El Salvador Forges Ahead in Fight Against Hunger

By Edgardo Ayala Reprint | | Print |

SAN SALVADOR, Nov 25 2015 (IPS) - In the last 15 years, El Salvador has managed to reduce the proportion of hungry people living in extreme poverty by four percentage points. But they still represent 12.4 percent of the population, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).

To speed up progress towards eradicating hunger, in 2012 lawmakers in this Central American country created the Salvadoran chapter of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger, a Latin American initiative that emerged in 2009 with technical support from FAO.

The aim is to create a space where public authorities, with civil society participation, debate and promote laws and public policies aimed at bolstering food security and family farming, while guaranteeing the right to healthy, nutritional food, the coordinator of the Salvadoran Front, legislator Audelia López, told IPS.

Programmes such as one that links family farming and school feeding, the creation of school gardens to teach children about healthy eating, or a draft law on food sovereignty and security and nutrition are all initiatives that the local Parliamentary Front is pushing ahead.

In this video report, IPS shows some of the programmes, such as the latest on the school gardens.