Africans should not die of hunger
Tuesday November 03 2009
TONY Herbert's support for Kevin Myers' recipe of letting Africans "learn lessons the hard way" is, as Tom Arnold says, "an unacceptable approach to preventable human suffering" (Letters, November 2).
That approach mirrors the policy of the imperial government in London during the Irish famine.
It says that it is better to let millions die of hunger rather than use available resources to keep them alive.
That does not mean that the overpopulation issue should be neglected.
Stabilisation of population has to be tackled in the same way that climate change has to be tackled.
But deliberately allowing people to die of hunger was not defensible when practised in Ireland by the British government in the 1840s and it is not defensible in relation to Africa today.
A Leavy
Sutton, Dublin 13
Irish Independent
