CB BureauAhead of next week’s summit in New York to discuss progress on the Millennium Development Goals, ActionAid has published a report that says nearly one-sixth of the world’s population remains hungry.
The report reveals that 20 out of 28 poor nations are off track to halving hunger by 2015, and 12 of these are going backwards, despite UN claims that the world is on track to meeting the Millennium Development Goals.
If China, the most successful growing economy, is removed from the scoring, the percentage of hungry people in the world is the same as when the goals were set two decades ago.
DR Congo, Burundi, Sierra Leone, Pakistan and Lesotho rank bottom on the scorecard. Surprisingly, not just the poorest, war-torn, or disaster-struck countries rank low. Despite a radical and rapid increase in India’s economy, drastic cuts in agriculture, and support to small farms, nearly half of the country’s children are malnourished and one in five of the population is hungry.
ActionAid says the hunger goal is going backwards globally, largely because of a lack of aid to agriculture and rural development, few legal rights to food in poor nations, and little or no support services to help farming communities when harvests fail.
Brazil, China, Ghana, Malawi and Vietnam, who top ActionAid’s scorecard, slashed hunger by dramatically scaling up investment in small farms and introducing social protection schemes such as public works employment, cash transfers, food rations, and free school meals. Malawi has reduced the number of people living on food handouts, from 1.5 million to 150,000, in just five years. Brazil has halved the number of underweight children in less than 10 years. China will meet its hunger goal five years early.
Rich nations also scored. Luxembourg, France, Spain, Sweden and Canada, who pledged agricultural aid to help fight the 2009 food crisis, scored top as donor nations. Portugal, Korea, Greece, New Zealand and Austria ranked bottom. G8 nations pledged $22 billion in 2009 to fight hunger, yet ActionAid estimates $14 billion of this is, in fact, old aid promises repackaged and it is still unclear when or how the money will be spent.