Friday, June 19, 2009

UN: World hunger reaches 1 billion mark

Alessandra Rizzo (AP)
"The silent hunger crisis is affecting one-sixth of all of humanity"

Indian workers silhouetted load rice sacks onto a truck at a grain market on the eve of World Food Day in Amritsar, India, 2008. The U.N. agency FAO is reporting today 6/19/08 that over 1 billion people across the world are hungry (AP/Altaf Qadri/file).

ROME – The global financial meltdown has pushed the ranks of the world's hungry to a record 1 billion, a grim milestone that poses a threat to peace and security, U.N. food officials said today.

Because of war, drought, political instability, high food prices, and poverty, hunger now affects one in six people, by the United Nations' estimate. The financial meltdown has compounded the crisis in what the head of the U.N. Food and Agricultural Organization called a "devastating combination for the world's most vulnerable."

Compared with last year, there are 100 million more people who are hungry, meaning they consume fewer than 1,800 calories a day, the agency said.

"No part of the world is immune," FAO's Director-General Jacques Diouf said. "All world regions have been affected by the rise of food insecurity."

Indian vegetable vendor weighs produce at a wholesale market on the outskirts of Hyderabad in April 2009. The OECD and the UN's agriculture agency said in a report that world food prices will rise over the next 10 years but are unlikely to hit the peaks seen during the food crisis in 2007 and 2008 (AFP/file/Noah Seelam).

The crisis is a humanitarian one, but also a political issue. Officials presenting the new estimates in Rome sought to stress the link between hunger and instability, noting that soaring prices for staples, such as rice, triggered riots in the developing world last year.

Josette Sheeran of the World Food Program, another U.N. food agency based in Rome, said hungry people rioted in at least 30 countries last year. Most notably, soaring food prices led to deadly riots in Haiti and the overthrow of the prime minister.

"A hungry world is a dangerous world," Sheeran said. "Without food, people have only three options: They riot, they emigrate, or they die. None of these are acceptable options."

Even though prices have retreated from their mid-2008 highs, they are still "stubbornly high" in some domestic markets, according to FAO. On average, food prices were 24 percent higher in real terms at the end of 2008 compared to 2006, it said.

"Malnutrition kills through the fact that it weakens the immune system of a child," said Andrei Engstrand-Neacsu, a Nairobi, Kenya-based spokesman for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies... More>>

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