Position Paper: Eradicate Global Hunger

Name of Delegate: Nam Nam Vanichchai

Issue: What can we do (as a united faction) to eradicate global
hunger?
Country Assigned: Oman
Question 1: What is the current status of the issue in your country?
Hunger has been a significant issue for centuries in several
countries and at the global level. This problem demonstrates that
there are still many poor countries lacking an access to nourishment
around the world. According to a statistic from the World Food
Programme, there are 805 million hungry people in the world and
98% of them live in developing countries. In addition to this, 75% of
these people live in rural areas and their living depends on
agriculture. By relying for income and food on agriculture without
other employments, they tend to have a low-quality life because
agricultural careers can be negatively impacted by a number of
factors such as natural disasters, government policy, and
geographic determinants. Nevertheless, global hunger is unlike
cancer that cannot be cured; this issue is solvable because there is
enough food in this world for everyone. . In order to overcome this
global problem, however, it depends on the knowledge, tools, and
policies along with political will fit together in each country.
Oman is a country that can be considered to have a lowmedium rate of hunger due to the countrys specialization in trading
through crude oil, petroleum products, and petrochemicals. The
nation is rich of oil and natural gas in the same way as Dubai, New
Mexico, and other large states in the US such as Texas, California,
and North Dakota. In 1964, oil was first discovered in the interior
near Fahad in the Western desert and Oman was able to leap
immeasurable income of petroleum products in 1970 when they
became independent from Britain. During that time, the new Sultan
of Oman, Qaboos bin Said Al Said, had change a representation of
absolute monarchy that is always infected by lousy leaders,
extremists, and corruption into an absolute monarchy in absolute
harmony by developing the country according to Western
modernization.
By discovering and exploiting these oil resources, Oman has
become the most-enriched state in the world during the past 40
years. The most significant improvement in Oman is economy that
has a great impact on other developments in the country. For
instance, oil exports have raised the revenue of the government and
rate of international trading that have led to an improved living
standard for the citizens of Oman. With a limited data about hunger
in Oman, we are able to analyze the high rate of access to drinking
water sources and sanitation to hypothesize that most Omanis have
a low-medium rate of hunger. To illustrate, Oman is one of the

countries where over 80% of population are able to access a water

source, which represents the effectiveness of its government to
provide its people with the four essential requisites of life: food,
clothing, medicine, and a residence, and also the growth of country
in terms of economics and politics.
On the other hand, this vast development has also become a
problem, creating a large gap between the rich and the poor
because the price of everything in the country has rapidly increased
and driven up the cost of living.
Nevertheless, the growing gap between the rich and the poor has
shown that the government probably does not distribute power
equally throughout their country. As we can see in reality, a lot of
prosperous people in Oman are capable of buying extremely
expensive cars and houses as they wish, while some of the
population are not even able to adjust to the rapid rising of living
costs.
Question 2: What is your country's stand on the issue?
Viable solutions that will solve internal problems between the
rich and the poor are offering employments to unopportunistic
people in rural areas, and charging taxes from wealthy population.
In fact, while Oman is rapidly developed by the petroleum
productions, the Sultan and his government were concerned about
oil reserves that are being expended. They therefore started to
introduce other industrializations concentrating on mining,
manufacturing, and agriculture. The purpose of this is also to ensure
that the government spreads its power across the regions, meaning
that bunches of low-class population that are unskilled will also be
employed and have a better living, not only skilled people in middle
and high classes will have employments. Moreover, the government
can charge taxes from luxury goods that only wealthy population
can afford to help balance the standards of living among their
population.
In addition, Omans financial stability has allowed them to
further offer financial aid and accommodations to other countries
that are in need of access to food and nourishment.
The Sultan and his government have already started a
program called Oman Charitable Organization (OCO) to
accommodate people without and within the country by providing
financial support in general for children, orphan, and elderly, and in
emergency for individuals and families affected by incidents, fires,
disasters, and natural calamities. They recently sent aids to other
states such as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Indonesia,
Yemen, and Thailand etc. For example, Oman had helped refugees
in Yemen by sending aid to famine-affected areas in Somalia where
people are facing severe humanitarian crisis. Moreover, although
when a developed nation such as Japan was impacted by the

earthquake and tsunami, Oman offered a financial support for $10

million to the quake-affected areas.
In the future, Oman can establish more programs such as
these financial aid programs to help people suffering from
malnutrition and to end the hunger crisis around the world.
Furthermore, with the agricultural rate in Oman that is increasing,
they are hoping to be able to produce agricultural and food
products, and distribute those for hungry citizens inside and outside
country in the near future.
Question 3: Explain the reason for your stand.
Since Oman only has a limited amount of agricultural and food
products that they can provide in the present, they are unable to
directly aid most countries with those products that are in need.
Nevertheless, the people of Oman and the government are working
on agriculture in order to provide food products for the
malnourished citizens living in Oman and, if possible, every other
people around the world. The only form of accommodation that
Oman can effectively offer now is financial aid. The people of Oman,
however, are hoping to offer more by starting programs to provide
foreign aids for countries that are struggling to provide food for their
citizens.
Source:
http://www.wfp.org/hunger/who-are
http://www.wfp.org/news/news-release/oman-contributes-1-millionhungry-families-mauritania-and-senegal
http://thp.org/issues/hunger/
http://www.omantrading.com/trading.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Oman
http://www.ifpri.org/sites/default/files/publications/ghi13.pdf
http://boatbythebeach.blogspot.com/2010/12/oman-richcountry.html
http://atlas.media.mit.edu/profile/country/omn/
http://www.omantrading.com/about-oti.html
http://www.country-data.com/cgi-bin/query/r-9667.html
http://internationalbanker.com/comment/economic-developmentoman/
http://reliefweb.int/report/somalia/oman-sends-aid-somalia
http://crossingborders.dk/oman-an-absolute-monarchy-in-absoluteharmony/