2015-05-28 15:52:00

UN report says rate of world hunger dropping


According to a new United Nations report, the number of chronically undernourished in the world has dropped below the 800 million mark as a result of an increasing number of countries having achieved their Millennium Development Goal (MDG) targets on hunger.  The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015 (SOFI) report, jointly published on Wednesday by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), reveals that the number of hungry declined to 795 million – 216 million fewer than in the 1990 – 1992 biennium and nearly 100 million fewer than in 2012.  This, the UN food agencies said, is due in large part to successes in the world's developing regions.  “The near-achievement of the MDG hunger targets shows us that we can indeed eliminate the scourge of hunger in our lifetime,” said José Graziano da Silva, Director General of the Rome-based FAO.  “We must be the Zero Hunger generation. That goal should be mainstreamed into all policy interventions and at the heart of the new sustainable development agenda to be established this year,” he added.

A majority – 72 out of 129 – of the countries monitored by FAO have achieved the Millennium Development Goal target of halving the prevalence of undernourishment by 2015, with developing regions as a whole missing the target by a small margin.  In addition, 29 countries have met the more ambitious goal laid out at the World Food Summit in 1996, when governments committed to halving the absolute number of undernourished people by 2015. 

According to the report, the proportion of people suffering from hunger in the Asia-Pacific region ‎has fallen by half in the last 25 years.‎  Using 1990 as a base year, when about 24 percent of the population in the region was undernourished, ‎the Food and Agriculture Organization said the percentage has been cut to 12 percent, enabling the ‎region to meet the U.N.'s ambitious Millennium Development Goals to halve undernourishment by ‎‎2015.‎

Some of biggest drops in the proportion of those hungry came in China, where it fell by 60.9 percent; ‎Thailand, where it dropped by 78.7 percent; and Vietnam, where it was down by 75.8 percent.‎ 

However, some parts of the region, such as South Asia, failed to reach the goal, and in total there are ‎still 490 million people in Asia and the Pacific who suffer from chronic hunger. ‎  (Source UN/AP)








All the contents on this site are copyrighted ©.