| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
HEADS OF STATE will be meeting in New York in September to see what mankind has done to meet the Development Goals set by the UN Millennium Summit. They will of course focus on the global issue of struggle against hunger and malnutrition which is designated as goal number one.
It is generally believed that we have regrettably made no serious progress in cutting by half the number of starving people around the world by 2015. When for the first time the problem of hunger on the planet was taken up by the World Food Summit in 1996, the number of people who do not have enough to eat was estimated at 840,000,000. This figure regrettably exceeded one million last year against the backdrop of the financial turmoil around the world.
Today 31 countries around the world experience a dire need for food: 20 countries in Africa, 9 countries in Asia and the Middle East and 2 countries in Latin America. Even relatively successful developed countries have millions of residents from the more vulnerable sections of the population who either chronically do not have enough to eat or can't afford quality food. According to some devastating statistics, last year one child died every minute from hunger and related diseases while the total number of hunger-related deaths exceeded those caused by AIDS, ?? and malaria taken together.
This situation is largely due to the food crisis of recent years which resulted from a combination of a number of subjective and objective factors. The chronic lack of attention over many years to the needs of the agricultural sector and lack of funds for it, especially in the developing countries, is an important contributing factor.
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