In a report published this month by Oxfam entitled, “A Billion Hungry People,” the humanitarian organization says global hunger increased by 109 million people in 2008 due in large part to rising fuel and food prices, bringing the world’s hunger count to almost a billion people, roughly one sixth of the world’s population.
Based on this dramatic increase in global food poverty, Oxfam is pleading with countries to start reforming their aid programs in order to create lasting solutions to the third world’s problems. The report asks countries to “rise to the challenge” and rethink their policies. Such policies include the availability of food to the people of war-torn countries, the role that the people affected by hunger have in creating more sustainable availability to food and clean water in their societies, and a more comprehensive approach to predicting the locations where aid is most needed, taking into account rising food prices, availability to food, and environmental factors such as droughts and flooding.
This report’s focus on a new approach to the distribution of humanitarian aid comes on the eve of a meeting to discuss the Food Aid Convention in Madrid, Spain. The Food Aid Convention is the treaty passed by the United Nations in 1967 that governs the dispersal of international aid. In recent years the treaty has come under scrutiny because of its strategies regarding how the humanitarian aid is distributed.
For more on the meeting click here.
For a summary of the Oxfam report click here.
Filed under: Fighting Poverty, Food Chain, Food Poverty, Global Food Crisis, Millennium Development Goals, News | Tagged: food crisis, food insecurity, Food Poverty, food prices, food security, Global Food Crisis, Global Poverty, poverty
