Crisis? What Crisis?

Still reeling from the effects of the 2008 crisis, we were caught by the pandemic before we had recovered from it. The virus slashed national GDP growth options, cooled the economy and led to massive job destruction, reducing the middle classes and swelling the global poverty pool.

All of this has manifest effects on Western families: reduced borrowing options, reduced purchases of goods and services, increased ability to save to prevent drowning, and withdrawal from unnecessary purchases. Millions of people have seen their jobs disappear, or their working hours and wages reduced, or the business where they worked closed down with no way back.

Since 2008 to date (including COVID-19), thanks to my work in International Cooperation, I have been able to contrast how these situations of continuing economic crisis are being experienced in different countries, from Senegal to Bolivia, from Guatemala to El Salvador, from the Philippines to Ecuador. I have always received a more or less similar response when sharing directly with the disadvantaged people in these impoverished countries: "Crisis? What Crisis? We have lived in crisis all our lives, we don't know what a saving is because we are busy all day long solving today's problems, we have never considered acquiring things that are not basic necessities because we can't even afford them, we are careful not to make the family sick because we can't afford a doctor or medicines, we don't have a car, or gas (we cook with firewood), or electricity, or running water". So, when I tell them about the effects that the "crisis" is having on our comfortable lives, they ask me the question: "Crisis? What crisis?

Back in Spain and Europe, and despite all the preventive restrictions of the health authorities, the terraces, cafes, bars, restaurants, promenades, are full of people, consuming their snacks, meals, drinks and ice creams, while we talk about the crisis we are suffering.

Globally, more than 860 million people do not have clean water, 2.5 billion do not have decent housing, 1.3 billion struggle to survive each day, and hunger continues to kill more than 2.5 million children a year from causes related to malnutrition, according to UNICEF. 

One last thought. In the face of a global pandemic, every resource available has been mobilised to curb it. Chilling figures have been invested in research, science, health, preventive measures and so on. For the situation of real hunger and death, of abysmal inequalities between north and south, between rich and impoverished countries, donor countries maintain a ridiculous 0.21% for Official Development Assistance. This is what it is. We must continue to live with the shame of not having wanted to eliminate global inequality at its roots and to bear the shame of not wanting to put an end to hunger.

Francisco Pineda Zamorano, expert in International Relations and Cooperation.