By Ranil Senanayake-August 20, 2013
Background:
"We don’t want the right to vote, just the right to live" a villager said, holding his dying child in his arms.
This is the simple truth that seems to elude most development work. The right to life is more intrinsic to humanity than democracy or suffrage. The more we look to science to validate modern society, the more evident becomes the conclusion that humans share the same evolutionary heritage as all other life on this planet: sustaining genetic information through environments that vary in time. This tells us that adaptation can only be made slowly and within finite limits. All living things stressed beyond these limits die. It is as simple as that.
