The bombing was long, leisurely and merciless... when North Korea was carpet-bombed by America to the edge of existence - the American media doesn’t have a memory that stretches quite so far back, uh, 1954, when the war ended. The damage the war has caused to the whole of North Korean society cannot be overestimated; yet today — inspite of the avalanche of American-sponsored sanctions — North Korea ranked better on GHI than the American ally: India.
On the severity scale, a GHI score of less than 10 means “low” prevalence of hunger while a score of more than 50 implies an “extremely alarming” situation.
