Thu, Nov 27, 2003 page7

• World hunger on the rise: UN report

  NO POLITICAL WILL One in seven people in the world is malnourished, yet sufficient food is produced to feed everyone, prompting officials to blame political inertia

  • NY TIMES NEWS SERVICE
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  The number of hungry people worldwide has swelled in recent years, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, because of war, drought, AIDS and trade barriers, according to a report released on Tuesday by the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

  The report, The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003, found that after falling steadily during the first half of the 1990s, hunger grew in the second half.

  Between 1999 and 2001, the report found, more than 840 million people, or one in seven, went hungry. Most alarming of all, between 1995 and 2001, the number of malnourished people across the developing world grew by an average of 4.5 million a year.

  The agency said the findings would make it impossible to meet its goal of halving world hunger by 2015. That goal, set first in 1996, was cited as a top priority by the UN Millennium Summit meeting in September 2000.

  The rise in hunger came even though the world produced ample food, and in 22 countries, including Bangladesh, Haiti and Mozambique, the number of undernourished declined in the second half of the decade.

  "Bluntly stated, the problem is not so much a lack of food as a lack of political will," the report declared.

  The FAO called on rich countries to invest in improving agricultural productivity, conserving natural resources and expanding access to global markets for farmers in the developing world.

  Citizens of countries that spend significant portions of their limited export earnings to import food are most likely to go hungry, the report concluded.

  By contrast, countries that succeeded in reducing hunger were those where agricultural production rose, population growth slowed and HIV rates were relatively low.

  Anti-poverty advocates said the report underscored the need to tackle underlying causes of hunger.

  "We tend to think of the solution as, `Well, they need seeds and tools,'" said Adrienne Smith, a spokeswoman for the Boston-based Oxfam America.

  "Unfortunately, there are structural issues that conspire to keep people from thriving," she said.

  Throughout the 1990s, the report found, only 19 countries, including China, reduced hunger among their peoples. In another 17 countries, where hunger had begun falling in the early 1990s, the number of malnourished people climbed in the latter half of the decade. This group included densely populated nations like India and Nigeria.

  "Unless significant gains are made in large countries where progress has stalled, it will be difficult to reverse this negative trend," the report said.

  Not surprisingly, the figures from countries at war, like Liberia and Congo, were the most startling. Agricultural production has come to a standstill in those countries, a great many of them in western and central Africa. The vast and fertile Congo topped the chart, with 75 percent of its population estimated to be undernourished in the 1999-2001 period. In Afghanistan and Burundi, 70 percent of people were undernourished.

  In southern Africa, the AIDS pandemic has cut a swath through what otherwise would be its most productive citizens. The disease has robbed families of breadwinners and forced some families to abandon their fields.
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