Nuclear threat looms as global leaders' failure exposed

Far from being voices for peace, we are seeing some national governments across the world exposed as being complicit in, and even backers of, state aggression, while the silence of others has been deafening.

Across the world conflicts continue to rage and while billions can be found to fund state-of-the art weaponry and help nations tool up and kill, it seems there is little funding and less appetite for addressing looming famines in Gaza, Sudan, Yemen, Somalia and elsewhere.

The charity Oxfam states that “the world stands on the brink of unprecedented famines” with around 30 million people experiencing “alarming hunger, severe levels of food insecurity and malnutrition”.

It is another symptom of a sickness at the heart of governments, a rot that has set in, as it is left to ordinary people, charities and humanitarian organisations to expose and highlight global injustices.

A different, kinder, peaceful world is possible and those who are taking a stand against violence and oppression and fundraising for fellow human beings who are being killed indiscriminately, dying of hunger and thirst and living in abject poverty and under oppression are the guiding light towards that alternative future.

Not all nations are complicit in these horrific situations of course and Ireland down the years has often been a voice a reason, but some of the most powerful nations who could use their influence to stop the violence and end the hunger rarely do.

They are too often part of the problem and too seldom part of the solution.

The world is unlikely to ever become a safer place unless that moral corruption is addressed at the source.

These are dangerous times and every voice for fundamental change and for peace matters.