Copyright 2001 Reuters
September 17, 2001
Story by David Brough

ROME - The world lacks the commitment to feed its people and the war on hunger is being lost, according to the U.N. food agency.

A World Food Summit held five years ago set the goal of halving world hunger by 2015, and the number of undernourished people must fall by 20 million a year for this to be achieved.

So far, the number is falling by just eight million and more than 800 million people, 200 million of them children, still go to bed hungry.

The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has called a follow-up summit for November 5-9 to try to galvanise the international community into action to achieve the 1996 target.

"The purpose of this event is to give new impetus to worldwide efforts on behalf of hungry people," said Jacques Diouf, director general of the FAO.

"We must raise both the political will and the financial resources to fight hunger," the Senegalese official said.

The FAO believes that the world lacks the commitment to ensure all its population has enough to eat and that poorer countries must do more to eradicate want at home rather than rely on foreign aid, officials say.

The United Nations estimates that 1.2 billion people - three-quarters of whom live in rural areas - survive on less than one dollar per day.

HOW TO END HUNGER?

Hartwig de Haen, an FAO assistant director general, told Reuters the November summit would stress that the goal to halve the number of hungry people by 2015 was still within reach if the international community acted decisively.

Hunger must to be tackled on several fronts, according to FAO officials:

* Agricultural and rural development at international, national and regional levels. Poorer countries must help themselves and not just depend on foreign aid;

* Rich states need to open up their markets to poor nations. Poor countries cannot compete fairly in agricultural markets because of a trade imbalance as shown by $326 billion in annual state support to agriculture in the countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (year 2000 figures), compared with $12 billion in farm aid to developing nations (latest available 1998 figures);

* Assistance to poor nations to implement international quality standards for their products;

* The war against HIV/AIDS must be won. The disease is devastating the rural work force in sub-Saharan Africa, crippling household incomes;

* Resolving conflicts so that more funds can be spent on wealth creation;

* Overcoming a lack of awareness about the extent of hunger and the fact that hunger is not only the result, but also the cause of poverty. Hunger makes workers less productive;

* Saving biodiversity, so that valuable traits of animal and plant breeds resistant to disease and drought do not vanish;

* Using biotechnology to boost yields, as long as adequate safeguards are in place to protect health and the environment. Genetically modified crops may not need costly chemical inputs such as herbicides that many poor farmers cannot afford.

WAR ON HUNGER HELPS RICH STATES TOO

De Haen said the summit would stress that it was in the interest of rich countries to eradicate hunger.

"Better nourished people are more productive and people with lower levels of hunger are more prosperous. As a result, they are better trading partners," he said.

"Fighting hunger produces economic benefits, such as higher economic growth, less social spending, a better rural-urban balance with less pressure to migrate from rural to urban areas, and fewer conflicts."

The FAO will seek pledges from world leaders attending the summit to back a new war chest with an initial target of $500 million to battle world hunger.

The so-called FAO Trust Fund for Food Security, which will receive voluntary contributions from governments and the private sector, will be used to teach people in poor countries how to feed themselves, for infrastructure and to combat pests.

"The focus at the summit will be to recall that there is this gap (in achieving hunger reduction) and to call on all parties to exercise more political will and more resources," De Haen said.

"There is a need to recognise that hunger is a violation of basic human rights." Error: Unable to read footer file.