A new report by the Food and Agriculture Organization finds that the world is failing to achieve its 1996 World Food Summit pledge: to reduce by half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015. According to The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) report for 2006, the number of undernourished people in developing countries has risen by 20 million since 1996 and continues to increase by four million per year.
SOFI Report Recommendations
Attaining the World Food Summit goal would require reducing today's total of 820 million undernourished people in developing countries by 31 million each year until 2015--a daunting task. However, the SOFI report emphasizes that with sufficient political will and decisive action, halving world hunger is still attainable. Past experience suggests that a twin-tracked approach with direct action against hunger in combination with a focus on agricultural and rural development can successfully reduce hunger. Specifically, the report highlights a series of recommendations:
- focus on poverty and hunger "hotspots," such as South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa;
- complement short-term interventions that respond to immediate food needs with long-term policies that support agricultural development and pro-poor economic growth;
- encourage private investment by promoting good governance, political stability, market reliability;
- enhance natural resource sustainability by creating financial incentives for environmentally sound agricultural practices;
- reform world trade to work for the poor and enhance the domestic competitiveness of developing countries; and
- increase the level of domestic and international resources dedicated to agricultural and rural development.
2006 Global Hunger Index
Global hunger trends, however, often mask significant regional disparities. In conjunction with World Food Day, the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) released the 2006 Global Hunger Index, which ranks countries based on three leading indicators of malnutrition:
- the proportion of people who are food energy deficient,
- the prevalence of malnourished children under 5, and
- the mortality rate of children under five.
The Index ranked 97 developing countries and 22 countries in transition and found that the current hunger hotspots are in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. IFPRI has identified three important causes of hunger: poor macroeconomic performance, warfare, and HIV/AIDS. Nine of the 12 countries with the highest levels of hunger were affected by civil wars or violent conflicts during the Global Hunger Index reference period.
RELATED LINKS:
EarthTrends:
Children's Health: Under-5 mortality rate
Children's Health: Underweight children under 5--moderate and severe
