A) ECONOMIC CAUSES

Root causes

10. The primary cause of hunger is poverty. Food security essentially depends upon an individual's purchasing power and not the physical availability of food(¹⁸). Hunger exists in every country. It has resurfaced in European countries, west and east alike, and is very widespread in countries that are insufficiently and incorrectly developed. However, the history of the 20th century shows that economic poverty is not an inevitability. Many countries have taken off economically and are continuing to do so at this very moment. At the same time still others are foundering after falling prey to national or international policies based on false premisses.

Hunger stems simultaneously from inter alia:

a) non-optimum economic policies in every country since unsound policies implemented in the developed countries indirectly, but strongly, affect all the economically poor people in every country;

b) structures and customs that are ineffective, or which are blatantly destructive of national wealth:

— at the domestic level in mis-developing countries(¹⁹) — the large public or private organisations enjoying monopoly status (which is sometimes inevitable) often hamper development instead of fostering it as demonstrated by the adjustments undertaken in many countries over the past ten years;

— at the domestic level in developed countries — shortcomings are less noticeable at the international level, but are no less damaging, directly or indirectly, to all the world's deprived;

— at the international level — constraints on trade and economic incentives are often ill-conceived;

c) morally reprehensible conduct: the craving for money, power and a public image, as ends in themselves, is evidenced by a diminished sense of public service for the sole benefit of individuals or worthy groups; this is accompanied by a high level of corruption in a variety of different forms, from which no country may fairly claim to be exempt.

All this reveals the contingent nature of human activities. For despite the best intentions, mistakes are often committed, creating unstable situations. Pointing them out is one means of setting about to resolve them.

Economic development has to be cultivated with institutions and individuals sharing in the responsibility for this. The most effective role that the State can play is the one set out in the Church's social teaching and in the analyses of the Church's social encyclicals.

The root cause of non-development or mis-development is the lack of will and ability to freely serve humanity, by and for each human being, which is a fruit of love. This is something that runs throughout this entire complex situation: at every level of technology in the broad sense of the term, in structures, legislation and in moral conduct. It is manifested in the design and performance of acts and instruments whose economic scope may be broad or narrow.

The lack of skills, structures which are no longer capable of serving cost-effectively, individual moral deviance and the absence of love are the causes of hunger. Shortcomings in terms of any one of these points, anywhere in the world, inevitably lead to a further reduction in the share rightfully due to the hungry.

Recent economic and financial developments throughout the world are an illustration of these complex phenomena. Technology and morality are closely implicated in them and determine economic performance. This leads us to the question of the debt crisis in the majority of the mis-developing countries along with the adjustment measures that have been, or are about to be, implemented.