THE GOVERNMENT should clearly outline how it is implementing the key recommendations of its Hunger Task Force report published two years ago and how it intends to meet its commitments to the Millennium Development Goals following deep cuts to the aid budget, Trócaire director Justin Kilcullen has said.
Mr Kilcullen was speaking at the launch of the development agency’s annual Lenten campaign. Trócaire hopes this year’s campaign will raise €12 million to support its work in the developing world.
The Hunger Task Force report, launched to great fanfare at the UN headquarters in New York in 2008, set out ways in which Ireland’s aid programme could be reoriented to focus on food insecurity, particularly in Africa. The Government pledged to help increase the productivity of smallholder farmers; implement programmes focused on maternal and infant under-nutrition; and ensure real political commitment, at national and international levels, to prioritise hunger.
Mr Kilcullen argued that, in light of severe cuts to the overseas development aid budget over the last two years, the Government should detail how it intends to meet its commitments to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). “If Ireland is serious about helping to eradicate hunger, it will require tough political decisions about our aid, trade and climate change policies,” Mr Kilcullen said. “But this comes against the backdrop of a 24 per cent cut in our overseas aid budget in recent times. Trócaire is now calling on the Government to clearly outline how it is implementing the key recommendations in its Hunger Task Force report and how it intends to meet its commitments to the MDGs. We cannot let this scandal of hunger continue.”
In September, Irish officials will attend a meeting convened by the UN to report on progress on the MDGs, which were agreed on in 2000. The first goal was to halve the number of people living with hunger by 2015.
Mr Kilcullen noted that, despite these pledges, five million children under the age of five die from hunger and diseases caused by hunger every year. “In 2000, we said we would halve the number of hungry people by 2015. Have we made progress? No,” he said.
“The number of hungry people has actually increased over this decade and now it’s the highest it has even been – with one in six people in the world hungry. We have seemingly learned to tolerate the intolerable.”
The crux of the matter, Mr Kilcullen said, was a lack of political will. “We know who the hungry people are. We know where they are. We know what it takes to respond to the problem. But there’s no political will to eradicate hunger and little or no money. The same effort and money that went into sorting out the banks is required to solve the problem of world hunger.”