World hunger photos: the stories and images of poor people's lives

See also United States hunger pictures and stories

Life in the back alleys of the Degüi Ayoreo community, outside Santa Cruz. In Santa Cruz, a city of nearly three million people, the Ayoreo Indians have become an example of how urban sprawl can devour a culture, making it invisible and stigmatising and endangering it, said anthropologist Luca Citarella. Credit: Miguel Ángel Souza/IPS 

Bolivia’s Ayoreo indians, devoured by the city Anna Infantas IPS December 18, 2012  

Our lives: A survivors guide to hard times IRIN News December 2012 The series follows 20 people in 10 countries including  Millicent Wanyama – Breadcrumb seller, Kenya  Manbahadur Tamang – Farmer, Nepal  and Grace Taban Genova – Home-brewer, South Sudan

Girls are still threatened by practices such as child marriage and female genital mutilation  Photo: Noor Ali/IRIN

Kenya: Nancy, "They did very bad things to me" IRIN News October 11, 2011 See World hunger photos: the stories and images of people's lives

In Bolivia, miners pick away at Rich Mountain, but it takes back its own toll Juan Forero Washington Post September 27, 2012   See slideshow, video.  See World hunger photos: the stories and images of people's lives

In pictures: Sierra Leone's cholera outbreak BBC News September 28, 2012

A child’s height was measured after he was rescued from garment factory labor in New Delhi in June. Labor laws affecting children are often not enforced, due to corruption, one of several ways in which corruption diminishes poor childrens' lives. Photo: Kevin Frayer/Associated Press  

How corruption affects the poor children of India Sonia Faleiero New York Times September 15, 2012 

10-year-old Meena Devi, right, and her older brother Sunil, 11, outside their hut in Jhanwatola village, Bihar.  Photo: Sonia Faleiro for The New York Times

Survival without adult supervision: stark reality in rural Bihar Sonia Faleiero New York Times August 25, 2012  

An anti-child labour activist struggles to rescue a young boy during an operation targeting child traffickers. Up to 200,000 children a year fall into the hands of slave traders in India, many sold by their poverty-stricken parents for as little as £11. Now a group of activists has set out to rescue them from a life in the sweatshops of Delhi. Photo:Chamberlain/Guardian

Activists in India attempt to rescue children from being sold into slavery Gethin Chamberlain The Guardian (UK) August 4, 2012 See  Child slavery in India in pictures

Balki Souley, 14, lost her baby during childbirth in a hospital in Maradi, Niger. Hospital officials said it was because of her age and the fact that she had eaten very little during her pregnancy. “When I return to my village, I will try to have another child,” said Balki, who was married at age 12. Photo: Sudarsan Raghayan/Washington Post  Each day, more than 25,000 girls younger than 18 are married across the world. Here is a look at some of them.

Will hunger crisis fuel child marriages? Sudarsan Raghayan Washington Post July 10, 2012 Amidst drought and famine, Niger leads West Africa in addressing crisis (video) Fred de Sam Lazaro PBS Newshour July 12, 2012

Bonded labor in Afghanistan’s brick kilns is one of the most common forms of hazardous labor in the country. More than half of the brick kiln workers surveyed in a recent report by the International Labor Organization (ILO) were children. According to the ILO, the kilns rely on debt bondage: Workers and their families are tied to a kiln by the need to pay off loans taken out for basic necessities, medical expenses, weddings and funerals. Photo: IRIN View slideshow

Pakistan: Debt bondage or education? IRIN News May 23, 2012  Afghanistan: Debt bondage ensnares entire families IRIN News May 16, 2012 See Wikipedia debt bondage 

Women que for water. Amina Abdalla, a 45-year-old mother of seven, lives in northern Kenya's Marsabit District, where life is a daily struggle for scarce water and pasture. Abdalla's family lives on about 10 litres (≈≈ 1 quart) of water per day, far below the 20-50 litres per person per day recommended by the UN.

Running out of water in northern Kenya: Amenia Abdalla waits in line six hours for 25 gallons of water which is expected to last 10 days for her family of eight IRIN News August 24, 2011  

Abdille Muhamed with his dead cow Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Kenya: When a cow is part of the family  IRIN News July 28, 2011

Maria Farah outside her ari.  Every day, 500g of boiled wheat is divided up between two adults, four children, a calf, a goat and a donkey in the Farah household. It is the only food they have had after rains failed for the past two seasons. The 15kg sack of wheat is provided to about 1,200 people in the Bisle area, which has four settlements, under the government-run Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) as payment for work, such as digging water holes. "It is boiled wheat for breakfast and for the main meal – we don't have anything else – no milk, no meat, no vegetables, no oil," says Maria Farah, the mother. Not surprisingly, two of her children are severely malnourished.  Photo: Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN  

Ethiopia: Families in Bisle living on 1.1 lbs of boiled wheat a day IRIN News July 12, 2011

This young Somali was suffering from severe malnutrition after fleeing home with his parents. "More than 50 per cent of Somali children arriving in Ethiopia are seriously malnourished, while among those arriving to Kenya that rate is somewhat lower, but equally worrying – between 30 to 40 per cent,". a  UNHCR spokesperson said.  Photo:Gangale/UNHCR

Somalia: Halima Omar, "I watched four of my children die of hunger"  IRIN News July 4, 2011

Pakistan: Selling children to pay off a debt IRIN News June 6, 2011

Gaining rights for women workers in Cambodia (video)  UNIFEM October 9, 2010 

 Microenterprise for women in India (4 minute video) Trickle Up October 9, 2010

Young boys bathing in a river in Nigeria known to be infected with the parasite that causes river blindness. Some 27 million people in Nigeria need treatment for river blindness, also known as onchocerciasis.  The disease is spread through the bite of a black fly that breeds in fast-flowing water. However, if at-risk people take the drug ivermectin, also known as Mectizan, annually for 15-17 years, the infection cycle is broken for life.  Photo: IRIN

River blindness in Nigeria: photo essay IRIN October 8,  2010 See more nutrition and health stories

In Agbogbloshie, a slum in Accra, the capital of Ghana, adults and children tear away at computers from abroad to get at the precious metals inside. Left, David Akore, 18, and other foragers. At the dump, the machines are dismantled and often burned to extract metals for resale. The equipment in this digital cemetery come mainly from Europe and the United States, sometimes as secondhand donations meant to reduce the "digital divide'' — the disparity in computer access between poor nations and rich. Photo: Pieter Hugo/New York Times

A global graveyard for dead computers in Ghana (Photo slideshow) New York Times  August 15, 2010 For other stories about the hard lives of poor people see World hunger photos: the stories of people's lives

Jogdiya, 2, lay with an intravenous drip in the Jhabua District Government Hospital as his father, Ratan Bhuria, looked after him and his 4-year-old sister. Bhuria’s children hover at the edge of starvation. His daughter, Nani, is 4 and weighs 20 pounds. His son, Jogdiya, is 2 and weighs only eight. Landless and illiterate, drowned by debt, Mr. Bhuria and his ailing children have staggered into the hospital ward after falling through India’s social safety net. They should receive subsidized government food and cooking fuel. They do not. The older children should be enrolled in school and receiving a free daily lunch. They are not. And they are hardly alone: India’s eight poorest states have more people in poverty — an estimated 421 million — than Africa’s 26 poorest nations. Photo: Lynsey Addario/ New York Times

India asks: Should poor people have a right to food? Jim Yardley New York Times August 8, 2010 See excellent accompanying photo slideshow. A Failure to Feed. See Hunger Notes special report: Food is a human right--or is it? For other stories about the hard lives of poor people see World hunger photos: the stories of people's lives

Wilbroda Wandera  Photo: Jane Some/IRIN

A recipe for extreme hunger: How a Kenyan woman feeds her family of ten when she has 40 shillings (50 cents) IRIN News May 14, 2010

Ilyas Masih with one of his seven daughters. Feeding so many is not easy. "I struggle even to buy a single kilo of `atta’ [wheat flour], which costs Rs 30 [36 US cents], and even that produces just about half a `roti’ [flat bread] for each of us,” he said. For Ilyas’s family, securing each meal - eaten on the floor around a kerosene oil stove on which his wife, Nasim, cooks - is an ordeal. “Especially at night, it is painful to hear the children beg for more food. Sometimes they snatch food from each other,” Ilyas said. Photo: Kamila Hyat/IRIN

Pakistan: A family of 9, living on $1.20 a day IRIN News  May 7, 2010

Haitian children prepared to eat dinner recently at the Foyer of Patience orphanage in Port-au-Prince. Many such centers are barely habitable. Chronic problems — like inadequate services, overwhelming poverty and shady orphanages — have only intensified, while the authorities fear that some of the less scrupulous orphanages are taking advantage of the chaos to round up children in crisis and offer them for sale as servants and sex slaves. It took the arrest last weekend of 10 Americans caught trying to leave the country with 33 Haitian children to focus international attention on the issue. While there is no evidence that the Americans, who said they were trying to rescue children in the aftermath of the earthquake, intended any harm, the ease with which they drove into the capital and scooped up a busload of children without documents exposed vast gaps in the system’s safeguards.  Lynsey Addario/New York Times  More photos of Haiti orphanages  

Bleak portrait of Haiti orphanages raises fears for the children Ginger Thompson New York Times February  6, 2010 

 The street is riskier but pays better  Photo: A. Mirza/ILO

South Africa: A day in the life of a sex worker IRIN News January 22, 2010

Fiser's mother wants him to return to school some day. Photo: BBC

Bitter lives of Bolivia's child workers  Andres Schipani  BBC News October 11, 2009

Audio slideshow: The music of the ghetto. Disease, deprivation and drugs are the realities of daily life in Chibolya - a slum in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, which has inspired reggae artist Maiko Zulu. Let him take you on a musical tour of the area. BBC News August 19, 2009  (Flash player required.)
 

Food is scarce in Afghanistan.  Here two students at a mosque school in Kandahar sort pieces of dried naans, or unleavened bread, given to them by soldiers nearby. Photo: BBC

Some pictures of ordinary life in Afghanistan  BBC News August 2009 

One of the world's biggest refugee camps lies on Kenya's border with Somalia.  The Dadaab camp, designed to hold  90,000 refugees, now gives shelter to more than three times that number. Photo: BBC

In pictures: Kenya's camp for Somali refugees BBC News August 5, 2009

omeless victims of credit crunch  BBC News April 14, 2009

A woman holds her 6-month-old son, Abdul Rachman Salim, who is suffering from diarrhea and an eye infection, outside the Mercy Malaysia clinic in Zam Zam camp, in North Darfur. Aid agencies provide crucial services to 2.5 million displaced people in the region. Photo: Lynsey Addario/Los Angeles Times

Camps in Darfur struggle with aid groups' exit Edmund Sanders  Los Angeles Times March 17, 2009 Especially see audio slideshow: Desperation grows in Darfur camps Lynsey Addario, Edmund Sanders and Bryan Chan Los Angeles Times March 17, 2009 

Malnutrition in India is worse than in many African nations, stunting the growth of children like this girl in Shivpuri, photographed in November 2008. Photo: Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

As Indian growth soars, child hunger persists Somni Sengupta New York Times March 13, 2009 (This article has several other valuable pictures.) India struggles with hunger Nancy Donaldson and Ruth Fremson New York Times  (Audio slide show) (Among other virtues, an excellent brief description of how hunger affects children.)

Baby Drupta weighs only 5.5 lbs and coughs incessantly.  Photo: BBC

Ignoring India's malnourished Soutik Biswas BBC News November 25, 2008

Mary Mwelu, 90, had not had a meal in two days when this picture was taken on 20 January 2009 due to a food crisis that has gripped Kenya Photo: Julius Mwelu/IRIN  Larger picture

Kenya: belt tightening as hunger spreads--causes include violence, high world food prices, and drought IRIN June 11, 2009

Seven-year-old Sinikiwe cradles her young brother Simba. Hunger stalks their family. Their local church, supported by the charity Tearfund provides what little food, clothing and seed they have. Photo: BBC

Disease and starvation in Zimbabwe  Paul Martin BBC News January 15, 2009 

An 80-year-old woman cradles her malnourished grandson near Afder, southern Ethiopia. Photo George Mulala/IRIN  Image ID: 2006111713 Larger picture

Two children suffering from malnutrition in Dhaka, Bangladesh .

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This malnourished child was brought to a feeding center in Maradi in 2005. Photo: Edward Parsons/IRIN

'Oil-rich' Nigeria’s malnourished throng to Niger’s feeding centers IRIN June 13, 2007 (You will leave this site.)

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