One billion hungry

“Hunger is a symptom of a succession of failed policies at the highest levels of government everywhere,” said the UN’s Special Rapporteur on hunger, Professor Olivier De Schutter.

“Hunger is caused and exacerbated by war, HIV/AIDS, natural disasters, lack of investment in agriculture, unfair trade rules and climate change.  Dealing with it requires tough political decisions by governments everywhere:  governments that have thus far implemented policies that undermine the livelihoods of the poor,” he continued in his St Patrick’s College/Trócaire Lecture last Tuesday, March 9.

Comparing the current global hunger with the Irish famine he said that the consequences of the failure of the potato crop were made worse because of the absence of mechanisms to regulate traders, who shipped grain abroad at the same time that the population was starving at home.

“The bitter irony is that there is more than enough food in the world to feed our population.  It’s not simply a question of supply and demand.  Addressing global hunger means looking beyond food production alone, to the marginalisation of small farmers, the inequalities in food distribution and the social injustice perpetuated by the global trading practices controlled by a handful of powerful countries,” he said.

Professor De Schutter praised the Irish government for setting up its 2008 Hunger Task Force, but he said he was disappointed at the recent cuts to the overseas aid budget.  The government needs resources in place to meet its strong commitment to fighting hunger.  “Ireland must commit to spending 0.7 per cent of national income on aid by 2015,” he said.

In September world governments will meet at an international conference to assess progress at reaching the Millennium Development Goals.  Trócaire Director Justin Kilcullen said a rescue package should be introduced at this summit to wipe out the scandal of global hunger.

“Governments should do the same for the one billion hungry as they did for the banks.  If we can galvanise a huge international effort to rescue failing banks, surely we can do the same to eradicate the scourge of hunger?” said Justin Kilcullen.

In 2000, Ireland signed up to the Millennium Development Goals.  The first of these goals set out to halve the number of those living in poverty and hunger by 2015.  Instead of making progress, the numbers are growing.  In 2000, 840 million people were hungry.  We were to reduce that to 470 million by 2015.  Now we have surpassed one billion.

“The fact that one billion people are hungry in the world – 1 in 6 of the population – is a scandal and a collective failure of world governments,” said Fr. Peter Henriot speaking at Queen’s University, Belfast.  The event entitled Hunger: the future of food and the right to food was organised by overseas development agency Trócaire as part of the organisation’s Lenten campaign on the issue of global hunger.

Keynote speaker Fr. Peter Henriot, director of the Jesuit Centre for Theological Reflection in Zambia, told the audience that solving the problem of world hunger was not a matter of charity but of basic justice and human rights.

by Ann Marie Foley