While the world’s farmers produce more than enough food to feed the planet’s nearly 8 billion people, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said “hunger and malnutrition are a fact of life” for billions.
In a message in advance of World Food Day on October 16, Guterres said 733 million people globally are short of food because of “conflict, marginalization, climate change, poverty and economic downturns.”
The Food and Agriculture Organization was established 79 years ago on October 16 with a mandate to provide people with greater access to food that not only quelled hunger but also was safe, nutritious and culturally acceptable.
But Dominique Burgeon, director of the FAO Liaison Office in Geneva, told journalists Tuesday that “We continue to witness severe imbalances across the world.”
“One in 11 people in the world go to bed hungry every day, over 2.8 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. … We have also the issue of stunting and wasting. As we speak, about 148 million children under the age of 5 are too short for their age, and 45 million are too thin for their height,” he said.
The U.N. children’s fund said children suffering from wasting, which is caused by a lack of nutritious and safe food and repeated bouts of disease, are dangerously thin and their immune systems are weak, “leaving them vulnerable to growth failure, poor development and death.”
The World Food Program said a record five countries – Lesotho, Malawi, Namibia, Zambia and Zimbabwe – have declared the hunger crisis “a state of disaster” and have called for international support. The agency noted that Angola and Mozambique also are severely affected.
The U.N. food agency expressed concern that urgent appeals for international support are falling on deaf ears, noting that “we have only received one-fifth of the $369 million needed to provide life-saving assistance to millions in southern Africa.”
