Fight Hunger to Reduce Poverty

"Fight hunger to reduce poverty" is the theme for this year’s World Food Day -- a day observed throughout the world on the anniversary of FAO's founding,16 October 1945. Captured in this year’s theme is the fact that hunger is the most critical manifestation of poverty, so eliminating hunger is the first step towards reducing poverty and ensuring Food for All.

Around 800 million men, women and children are chronically hungry. Hunger causes illness and death, robs people of their potential to work and cripples children's learning capacity. It also undermines the peace and prosperity of nations and traps individuals in a vicious cycle of poor nutrition, ill health and diminished capacity for learning and work that is passed on from one generation to the next. Above all, it is a fundamental violation of the right to food.

Unfortunately, most poverty reduction strategies fail to specifically target hunger. Policy makers long assumed that if income levels rose and economies grew, the benefits would trickle down to the hungry. But this has not proved to be an effective strategy.

"We cannot assume that hunger will disappear as a by-product of poverty elimination," says FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. "A sharper focus is needed on hunger and agricultural development within the broader objective of poverty reduction."

To make progress in the fight against hunger, governments, the private sector and the international community will need to focus their efforts in rural areas, where 70 percent of the poor and hungry live. This must include directing more investments to those regions.

Raising people’s awareness about the problems of hunger and food insecurity is also a vital step. World Food Day activities aim to heighten public understanding of hunger and strengthen solidarity in the struggle to make sure that everyone has enough to eat every day. World-renowned celebrities support this effort as participants in FAO’s Ambassadors Programme. In addition, FAO’s TeleFood campaign creates awareness of the fight against hunger through a variety of events -- including concerts, sporting events andtelevision programmes -- around the world.

At the 1996 World Food Summit, world leaders committed themselves to cutting by half the number of hungry people by 2015. This year's World Food Day will provide an additional opportunity to raise awareness about the issues to be addressed at the World Food Summit: five years later.