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Hunger in the news

A daily selection of news reports from the world's media dealing with hunger and responses to it.
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Hunger in the news
9 October 2012

How to teach... World Food Day

It is World Food Day on 16 October. (..) The World Food Programme has developed a set of cross-curriculum lessons researching hunger through Molly's eyes – a girl from Kenya –which dig deep into the multifaceted causes of hunger. The accompanying lesson Molly's World Help End World Hunger looks specifically at the power of school meals. The World Food Programme is also holding a live tweetup on Tuesday 9 October from 14.30 to 15.30 to discuss how to solve global hunger, giving students and teachers the opportunity to ask questions of world experts on the subject.
The Guardian
Hunger in the news
9 October 2012

Hunger falls but still unacceptably high-FAO chief

Achieving the first Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of halving the prevalence of hunger in the world by 2015 is still within reach, but a strong, sustained acceleration of efforts is needed. (..) The global number of chronically hungry people has declined by 130 million since 1990, falling from a little over one billion people to 868 million - 852 million of them in developing countries. (..) These figures are included in this year's The State of Food Insecurity in the World (SOFI) -- the world hunger report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Food Programme. In this edition, SOFI uses better data and an improved methodology, developed with the help of experts from around the world to estimate hunger.
Reuters
Hunger in the news
9 October 2012

MDG target to halve prevalence of hunger within reach, says UN

The international target to halve the prevalence of hunger is within reach, the UN said on Tuesday, after publishing figures suggesting global progress on reducing hunger has been better than previously thought. (..) Significantly, the figures do not show an increase in global hunger following the recent food price and economic crises.
The Guardian
Hunger in the news
9 October 2012

One in eight of world population going hungry: U.N.

In their latest report on food insecurity, the UN agencies estimated that 868 million people were suffering hunger in 2010-2012, or about 12.5 percent of the world's population, down more sharply than previously estimated from about 1 billion, or 18.6 percent in 1990-92. (..) "That is better news than we have had in the past, but it still means that one person in every eight goes hungry. That is unacceptable, especially when we live in a world of plenty," said Jose Graziano da Silva, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO).
Reuters
Hunger in the news
8 October 2012

Climate Change: Watch out for the roads

Researchers from the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have joined hands with the United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research (UNU-WIDER) to take a closer look at how climate change could affect roads in the developing world, using Mozambique as an example. Food supply in Mozambique is already constrained by the lack of adequate roads linking the big commercial farms in the north to markets in the south. Climate change threatens what roads exist with frequent and intense flooding and high temperatures, researchers said.
IRIN
Hunger in the news
8 October 2012

S. Sudan Refugee Camp Braces for New Arrivals

Conditions at the Yida refugee camp in South Sudan have improved - after a wave of new arrivals, disease and death. But as the rainy season ends, the camp is bracing for another wave of challenges that could overwhelm the humanitarian community. (..) For the past few weeks, the World Food Program has been forced to deliver food by air.
VOA News
Hunger in the news
5 October 2012

Analysis: The fortified food conundrum in Afghanistan

The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) admits humanitarian organizations have had “major gaps” in their capacity to respond to the nutrition crisis, with past attempts to establish a UN “cluster” focused on nutrition failing due to insecurity. But a new four-year US$6.4 million project run by the World Food Programme (WFP) and the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) aims to reach nearly half the country's population - 15 million Afghans - with fortified foods.

IRIN
Hunger in the news
5 October 2012

And Now, Digital Food (Will it Help the Poor?)

Last month Mastercard Worldwide and the World Food Program (WFP) announced a global partnership in “digital food”. The public-private partnership aims to harness Mastercard’s expertise in electronic payments to develop WFP’s electronic voucher programs. Can it work? There are good reasons to think that “going cashless” could make WFP’s operations more efficient and improve people’s lives. But the benefits are far from certain, and WFP and Mastercard would do well to ensure rigorous evaluation of what amounts to a giant experiment (about which, more below).

Center for Global Development
Hunger in the news
4 October 2012

EU to focus on building resilience to disaster among world's poorest

The EU's emergency and development arms are to work together more closely to reduce the vulnerability of the poorest households to shocks from conflict, drought and other crises, and to tackle the underlying causes of food insecurity in regions such as the Sahel and the Horn of Africa.
The Guardian
Hunger in the news
4 October 2012

The Debating Chamber - Shining a light on the big dirty secret of hunger

Outside of the big high profile emergencies caused by drought, floods, cyclones, or earthquakes, the horrific impact of grinding under nutrition on the lives of children is a big, dirty secret that has remained hidden for far too long. (..) So how do the humanitarian agencies most engaged in this pressing issue take advantage of World Food Day, to build on this momentum?
Alertnet