The total number of hungry people around the world is down by 37 million, but there are still 805 million people who are not meeting their nutritional needs in order to have a healthy life because of natural disasters, armed conflicts, or chronic poverty and acute malnutrition, the World Food Programme (WFS) said.
According to the 2014’s report on the State of Food Insecurity in the World, which was issued on the eve of World Food Day on Thursday, 63 countries have reached international hunger-reduction targets before 2015, which is “proof of the progress possible when governments, humanitarian organisations and the private sector come together to make lasting change,” WFP said in a statement.
Yet, the challenges are many.
“I think our main challenge is to deal with the many major emergencies that we are facing around the world right now. Very importantly, among them the needs of more than 6 million from Syria who have been affected by the conflict there, both refugees and the people displaced inside [Syria], as well as the current situation in Iraq,” said Emilia Casella, Rome-based WFP spokesperson.
Speaking to Gulf News, she added that other emergencies include the one caused by the outbreak of Ebola in West Africa, and the conflicts in both south Sudan and Central Africa Republic.
“These are all extremely complex and difficult emergencies. At the same time, we are grappling with what is [the] so called forgotten emergency that are receiving less attention in the news, such as Yemen and Afghanistan,” Casella explained.
In war-torn Afghanistan, the WFP has appealed for new funding for its programmes otherwise food rations to one million people would be greatly reduced.
In Yemen, one of the impoverished nations in the world, WFP last July started a new 2-year programme with the target of assisting 6 million people. A comprehensive food security report concluded that 10.6 million people are food insecure. They constitute 41 per cent of the population, while the percentage of people who are severely food insecure is nearly 19 per cent.
“So definitely, our response in Yemen is critically important, and we are paying close attention to Yemen and we have been calling upon all donors in the region as well as beyond the region to please keep Yemen in their thoughts,” Casella added.
Hunger and under-nutrition carry “devastating effect” on the lives of individuals, communities and national economies.
“Data from a series of studies called the Cost of Hunger in Africa has shown that hunger is capable of reducing a nation’s workforce by 9.4 per cent and national GDPs by up to 16.5 per cent, severely limiting a developing country’s ability to make much needed investments and grow,” WFP said in a statement.
“Every year, we witness hunger’s devastating effect on families, communities and whole economies,” said WFP Executive Director Ertharin Cousin in a statement. “But despite horrific crises engulfing entire regions, we are making real progress in the fight to sustainably and durably end hunger and chronic malnutrition,” she noted.
She was referring to the different programmes implemented on emergency preparedness, support to family farmers, nutritional assistance and “building the resilience of communities to withstand shocks, millions of people are now better able to focus on building a future free of hunger for themselves and the next generation.”
