Food crisis leaves one billion hungry

Kofi Annan, chairman of the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa; Tom Arnold, chief executive of Concern Worldwide; and Dr Mary Robinson, director of Realising Rights: The Ethical Globalization Initiative, at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham yesterday for the Concern Worldwide conference Fighting Hunger. Photograph: Bryan O'Brien

THE GLOBAL financial crisis cannot be used as an excuse for inaction on a food crisis that leaves almost one billion people hungry every day, former UN secretary general Kofi Annan has said.

Speaking at an international conference in Dublin yesterday, Mr Annan noted that "while national governments and international lenders scramble to inject hundreds of billions of dollars into failing banks, the developing world goes hungry".

He urged political leaders to maintain their resolve to end a situation where almost one billion people go hungry every day.

"For although the ups and downs of the global economy may be cyclical, there is nothing cyclical about hunger in sub-Saharan Africa. There, the pattern is a steady and appalling rise," Mr Annan said.

Warning that the world was now at a critical juncture, he recalled that the food crisis had recently awakened governments to the need to end hunger and spur growth in Africa. "Yet today commitments to that goal are on shaky ground. The world financial crisis now threatens to undermine further the political will needed to keep promises.

"The financial crisis cannot be an excuse for inaction. We must maintain our resolve. We can end hunger and poverty. Doing so is critical to Africa and to a healthy and resilient global food system."

Mr Annan, who now chairs the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, was in Dublin to address a conference organised by development agency Concern to mark World Food Day.

More than 200 figures from government, business and the aid sector attended the meeting, which coincided with Concern's 40th anniversary.

Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and special adviser to UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon, praised the Government for not reducing its rate of development aid in this week's Budget.

"I very much appreciate that the Irish Government followed through on its aid commitment in what is no doubt the most difficult project in living memory in this country," said Prof Sachs.

"The Government has made it very clear it is not going to pretend to balance the crisis on the backs of the world's poorest people . . . this is a tendency we may see in some of our governments, [but] Ireland said no - it remains committed to its development objective.

"I think this is good value for the Irish people - not only in a humanitarian sense but in a sense of Ireland's leadership in the world and in the sense of national security and global security."

Prof Sachs was a member of the hunger taskforce established by the Government's overseas development unit, bringing together 15 Irish and international experts to recommend ways in which aid strategies could be refocused to address food insecurity, particularly in Africa. Its report was presented to Taoiseach Brian Cowen at the UN in New York last month.

Another member of the taskforce, Concern chief executive Tom Arnold, said the increase in food and energy prices and the food riots that occurred earlier this year pushed food security up the international political agenda for the first time since the 1970s.

"But the brutal reality is that, notwithstanding the good analysis and the political commitments made at UN, G8 and EU level, very few additional resources have been found to translate commitments into actions," he said.

At a separate event organised by development agency Gorta, the group's chairwoman Deirdre Fox noted that, in 2000, world leaders committed to halving the proportion of people suffering from extreme poverty and hunger worldwide.

"Not a single country in sub-Saharan Africa is on track to achieve this goal on time," she said.

This article appears in the print edition of the Irish Times