On World Food Day, UN says true international alliance needed to reduce hunger

Only a comprehensive international alliance against hunger will allow the world to feed the 840 million people who now go hungry, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan said today in a message marking World Food Day today.

“Despite the extraordinary technological and agricultural advances of the modern era, the ancient and most basic affliction of hunger is still with us,” he said. “Every day, 840 million people do not have enough to eat.”

In South Asia, one person in four suffered from hunger, while in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion was as high as one in three, he said.

The 1996 World Food Summit had set a goal of halving that number by 2015, he said.

“As the theme of this year’s World Food Day reminds us, the goals will be met only if we forge a true ‘International Alliance against Hunger’ – an alliance encompassing governments, international organizations, civil society, the private sector, religious groups and individuals,” Mr. Annan said.

Large-scale hunger was an affront to human dignity and should shock the conscience of mankind, he said.

In his statement, Jacques Diouf, the Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), noted that the international community created the “International Alliance against Hunger” in June 2002 as an advocacy group.

“This Alliance…is also meant to promote joint actions by its members. And it encourages partners to offer assistance, whether training, policy advice, or help in developing hunger reduction strategies,” he said, as FAO commemorated its founding in 1945.

The government of each country carried the primary responsibility for reaching its goals, however, Mr. Diouf said.

He noted that water was vitally linked to food production because agriculture absorbed about 70 per cent of the fresh water used.

Stressing the need to avoid poor irrigation practices, he said: “Irrigated farming is at least twice as productive as rain-fed farming, and during the next 30 years some 70 per cent of additional food production in developing countries should come from irrigated land.”

Meanwhile, the World Food Programme (WFP), the UN agency in charge of providing emergency food aid, said it faces the highest global food aid needs in its 40-year history.

In Liberia, Eritrea, Uganda, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Haiti people would starve on World Food Day, it said in a release. “This year, WFP needs more than $4.3 billion to feed almost 110 million people, but contributions have fallen short by $600 million, almost 15 per cent…It is simply unacceptable in this day and age that hunger and malnutrition remain the number one cause of death worldwide,” WFP Executive Director James Morris said.

WFP also announced that to strengthen the efforts of the Joint UN Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) against the spread of the disease, it would provide supplemental nutrition to the very poor in the 21 countries hardest hit by the pandemic.

Listen to UN Radio report