{"id":115285,"date":"2026-06-12T15:18:26","date_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:18:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sonnenseite.com\/?p=115285"},"modified":"2026-06-12T15:18:35","modified_gmt":"2026-06-12T13:18:35","slug":"jean-ziegler-the-worlds-conscience-is-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sonnenseite.com\/en\/franz-alt-en\/comments-interviews\/jean-ziegler-the-worlds-conscience-is-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"Jean Ziegler: The world\u2019s conscience is dead"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Jean Ziegler has died. The \u201cworld\u2019s conscience from Switzerland\u201d (TAZ)<\/a> is dead. Hardly anyone embodied this \u201cworld\u2019s conscience\u201d as intensely, for as long, or as convincingly as the Swiss sociologist, politician and champion of social justice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean Ziegler<\/a> was committed to fighting for the poor at the UN from the richest country in the world, Switzerland. He fought against the \u201ccannibalistic world order\u201d in which, to this day, more than a billion people have no chance of a life of dignity. \u201cThese poor people are not starving to death; we are murdering them,\u201d he also said on my \u201cQuerdenker\u201d programme on 3sat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ziegler\u2019s prominence and his incomparable ability to name injustice for what it is made him a champion for a better world. He \u201cencouraged people not to resign themselves to things that one must not resign oneself to. That was his most important ability and his greatest achievement. In this way, he also revitalised the office of UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, which he took over in 2000. Ziegler\u2019s most famous quote dates from this period: \u201cA child who dies of hunger today is being murdered.\u201d (TAZ 11 June 2026<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His political assessments were not always correct. For far too long, he turned a blind eye to the human rights violations committed by the mass murderer Pol Pot in Cambodia, the dictator Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, or the misanthrope Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. He later apologised for this. He condemned Putin\u2019s aggression in Ukraine from the outset, without overlooking the mistakes of NATO\u2019s blind eastward expansion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jean Ziegler never tired of pointing out the scandal that, in our wealthy world, tens of thousands of people starve to death every day. In this world of the super-rich and tech billionaires, the death of a \u201cworld conscience\u201d is particularly painful. Yet at the moment, it looks as though Pope Leo XIV might be able to replace this missing \u201cconscience of the world from Switzerland\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n