According to Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, there has been little progress in combating hunger.
The World Food Summit, held in Rome in 1996, set the ambitious target of halving world hunger by 2015 relative to 1990-92. “Ten years later, we are confronted with the sad reality that virtually no progress has been made towards that objective,” said FAO chief Jacques Diouf in the report titled “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2006.”
The drop from 823 million to 820 million undernourished people in developing countries is so tiny that it is “within the bounds of statistical error,” he said in the UN agency’s report. “The world is richer today than it was 10 years ago. There is more food available. … What is lacking is sufficient political will to mobilize … resources to the benefit of the hungry,” Diouf said.
FAO often talks about lack of political will as one of the key barriers to reducing hunger. As one member of the governing board of the organization noted last year,
Governments are the main location of political will. Government programmes can reduce – or add to – hunger on a large scale. Government policies set the framework in which individuals, business and civil society can contribute to progress against hunger.
The World Food Prize recognized the importance of political will to do just that by awarding the first ever Dr. Norman E. Borlaug Medallion to King Bhumibol Adulyadej of Thailand for his efforts to reduce hunger and poverty in his country. Among the project supported and initiated by the King
…have been efforts to promote small-scale agriculture, the introduction of new agricultural technologies and the sustainable use of water. Beyond these projects, His Majesty has led other efforts to promote child health, combat iodine deficiency and increase access to education.
I am a firm believer that things like widespread corruption and poor governance contribute greatly to hunger problems and undermine significantly any efforts to reduce it. I remember talking to a freelance journalist who was investigating corruption problems in Mali several years ago, and he told me about the scheme where stockpiles of food were sold by corrupt officials for profit instead of being delivered to the people or saved for future use in times when, for example, crops are destroyed by droughts. This story will sound all too familiar to citizens in many other countries.
So, as we talk about reducing hunger, we should be concerned with supporting local efforts to produce food (economic reform issues) but also addressing distribution issues to ensure that people actually have access to what is being produced. Increasing food aid to countries in need, although important in its own right, should not come at the expense of improving the effectiveness of aid distribution and building up the domestic capacity to reduce hunger.
Published Date: November 17, 2006