UN sees no need for hunger

The world has enough resources to feed its growing population if political leaders can get past "short-term interests", the head of the UN's food agency says.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation's (FAO) Senegalese director, Jacques Diouf, has made the comments to mark World Food Day.

"Today the world has the resources and technology to produce sufficient quantities of food not only to meet the demand of a growing population, but also to bring an end to hunger and poverty," Mr Diouf said.

He adds that he "dares to hope" that politicians would "make decisions based on the social harmony of a world of solidarity and peace, not on short-term interests that can lead to injustice and social unrest".

The United Nations estimates that 852 million people worldwide went without enough food in 2004.

That is a rise of 10 million over the previous year, which indicates that food crises have become more frequent around the world.

Jean Ziegler, the UN special rapporteur on the right to food, says every day some 100,000 people die of malnutrition.

"The right to food is a human right," stated the special rapporteur, who will present his full report to the UN in New York on October 27.

The chronic lack of food in sub-Saharan Africa is particularly worrying, with over a third of the region's population now considered malnourished.

The numbers of underfed soared from 88 million 1999 to 200 million in 2001.

Mr Ziegler complains that while the 191 countries in the UN spent a trillion dollars on arms in 2004, they reduced their donations to international organisations.

This year, the coffers of the World Food Program (WFP) were $290 million down, while the UN High Commissioner for Refugees needed an extra $241 million to run his operations properly.

The WFP has had to reduce food rations for thousands of refugees over the past few months, particularly in west Africa and the east African Great Lakes region, to well below the 2,100 calories needed for survival.

By Feed the World 17 October 05

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Poverty Population & Development

3 billion of the world's people (one-half) live in 'poverty' (living on less than $2 per day). 1.3 billion people live in 'absolute' or 'extreme poverty' (living on less than $1 per day).

800 million people lack access to basic healthcare. 17 million people, including 11 million children, die every year from easily preventable diseases and malnutrition.

800 million people are hungry or malnourished. Nearly 160 million children are malnourished worldwide. 11 million people die every year from hunger and malnutrition.

2.4 billion people lack access to proper sanitation. 1.1 billion do not have safe drinking water. By 2025, at least 3.5 billion people or nearly 2/3rd's of the world's population will face water scarcity. More than 2.2 million people, mostly children, die each year from water related diseases.

275 million children never attend or complete primary school education. 870 million of the world's adults are illiterate.

3 million people die every year from HIV/AIDS. Approximately 25 million people have died from AIDS in the last 20 years. 70 million will die from AIDS by 2020. 40 million people are currently infected with HIV/AIDS, who will die within 10 years. 13 million children have been orphaned by HIV/AIDS since the epidemic began, and the number is expected to double to 26 million by 2010.

Over 100 million people live in slums. An estimated 25 to 50 percent of urban inhabitants in poor, developing countries live in impoverished slums and squatter settlements.

The richest 1% of the world's people earned as much income as the bottom 57% (2.7 billion people). The top 5% of the world's people earn more income than the bottom 80%. The top 10% of the world's people earn as much income as the bottom 90%. The richest 16% of the world's population receives 84% of the world's annual income.

The wealth of the world's 7.1 million millionaires ($27 trillion) equals the total combined annual income of the entire planet. The combined wealth of the world's richest 300 individuals is equal to the total annual income of 45% of the world's population. The world's 3 wealthiest families have a combined wealth equal to the annual income of 600 million of the world's people. The wealthiest one-fifth of the world's population receive an average income that is 75 times greater than the poorest one-fifth.

Poor countries (which contain 4/5th's of the world's people) pay the rich countries an estimated nine times more in debt repayments than they receive in aid. Africa alone spends four times more on repaying its debts than it spends on health care. In 1997 the foreign debts of poor countries were more than $2 trillion and growing. The result is a debt of $400 for every person in the developing world - where average annual income in the very poorest countries is less than a dollar a day.

By Reality 16 October 05

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Malnutrition strikes 1 in 3 Africans: UN

One in three Africans suffers from malnutrition and a total of 852 million people in the world suffer from hunger, the United Nations says in a new report.

The World Food Program (WFP) report highlighted the plight of starving Africans and said that the financial contributions necessary for alleviating the continent's hunger problems were lacking.

The program said they had received less than 20 per cent, or $US67 million, of the $US405 million it needs for its operations in southern Africa from now until 2006.

"The WFP aims to feed 26 million victims of food crises on the continent this year because of drought, conflict, HIV/AIDS, locust infestations and economic problems," the report said.

"So far it has barely half the contributions it needs to keep these people alive and build better lives."

The report came just days before next week's G8 summit of leaders of the most industrialised countries, where African poverty is set to have a place on the agenda.

Activists have planned a string of worldwide concerts, protests and rallies in the build-up to the July 6-8 G8 summit in Scotland, designed to force world leaders to give the issue priority and to provoke action on debt, trade and aid in Africa.

The WFP report said the number of people in need of emergency food aid this year had rapidly risen from 3.5 million to 8.3 million in seven southern Africa countries, mainly because of drought.

It gave hunger figures as four million in Zimbabwe, 1.6 million in Malawi, 1.2 million in Zambia, 900,000 in Mozambique, 245,000 in Lesotho, 230,000 in Swaziland and 60,000 in Namibia.

In addition, the triple threat of HIV/AIDS, food insecurity and weakening capacity for service delivery is leaving whole societies much more vulnerable to external shocks.

Other African hunger hotspots mentioned in the report included Ethiopia, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Mali and Niger.

The WFP is the largest UN humanitarian agency and it feeds around 90 million people per year, of which 56 million are children.

Stages set for the 'greatest concert ever'

Final preparations are underway for what organisers have promised will be the greatest music show on Earth, with pop stars joining forces to raise awareness of poverty in Africa.

Irish rocker and organiser Bob Geldof says he believes Saturday's Live 8 event will eclipse the Live Aid concert of 20 years ago, when 1.5 billion people tuned in to see the likes of U2, David Bowie and Mick Jagger perform to raise money for Ethiopia's famine.

This time the event is about people power, with organisers hoping huge crowds at the venues and a television and Internet audience in the billions will put pressure on world leaders meeting next week in Scotland to do more to fight poverty.

"I tell you something ... You will never see it again. It will be the greatest concert ever," Geldof told an audience of young people on the MTV channel.

Plea

In an open letter from Live 8 appearing in The Times newspaper on Saturday, organisers made a final plea to governments to meet their demands to end poverty.

"Just as people demanded an end to slavery, demanded women's suffrage, demanded the end of apartheid - we now call for an end to the unjust absurdity of extreme poverty that is killing 50,000 people every day in the 21st Century," it said.

Concerts will be held in all the Group of Eight industrialised nations, plus one in Johannesburg and another featuring African acts in south-west England.

Tokyo will open proceedings in the east and the event winds up in North America.

The initiative, costing an estimated 25 million pounds ($US45 million) to stage, has been widely praised by aid groups, and Geldof can point to a recent $US40 billion debt forgiveness deal and US pledges to double aid to Africa as signs of progress.

"We're on the way," he said.

"It's incredible to think after 20 years we're almost there."

March planned

The Live 8 concerts are linked to the Make Poverty History campaign, campaign organisers hope up to 100,000 people will march through Edinburgh on Saturday.

"There is suddenly a real chance - the sort that comes but once in a generation, for Africa to reverse its three decades of stagnation," Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor said, the head of the Catholic Church in England and Wales. Not everyone is sure Live 8 will directly affect the outcome of the G8 meeting near Edinburgh on July 6 to 8.

By Feed the World 2 July 05

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The growing toll was announced as the United Nations struggles to find ways to end the violence in the western Sudanese region where almost two million people have been displaced.

"It has been at least 10,000, on average, of preventable deaths since the emergency became a big emergency, which was towards the end of 2003," the UN undersecretary general for humanitarian affairs said.

If you say for the last 18 months, 10,000 a month, that's 180,000. It could be just as well more than 200,000 but I think 10,000 a month is a reasonable figure," Mr Egeland said.

He says the toll does not included those killed in the fighting between the local black population and government-backed militias. Mr Egeland last week said the 70,000 figure was obsolete.

The UN official says the toll has improved in recent months.

"Mortality has decreased in recent months because of effective relief work," he said.

More camps have been built and other international relief efforts have been stepped up over the past year. Mr Egeland said the violence was continuing in Darfur outside of refugee camps and that unless stabilisation efforts were increased the number of people forced out of their homes could rise to three or four million.

By In Solidarity 15 March 05

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