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STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN The State of Food Insecurity 2001 |
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Hartwig de Haen, Assistant Director-General of FAO, presented The State of Food Insecurity 2001 (SOFI), stating that the world is slipping further behind its target to halve hunger by 2015, which was the goal set during the World Food Summit in 1996. "Unless the world raises its level of political will and mobilizes the resources necessary to fight hunger, there will be no way to solve hunger...Food is a human right and hunger itself is a cause of poverty. We cannot wait for income growth to reduce hunger," said Mr de Haen. In the 1990s the number of hungry people declined by only six million per year. At this rate, it would take 60 years to reduce the number of hungry people in the world to 400 million, which was the target the 1996 World Food Summit had committed to by the year 2015. Mr de Haen added that FAO was particularly concerned about the state of the world's children, saying that undernutrition among children could worsen due to factors such as poor economic prospects and HIV/AIDS. "We estimate that at least 180 million children under ten years of age are part of the 777 million people estimated to be chronically undernourished in the developing world." |
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