By Thalif Deen
UNITED NATIONS, Dec 8 2004 (IPS)

The world’s developing nations have fallen short of the pace required to cut the number of hungry people by half by 2015, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned Wednesday.

”We must do better,” Florence Chenoweth, director of the FAO Liaison Office in New York told reporters.

Hunger and malnutrition kill more than five million children every year, and cost developing nations billions of dollars in lost productivity and national income, she added.

”If you do the math, hunger kills one child every five seconds,” noted Chenoweth.

The World Food Summit in Rome in 1996 pledged to cut the planet’s chronically hungry people by 50 percent by 2015: from 800 million to 400 million.

But in a 44-page study titled ‘The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004’ released Wednesday, the Rome-based U.N. food agency says the number of hungry people increased to 852 million in the 2000-2002 period.

Cutting hunger by 50 percent is also one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by world leaders at a summit meeting in New York in September 2000.

The other pledges at the Millennium Summit included a drastic cut in poverty, the promotion of gender, the achievement of universal primary education and the elimination of HIV/AIDS.

If there is no significant improvement in reducing hunger over the next few years, Chenoweth said, it is very unlikely that developing nations would be able to meet the pledges made at the Food Summit and the Millennium targets.

Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who currently heads a global campaign against hunger, has joined forces with leaders of France, Chile and Spain in declaring that hunger is ”a political problem that needs a political priority.”

The four heads of state are seeking ”new and innovative” sources of financing – including new global taxes – specifically to fight both hunger and poverty.

Development assistance from rich to poor nations has averaged about 55 billion dollars annually in recent years. But U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan says developing nations need an additional 50 billion dollars a year if they are to meet the targets set by the Millennium Summit.

In a preface to the study, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf says he is optimistic about the future despite ”the slow and faltering progress on a global scale,” because numerous countries in all regions of the world have proven that success is possible.

More than 30 countries, with a total population of over 2.2 billion, have reduced the prevalence of under nourishment by 25 percent and ”have made significant progress towards reducing the number of hungry people by half by the year 2015,” writes Diouf.

These countries include Angola, Benin, Brazil, Gabon, Ghana, Myanmar, Peru, Syria, Uruguay and Vietnam.

According to the study, Asia accounts for the largest drop in the number of hungry people, while sub-Saharan Africa boasts the most countries that have brought the prevalence of hunger down by 25 percent or more, although often from very high levels at the outset.

Among the African countries are several that demonstrate another key lesson – that war and civil conflict must be regarded as major causes not only of short-term food emergencies but also of widespread chronic hunger.

Many of the nations that have achieved rapid progress in cutting hunger have something in common – significantly better than average agricultural growth.

Still, the FAO says it is ”regrettable” that so little is being done to fight hunger, although the resources needed to effectively prevent this human and economic tragedy are ”minuscule” when compared to the benefits.

Without the direct costs of dealing with the damage caused by hunger, more funds would be available to combat other social problems, according to the study.

”A very rough estimate suggests that these direct costs add up to around 30 billion dollars per year – over five times the amount committed so far to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.”

Additionally, there are the indirect costs of lost productivity and income. The study says that tolerating the current levels of child malnutrition will result in productivity and income losses over their lifetimes of between 500 billion dollars and one trillion dollars at present value.

”Simply stated,” says Diouf, ”the question is not whether we can afford to take the urgent and immediate action needed to reach and surpass the World Food Summit goal. The question is whether we can afford not to. And the answer is an emphatic, resounding ‘no’.”

The hungry cannot wait, he says, and neither can the rest of the human family.

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