A global response is needed to end the “scandal” of world hunger, Taoiseach Brian Cowen told a major summit in China today.
Mr Cowen was speaking this morning at the seventh Asia-Europe (ASEM) meeting on the theme of food security, disaster preparedness and management
The Taoiseach said the issue of food security was “particularly acute” in Africa.
He said the thought that we would shortly reach a global figure of one billion people living in hunger, if we had not done so already, was “horrendous”.
“In 2000 the international community set the Millennium Development Goal of reducing by 50 per cent the proportion of those going hungry,” Mr Cowen said.
“This goal is achievable. Progress has been made - particularly here in China and in many other Asian countries, and I congratulate the Governments involved for their effective actions. However, insufficient progress has been made in other parts of the world.”
Mr Cowen noted the recent recommendations of the Government-appointed Hunger Task Force, which included the need for all governments to follow through on their commitments to ending world hunger.
He said this recommendation had a special resonance for Ireland.
“Etched in our folk memory is our own experience of famine in the 19th century when through starvation, epidemic and emigration, our country lost half its population.
“The failures then and the failures now were and are due above all to the lack of sufficient political will by those with the power to act.”
Mr Cowen also said the productivity of agricultural smallholders needed to be increased, and the fact that the vast majority of small farmers are women needed to be taken into account.
“Women produce 80 per cent of all agricultural production in Africa,” Mr Cowen noted.
“We must also promote effective actions to counter maternal and infant undernutrition. Undernutrition accounts for 3.5 million child deaths annually – over one third of the total. The critical period is to get services to the child in its first 2 years. Failure to do so can result in irrevocable physical and mental impairment.”
The Taoiseach said the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon had already defined a comprehensive framework for action and he called on all governments at the summit to back this initiative.
“It is a global crisis and requires a global response. Only in this way can we ensure that that this initiative makes a real impact on ending the scandal of world hunger once and for all.”
Last month, the Taoiseach presented UN Secretary General with the report of the Government’s Hunger Task Force.
Mr Cowen said that report made a wide series of recommendations on tackling the root causes of hunger, especially in Africa, and that it made for some “disturbing reading”.
“The headline for the report – that 862 million people worldwide do not have enough to eat – came from the Summit on Food Security in Rome last June.
“Three months later when the task force report was published the figure was well over 900 million and rising – fuelled further by escalating food prices,” Mr Cowen said.
“At this rate, it is reasonable to assume that if we have not already reached the horrific figure of 1 billion of the world’s population living in hunger, that we will shortly do so. The very thought of this is deeply disturbing, the reality horrendous.”
Irish and international experts and activists in the group include Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, Josette Sheeran, executive eirector of the World Food Programme and Bono.
The two-day ASEM summit ended today.