I believe that a major world issue is religious tolerance. It is important because no matter where you live in the world it is a problem all countries have to deal with. Many people have died from intolerance of religions. For example the Jews in World War 2, both Protestants and Catholics in North Ireland, Muslims and Jews in Israel, tribal groups in Africa, Sunnis and Shiites in the Middle East, the people in the Twin Towers on September 11th and many more. Many of these disputes are started because one group doesn’t like the way another group practices there religion or one religion took over another religion’s land. 50 million people died in World War 2 and 200 million more deaths in things not commonly considered as religion. One of the biggest killers of people is from wars. Most of have some sort of religious difference behind them.
Terrorism has started form these differences. If we don’t be careful there will be World War 3. There are already a bunch of civil wars going on right now. Some of these differences have been going on for years. We need to respect each other’s belief systems and make peace with one another. Nothing will be solved by hurting and killing each other. When we do this we just encourage terrorists. The terrorist thrive off the pain and hurt of others, by striking back we give into them. I am not saying it will be easy to make peace or that it will happen soon, all I am saying is that if we don’t act soon we will end up wiping out all the humans on this Earth.
I think you make a valid point but in my opinion the biggest problem is the wars started by terrorists. Sure hunger and famine can kill many people but nuclear weapons can kill thousands at the press of a button. To starve you have to go days with out eating or drinking, in wars you could die at any given point. Also not every country has a lot of that going on right now, but every country knows how deadly and scary it is to have nuclear warfare. 40 or more nations have nuclear weaponry. It only takes one to blows us all up. Famines, with cause starvation, sometimes have to do with the weather or the way the land is, but any nation who is powerful enough can get weapons of mass destruction. There are many programs that send food and supply to starving third world countries. There is no program to stop producing nuclear weapons. Although the UN tries to keep countries for fighting some times wars can not be stopped. Terrorists are more deadly then any famine. A mass number of lives have been taken and many buildings destroyed by the acts of terrorists. Although mass numbers of people do get killed for starvation also. It is very expensive to have a war, where as famine and starvation are caused by lack of money. This is why I think that it is a bigger world problem to have terrorists, nuclear weapons, and wars, although starvation is still a world problem.