UNITED
NATIONS - Despite international efforts to reduce poverty,
hunger is on the rise again after falling steadily during
the first half of the 1990s, according to a report Tuesday
by the U.N. food agency.
Nearly
850 million people go to bed hungry every night, the vast
majority in Africa and Asia, and the number of undernourished
people in the developing world is climbing at a rate of
almost 5 million a year, it said.
"The
State of Food Insecurity in the World," an annual report
by the U.N. Food and
Agriculture
Organization, paints a grim picture of a failing global
campaign against hunger.
The
latest estimates from 1999-2001 "signal a setback in
the war on hunger," the report said, and the prospect
of meeting the U.N. goal of cutting in half the number of
malnourished people by 2015 appears "increasingly remote."
"The
goal can only be reached if the recent trend of increasing
numbers is reversed," said FAO Assistant Director-General
Hartwig de Haen. "The annual reductions must be accelerated
to 26 million per year, more than 12 times the pace of 2.1
million per year achieved during the 1990s."
The
Food and Agriculture Organization said it is time for nations
to examine why hundreds of millions of people go hungry
in a world that produces more than enough food for every
man, woman and child.
"Bluntly
stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack
of political will," the report said.
Except
when wars or natural disasters briefly put a spotlight on
developing countries, "little is said and less is done"
to end the plight of the 798 million people in the developing
world who suffer from chronic hunger - a figure that outnumbers
the total population of Latin America or sub-Saharan Africa,
the FAO said.
At
the U.N. World Food Summit in 1996, governments set a goal
of cutting in half the number of undernourished people by
2015 and used the period 1990-1992 as a baseline. At the
U.N. Millennium Summit in September 2000 - the largest gathering
of world leaders in history - this goal went to the top
of the list of global priorities.
According
to the FAO report, during the first half of the 1990s, the
number of chronically hungry people decreased by 37 million.
But since the 1995-1997 period, the number has increased
by over 18 million. This means the overall decline since
1990-1992 was only 19 million.
But
the FAO said a closer analysis of the figures revealed "an
even more alarming trend" - that the number of undernourished
people in the developing world actually increased by 4.5
million per year between 1995 and 2001.
On
the good news side, 19 countries have reduced the number
of hungry people since 1990-1992 by a total of over 80 million.
The list spans the globe and includes six countries in Latin
American and the Caribbean and seven in sub-Saharan Africa.
"It
includes both large and relatively prosperous countries
like Brazil and China, where levels of undernourishment
were moderate at the outset, and smaller countries where
hunger was more widespread, such as Chad, Namibia, Sri Lanka
and Guinea," the report said.
Twenty-two
countries - including Bangladesh, Haiti and Mozambique -
succeeded in "turning the tide against hunger"
in the second half of the 1990s, after rising through the
first five years, it said.
At
the other end of the scale are 26 countries where hunger
increased by almost 60 million from 1990-1992 including
Afghanistan, Congo, Burundi, North Korea, Somalia, Tanzania,
Guatemala, Liberia and Sierra Leone, the report said.
China
reduced the number of hungry people by 58 million from 1990-1992,
but progress has slowed. By contrast, India reduced the
number of malnourished people by 20 million between 1990-1992
and 1995-1997, but the number increased by 19 million over
the following four years, it said.
