Women are the world's primary food producers, yet cultural traditions and
social structures often mean women are much more affected by hunger and poverty
than men. Seven out of 10 of the world's hungry are women and girls.
While around 25 percent of men in developing countries suffer from anaemia
caused by an iron deficiency, 45 percent of women are affected. Lack of iron
means 300 women die during childbirth every day. As a result, women, in
particular, expectant and nursing mothers, often need special or increased
intake of food.
Maternal stunting and underweight are also among the
most prevalent causes of giving birth to a low birthweight child.
World Hunger Increasing
FAO Head Calls on World Leaders to Honour
Pledges
30 October 2006, Rome - Noting that promises
are no substitute for food, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf today called on
world leaders to honour a 10-year-old pledge to halve the number of hungry in
the world by 2015.
Ten years after the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) in
Rome, which promised to reduce the number of undernourished people by half by
2015, there were more hungry people in the developing countries today – 820
million – than there were in 1996, Dr Diouf said.
“Far from decreasing,
the number of hungry people in the world is currently increasing – at the
rate of four million a year,” he continued. Dr Diouf was speaking in Rome at the
launch of the annual FAO report, The State of Food Insecurity in the
World, or SOFI.
The leaders of the 185 countries who took part in the
Summit termed world hunger “unacceptable and intolerable,” Dr Diouf recalled.
“Today, I am deeply sorry to report that the situation remains intolerable and
unacceptable – all the more so because ten years have passed.”
“Business
as usual will not do,” Dr Diouf declared. Failure to achieve the World Food
Summit objective would be “shameful,” he added.
Marginal
reduction
According to the SOFI report, today’s estimated 820 million
undernourished people in developing countries represent a marginal reduction of
three million as against the 1990-1992 baseline of 823 million used by the
Summit.
But the performance is even worse if measured against the 1996
world total of some 800 million – a 23 million increase. Keeping the Summit
pledge would require reducing the number of undernourished by 31 million every
year until 2015, whereas the number of hungry is currently climbing at the rate
of some four million a year.
Nonetheless, over the past ten years, the
proportion of people suffering from hunger in developing countries has gone down
as the overall population has gone up, the SOFI report noted.
One in five
people in the developing countries were undernourished in 1990-92, and this has
now gone down to 17 percent.
Millennium Goal on
hunger
Moreover, FAO’s projections suggested there could be a further
drop from 17 percent to 10 percent in the next nine years. “This means that the
world is on a path towards meeting the Millennium Development Goal on hunger
reduction,” the report said.
Nonetheless, the total number of
undernourished in developing countries in 2015 was projected at 582 million.
This would fall 170 million short of the World Food Summit target of 412
million.
More than half of these would be concentrated in South Asia and
East Asia, with 203 million and 123 million respectively. Sub-Saharan Africa
would be home to 179 million hungry – more than double the WFS
target.
Significant disparities
Overall hunger reduction
trends masked significant disparities among regions, according to the report.
For instance, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean had seen
an overall reduction in both the number and the prevalence of undernourished
people.
In sub-Saharan Africa, “the task facing the region remains
daunting,” the report said. There were currently 206 million hungry in the
region – nearly 40 million up from 1990-92, the baseline period used by the
Summit.
The WFS target was still attainable if concrete and concerted
action was taken, SOFI noted. This should be based on a twin-track approach
emphasizing direct action against hunger together with a focus on agricultural
and rural development.
The report listed a series of steps which, it
said, was needed to eradicate hunger in the years ahead. They included:
focussing programmes and investments on “hotspots” of poverty and
undernourishment; enhancing the productivity of smallholder agriculture;
creating the right conditions for private investment, including transparency and
good governance; making world trade work for the poor, with safety nets put in
place for vulnerable groups; and a rapid increase in the level of Official
Development Assistance (ODA) to 0.7 percent of GDP, as promised.
“We
must step up dramatically our efforts to reach the WFS hunger reduction target.
If the political will is there we can reach it,” the report concluded.
Contact:
Christopher
Matthews
Media Relations, FAO