The unfortunate milestone is in sight for 2009. The culprits are always the same including lies by the rich countries and poor policies as well as mismanagement or corruption at the receiving end. If we could not have made headway during the (false) prosperous recent times, surely the problem will only get worse as the world stumbles through the credit crisis.
Decades of progress in reducing hunger are being abruptly reversed, dealing a devastating blow to a pledge by world leaders eight years ago to cut it in half by 2015.
Rich countries have failed to provide promised money to boost agriculture in the Third World; the financial crisis is starving developing countries of credit and driving their people into greater poverty, and food aid to the starving is expected to begin drying up next month.
Development charities recently called on US president-elect Barack Obama to put the escalating food crisis "front and centre" of his priorities.
Some 963 million people are now undernourished worldwide, according to the most recent survey of the crisis by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), and the UN body expects the situation to worsen with the recession. "The number will rise steadily next year," an FAO spokesman told the IoS last week. "We are looking at a billion people. That is clear." The FAO fears the tally will go on increasing for years to come.
This directly contradicts an undertaking by the world's leaders at a special summit in September 2000 to "reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger" from 1990 levels by 2015, as part of an ambitious set of Millennium Development Goals.
