Hunger increasing around the world after earlier decline - UN food agency

With almost 850 million people undernourished, global hunger is again rising after dropping during the early 1990s, the United Nations food agency says in its annual hunger report.

The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) says the statistics in “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003,” released yesterday, are so poor that the World Food Summit’s goal of halving the number of undernourished people by 2015 cannot be achieved.

Some 842 million people worldwide were estimated by the FAO to be undernourished in 1999-2001, with only Latin America and the Caribbean reporting an overall decrease in the number of hungry since the mid-1990s. Almost all of the undernourished live in developing countries.

The modest but steady gains of the first half of the 1990s, when the number of hungry people fell by 37 million, have been eroded by a rise of 18 million in the late 1990s.

The report found that the countries with stronger economic and agricultural growth fared best in reducing hunger, while there was also a correlation with lower population growth and increased economic and social development.

The less successful nations tended to have frequent food emergencies, high rates of HIV/AIDS infection, a pattern of droughts or were beset by civil strife.

FAO’s Assistant Director-General, Economic and Social Department, Hartwig de Haen, said in a statement that the organization is “learning more every day about what works to reduce hunger and what causes increased numbers of people to suffer from undernourishment.

“We are now in a position to make very specific recommendations that countries can follow to alleviate hunger and malnutrition sustainably.”

The FAO says increasing international trade in developing countries “can have a major impact on reducing hunger and poverty” by strengthening the economy and improving food security.

There were some bright spots in the report. Not all countries are losing the battle with hunger: 22 nations – including Bangladesh, Haiti and Mozambique – reduced their numbers in the late 1990s.

But 17 other countries that had previously been reducing levels of hunger began to slip in the late 1990s. They included some nations with large populations, such as India, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Sudan.

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