At the recent G8 summit in France, Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula de Silva offered an intriguing proposal — institute a global tax on arms sales and use the money for a hunger fund to alleviate hunger.
Lula told the G8,
My proposal is the creation of a global fund capable of feeding those who are hungry and at the same time creating the conditions to eradicate the structural causes of hunger.
Like I said, an intriguing proposal but not likely a realistic one. The obvious response to the existence of such a fund would be for developed countries to reduce their aid to forestall hunger on the grounds that now there is this new fund to take up the slack.
It is also difficult to understand how Lula thinks the mere presence of such a fund would be able to solve the structural causes of hunger. Has he taken the time to add up all of the money spent over the last 50 years on this problem and just how ineffective such efforts have been? If simply throwing money at developing nations worked, hunger would have been eradicated decades ago.
Source:
Lula proposes hunger fund. The BBC, June 2, 2003.