existence

Hunger is neither a natural condition of humankind nor an unavoidable tragedy: it is the result of choices made by governments and economic systems that have chosen to turn a blind eye to inequalities – or even of promoting them.

The same global order that denies 673 million people access to adequate food also enables a privileged group of just 3,000 billionaires to hold 14.6 percent of global gross domestic product (GDP).

In 2024, the wealthiest nations helped drive the largest surge in military spending since the end of the Cold War, reaching $2.7 trillion that year. Yet they failed to deliver on their own commitment: to invest 0.7 percent of their GDP in concrete actions to promote development in poorer countries.

Today, we see situations not unlike those that prevailed 80 years ago, when the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations was created. Unlike then, however, we are not only witnessing the tragedies of war and hunger feeding into each other, but also facing the urgent climate crisis. And the international order established to address the challenges of 1945 is no longer sufficient to address today’s problems.

Global governance mechanisms must be reformed. We need to strengthen multilateralism, create investment flows that promote sustainable development, and ensure that states have the capacity to implement consistent public policies to fight hunger and poverty.

It is essential to include the poor in public budgets and the wealthy in the tax base. This requires tax justice and taxing the superrich, an issue we managed to include for the first time in the final declaration of the G20 Summit, held in November 2024, under Brazil’s Presidency. A symbolic but historic change.

We advocate for this practice around the world — and we are implementing it in Brazil. Our Parliament is about to approve substantial tax reform: for the first time in the country, there will be a minimum tax on the income of the wealthiest individuals, exempting millions of lower-income earners from paying income tax.

During our G20 Presidency, Brazil also proposed the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. Although recent, the initiative already has 200 members — 103 countries and 97 partner foundations and organisations. This initiative is not just about exchanging experiences, but about mobilising resources and securing commitments.

With this alliance, we want to enable countries to implement public policies that truly reduce inequality and ensure the right to adequate food. Policies that deliver rapid results, as seen in Brazil after we made the fight against hunger a government priority in 2023.

Official data released just a few days ago show that we have lifted 26.5 million Brazilians out of hunger since the beginning of 2023. In addition, Brazil has been removed, for the second time, from the FAO’s Hunger Map, as laid out in its global report on food insecurity. A map we would not have returned to if the policies launched during my first two terms (2003-10) and President Dilma Rousseff’s (2011-16) had not been abandoned.

Behind these achievements lie a set of coordinated actions on multiple fronts. We have strengthened and expanded our national income transfer programme, which now reaches 20 million households and supports 8.5 million children aged six and below.

We have increased funding for free meals in public schools, benefitting 40 million students. Through public food procurement, we have secured income for small-scale family farmers, while offering free, nutritious meals to those who truly need them. In addition, we have expanded the free supply of cooking gas and electricity to low-income households, freeing up room in family budgets to strengthen food security.

None of these policies, however, is sustainable without an economic environment that drives them. When there are jobs and income, hunger loses its grip. That is why we have adopted an economic policy that prioritises wage increases, leading to the lowest unemployment rate ever recorded in Brazil. And to the lowest level of per capita household income inequality.

Brazil still has a long way to go before achieving full food security for its entire population, but the results confirm that state action can indeed overcome the scourge of hunger. These initiatives, however, depend on concrete shifts in global priorities: investing in development rather than in wars; prioritising the fight against inequality instead of restrictive economic policies that for decades have caused massive concentration of wealth; and facing the challenge of climate change with people at its core.

By hosting COP30 in the Amazon next month, Brazil wants to show that the fight against climate change and the fight against hunger must go hand in hand. In Belem, we aim to adopt a Declaration on Hunger, Poverty, and Climate that acknowledges the profoundly unequal impacts of climate change and its role in worsening hunger in certain regions of the world.

I will also take these messages to the World Food Forum and to the meeting of the Council of Champions of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, events I will have the honour of attending today, the 13th, in Rome, Italy. These are messages that show that change is urgent and possible. For humanity, which created the poison of hunger against itself, is also capable of producing its antidote.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal judge in California has blocked the Trump administration from enforcing anti-diversity and anti-transgender executive orders in grant funding requirements that LGBTQ+ organizations say are unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Jon Tigar said Monday that the federal government cannot force recipients to halt programs that promote diversity, equity and inclusion or acknowledge the existence of transgender people in order to receive grant funding. The order will remain in effect while the legal case continues, although government lawyers will likely appeal.

The funding provisions “reflect an effort to censor constitutionally protected speech and services promoting DEI and recognizing the existence of transgender individuals,” Tigar wrote.

He went on to say that the executive branch must still be bound by the Constitution in shaping its agenda and that even in the context of federal subsidies, “it cannot weaponize Congressionally appropriated funds to single out protected communities for disfavored treatment or suppress ideas that it does not like or has deemed dangerous.”

The plaintiffs include health centers, LGBTQ+ services groups and the Gay Lesbian Bisexual Transgender Historical Society. All receive federal funding and say they cannot complete their missions by following the president’s executive orders.

The San Francisco AIDS Foundation, one of the plaintiffs, said in 2023 it received a five-year grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand and enhance sexual health services, including the prevention of sexually transmitted infections. The $1.3 million project specifically targets communities disproportionately affected by sexual health disparities.

But in April, the CDC informed the nonprofit that it must “immediately terminate all programs, personnel, activities, or contracts” that promote DEI or gender ideology.

President Trump has signed a flurry of executive orders since taking office in January, including ones to roll back transgender protections and stop DEI programs. Lawyers for the government say that the president is permitted to “align government funding and enforcement strategies” with his policies.

Plaintiffs say that Congress — and not the president — has the power to condition how federal funds are used, and that the executive orders restrict free speech rights.

Har writes for the Associated Press.

The notoriously private singer Sia revealed that she has a third child as she filed for divorce Wednesday from her second husband Daniel Bernard.

Though her wedding celebration was reported in May 2023, the Aussie performer married her beau officially on Dec. 28, 2022, according to documents filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Their date of separation was Tuesday, putting their time together at two years and two months.

Somersault Wonder Bernard, born March 27, 2024, is mentioned as a minor child involved with the dissolution of marriage. The baby’s sex is unclear. Sia also adopted two 18-year-old boys in 2019, as they were aging out of the foster care system, but they are not mentioned in the divorce filing.

The reason given for the split is the usual: irreconcilable differences.

Here’s hoping this breakup is not as traumatic for the singer as her first divorce was. The 49-year-old split with documentary filmmaker Erik Anders Lang in 2016, and it threw her for a loop, she told Zane Lowe in September 2023.

“That one was such a dark time that I was in bed for three years, really really severely depressed, and so I couldn’t really do anything for that period of time,” the “Unstoppable” singer said. It wasn’t until after the depression lifted that she worked on her 10th studio album, “Reasonable Woman,” which came out in May 2024.

Even as she developed material for the album during the pandemic lockdowns, Sia said she “was like mainly just like laying there, not engaging any muscles, watching television, sort of like just zoning out” in bed as movies and shows were projected on the ceiling.

Then, the “Chandelier” singer said, she would go to where producer Jesse Shatkin was staying on her Palm Springs property, and songs including the album’s first single, “Gimme Love,” just “blurpled out.”