Number of world’s hungry dips below 1 billion, UN reports

(Sept.1115,2010) Although the number of hungry people in the world has fallen below 1 billion thanks to renewed economic growth, it remains unacceptably high, two United Nations agencies stressed on Tuesday. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization – FAO, announced in a new report that 925 million people will suffer chronic hunger, down nearly 100 million from 1.02 billion in 2009. “But with a child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment, hunger remains the world’s largest tragedy and scandal,” said FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf. He warned that the continued high level of global hunger hampers the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the eight globally-agreed anti-poverty targets with a 2015 deadline. Additionally, if recent increases in food prices persist, they could further impede efforts to curb the number of hungry people in the world, he said. Next week, world leaders will gather at UN Headquarters in New York to assess progress made in achieving the MDGs. Goal 1 is to halve the proportion of the world’s hungry from 20 to 10 per cent, and with 5 years left till the 2015 deadline, that proportion still stands at 16 per cent.
Next month, FAO and the World Food Program (WFP) will release their joint flagship report, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World.” Among its findings will be that two thirds of the world’s hungry live in just seven countries: India, Pakistan, Bangladesh China, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Ethiopia and Indonesia..