September/October 2001 Living Now
The FAO View on World Hunger
Jacques Diouf – Senegalese, Ph.D. in Social Sciences of
the Rural Sector from the Sorbonne, Paris – was elected Director-General
of the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations
at the end of 1993. Below is an extract from an interview granted
to Sergio Tripi,the Italian publisher and editor of the Good News
Agency, which is dedicated to the creation of a more aware public
opinion.
Next November FAO will hold the World Food Summit. At the previous
Summit in 1996, the Plan of Action agreed upon contained seven commitments
on part of governments, which were expected to lead to significant
reductions in chronic hunger. And already in December 1992, the
Joint FAO/WHO International Conference on Nutrition declared that
“hunger and malnutrition are unacceptable in a world that has
both the knowledge and the resources to end this human catastrophe.”
Why does the hunger problem continue to be so dramatic in the world?
To answer your question, let us look at the situation in Africa.
While Africa is not the most populous continent, it does contain
half of the world’s low-income food-deficit countries and 33
of the 48 least developed countries – countries in which the
majority of the population survive on less than one dollar a day.
Recently, the problems that have beset many African countries most
often involve a combination of internal and external problems. These
include uncertain climatic conditions, in particular repeated periods
of drought and flooding; lack of water control - only 6 percent
of the cultivated land in Africa is irrigated or has some kind of
water control system, compared to 11.7 percent under irrigation
in Latin America and 42.6 percent in South Asia; armed conflicts
both within and between countries; high population growth which
places land and water resources under pressure and may lead to severe
land erosion, salinisation and depletion of the resources themselves;
plant pest and human diseases including malaria, tuberculosis and
most recently HIV/AIDS; political instability; high levels of debt;
declining levels of international aid; and widespread poverty.
Meanwhile, in the nine years between 1990 and 1999, Official Development
Assistance (ODA) to developing countries fell by 19 percent. This
contradicts the international commitment to increase ODA from its
current low level of 0.24 percent to the agreed target of 0.7 percent
of GNP. In 1990 the Africa region received 30 percent of ODA. By
1998, this had fallen to 21 percent despite the commitment by world
leaders at the World Food Summit to strengthen efforts towards reaching
of the target.
This is one of the reasons why FAO has called on world leaders
to return to Rome this November for the World Food Summit: five
years later. There is a need to reaffirm those commitments made
five years ago, when the goal of halving the number of the undernourished
in the world by 2015 was endorsed by 186 countries. FAO’s State
of food insecurity in the world 2000 clearly showed that the
present rate of progress is not sufficient to achieve this goal.
More determined action is thus required from governments and the
international community.