WORLD hunger can only be seriously tackled through major structural changes in the world economy, a conference in Dublin to mark the United Nations World Food Day was told yesterday.
According to Mr Colm Reddy Comhlamh, the association of Comhlamh, returned development workers, the role of aid in eliminating hunger is very small, and the role of expatriate development workers smaller still. "Serious economic structural changes are needed if the world is to be serious about tackling hunger.
"Figures suggest a third to a half of the world's population, or two billion people, face vitamin or mineral deficiencies, while at least 800 million are undernourished. This doesn't say much about the world's efforts to date"
to fight hunger, he said.
Worldwide official aid to southern countries is about £35 billion a year and is declining, he said. Yet the same southern countries paid four times that amount each year to northern countries in debt repayments alone. If the cost to southern countries of injustices in trade is added in, the total is over £300 million, or nine times the amount received in aid.
The best future role for expatriate development workers was in campaigning for structural changes in the world economy to eliminate such injustice, he added. Workers should also be involved in education and raising awareness on debt, trade injustices arms and the environment.
UCD economics professor Dr Cormac O Grada questioned the regular assertion that there is a causal link between memories of Ireland's Great Famine of the 1840s and the generosity of Irish people in giving money to Third World charities.
He suggested a "less fashionable" explanation that the Irish tradition of missionary activity in sub Saharan Africa has made Irish people at home more aware of the difficulties there, and therefore more generous in giving aid.
However, "...There is nothing wrong with the link being made if Irish suffering during the Great Famine can inspire greater concern for the Third World today, so much the better," he said.
Sister Catherine O'Grady, an aid worker in Tanzania with the Medical Missionaries of Mary, told the conference there was a shift away from the old approach of Western advisers arriving in such countries and dispensing advice. In the Singida diocese in which she works, nutrition and food programmes are being executed with ideas and input from local people.
"These people have been accustomed to executing out Western advice indiscriminately without thinking about it", she said. "Instead of telling them what their problems are, we now realise the simple fact that people themselves are well aware of what their own problems are and how best they can be solved. Having come up with their own solutions they are extremely eager to execute them, using the local resources available and then, if necessary, outside donor agencies."