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Press Release 97/36
ITALY’S PREMIER BACKS FAO’S FIGHT AGAINST HUNGER
ROME, September 26 -- Italy’s Prime Minister, Romano Prodi, has given his personal
support to the “Appeal against World Hunger” and the first mondovision TeleFood
organized by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in conjunction with the
forthcoming World Food Day.
Prime Minister Prodi wrote to FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf: “I assure you of
the full support of the Italian government to sustain the efforts undertaken by FAO
to eliminate hunger in the world and the actions you have carried out designed to
reduce the number of people who are malnourished and on the margins of survival.”
Prodi’s support for the Appeal, which has been signed by well over 100 prominent
personalities in the worlds of politics, the arts, entertainment and sport around
the world, comes three week’s before FAO’s first global TeleFood telecast on October
19, which is to be broadcast on RAI DUE in Italy and RAI International around the
world.
The Appeal against World Hunger describes the current situation in which the lives
of more than 800 million people in the developing world are blighted by hunger and
malnutrition, as “outrageous in a world of surplus and waste.”
It continues: “We call upon all persons with a keen sense of justice to play a part
in this noble enterprise, so that the chronically hungry and malnourished in the
least privileged parts of the world may finally break out of the vicious circle.”
Both the Appeal against World Hunger and TeleFood are initiatives by FAO arising
from last year’s World Food Summit in Rome, at which 186 countries pledged their
commitment to halve the number of the hungry by 2015. The Summit emphasised the need
to involve all sections of civil society in the fight against hunger.
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