U.N. agency backs Brazil's program to beat hunger

www.alertnet.org 14 Feb 2003 00:00

BRASILIA (Reuters) - The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization on Friday urged rich countries and financial markets to step up efforts to feed the world's estimated 840 million hungry people.

"We must work out how to secure the involvement of developed countries ... and how to integrate the private sector and financial markets in combating hunger," Jacques Diouf, director general of the Rome-based FAO, said during a visit to Brazil's capital.

At the present rate, it will take 150 years to get rid of world hunger, he said, urging governments to change political priorities and focus on feeding the hungry.

Diouf was in Brasilia to sign a $1-million technical aid agreement for leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's "Zero Hunger" program.

Launched early this month in the northern state of Piaui, one of the country's poorest, some 716 families will each be given $14 to buy food in a pilot project.

"Brazil sets an example," said Diouf, adding that the FAO supported Lula's proposal to create a fund to combat world hunger and poverty.

"We shall use President Lula's proposal to establish a political and moral base for an international alliance against hunger," he said.

Brazil has the world's 9th largest economy and is rich in natural resources, but wealth distribution is among the worst in the world. Nearly one-third of the country's 170 million people live on less than $1 a day and are undernourished.

Diouf estimated that out of the world's 840 million hungry people, 799 million were in developing countries and 30 million in Central Europe and countries of the former Soviet Union. The rest were in developed countries.

He said that current aid programs were trimming the number of hungry people by 2.5 million annually.

"If this trend continues we will succeed in eliminating hunger in 2150," Diouf said.

He said that real progress will only be made when hunger becomes a political problem.