Inter Press Service - November 25, 2003
Jim Lobe

Nearly 800 million people are now thought to go to bed hungry each night throughout the developing world and another 34 million in the mainly East European and Central Asian countries of the former Soviet Union, according to the FAO's latest 'State of Food Insecurity in the World', released here Tuesday on the eve of the U.S. national feast day, Thanksgiving.

If current trends continue, adds the report, it will be impossible for the world to meet or even come close to the target set by the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) to reduce the number of hungry to 400 million by 2015.

"FAO's latest estimates signal a setback in the war against hunger" says the document. "The WSF goal of reducing the number of undernourished people by half by the year 2015 can now be reached only if annual reductions can be accelerated to 26 million (people) per year, more than 12 times the pace of 2.1 million per year achieved to date."

The 36-page report emphasises that reliable statistics on hunger are often difficult to obtain, so the U.N. agency is forced to extrapolate from available data and from studies by researchers and relief groups in specific areas. The statistics are therefore estimates.

The study uses the WFS baseline period 1990-92 compared to the most recent period for which statistics are available, 1999-2001. While approximately 861 million people were hungry in the prior period, 842 million people were hungry in the latest, a negligible decline over a decade.

The decline was more significant in percentage terms due to population growth. In 1990-92, for example, the number of hungry people in the developing world was estimated at 816.6 million, compared to 797.9 million in 1999-2001. While the former figure represented 20 percent of all people living in developing countries, the latter accounted for 17 percent of the total population.

But what was particularly worrisome in the new figures was the trend line. While the number of the world's hungry fell by 37 million between 1990-92 and 1995-7, it rose by 18 million during the latter half of the decade, according to the report.

At the regional level, the number of undernourished fell only in Asia and the Pacific and in Latin America and the Caribbean. The sharpest rises were in sub-Saharan Africa, in part due to poor harvests and civil conflict in some countries, and in the Near East and North Africa.

China itself made a major contribution to the decline, reducing the number of hungry people there by 58 million over the decade, although progress has slowed in the more recent years.

The other Asian giant, India, on the other hand, has stagnated during the same period. After seeing a decline of 20 million over the first five years, the number of hungry people there has risen by 19 million since, to 214 million, or one in every five citizens.

Only 19 developing countries experienced a decrease over the entire 10-year period. They included Vietnam, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Peru, Brazil, Ghana and Namibia, as well as China.

But 26 other countries -- led by war-torn nations like Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Liberia, as well as others including Yemen, the Philippines, Kenya and Iraq -- suffered a rise in the number of undernourished over the same period.

Another 17 countries experienced a decrease, followed by an increase in the number of hungry people, including India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Nigeria and two other war-ravaged countries, Colombia and Sudan.

On the more positive side, 22 countries experienced an increase followed by a decrease, including Bangladesh, Cambodia, Haiti, Nicaragua, Mozambique and Uganda.

As for "countries in transition", most Baltic and East European countries have made gains, but many former Soviet states saw significant increases in hunger over the decade as agricultural production and marketing systems broke down and disrupted trade and exchange relations led to losses in the money needed to import food.

The proportion of malnourished now ranges from 20 to 34 percent in Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Georgia, while in Armenia and Tajikistan the proportion is estimated at greater than 35 percent.

In addition to civil conflict, droughts and other extreme weather conditions and the HIV/AIDS epidemic are contributing significantly to increases in hunger in sub-Saharan Africa.

Countries with HIV prevalence greater than five percent in 1991 have seen hunger rates skyrocket from just over 25 percent in 1980 to about 37 percent in 1999-2001.

For countries in the region where HIV prevalence was less than five percent in 1991, on the other hand, the percentage of hungry people has dropped steadily from about 37 percent almost 25 years ago to 26 percent.

The southern African food crisis of the past year, which was touched off by prolonged drought, showed that "hunger cannot be combated effectively in regions ravaged by AIDS, unless interventions address the particular needs of AIDS-affected households and incorporate measures both to prevent and to mitigate the spread of HIV/AIDS", the report said.

In general, it added, countries that have succeeded in reducing hunger were those that enjoyed more rapid economic growth, particularly in agriculture; slower population growth; lower levels of HIV infection; and a higher ranking in the U.N. Development Programme's Human Development Index (HDI).

FAO is urging governments to adopt anti-hunger policies that include more resources for agricultural production, emergency interventions early in periods of food shortages or crop failures, a focus on providing jobs for the poor and agrarian reform.

It praised Brazil's 'Zero Hunger Project' (Projeto Fome Zero) as particularly effective.

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+U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (http://www.fao.org/)

+'12 Myths About Hunger, Food First (http://www.foodfirst.org/pubs/backgrdrs/1998/s98v5n3.html)

(END/IPS/WD/DV/JL/ML/03)

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