The Executive Director of the WFP, James Morris, has sounded a call to action to end child hunger, describing the plight of hundreds of millions of poor, malnourished children who die, or fail to develop properly, as “an affront to conscience”.
The Executive Director of the WFP, James Morris, has sounded a call to action to end child hunger, describing the plight of hundreds of millions of poor, malnourished children who die, or fail to develop properly, as “an affront to conscience”.
Once severe malnutrition takes its toll, it cannot be reversed later on. There’s no such thing as retroactive nutrition
WFP Executive Director James Morris
Morris made the remarks before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday alongside Ann Veneman, UNICEF’s Executive Director and core partner in the Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative.
The two UN agency heads are working to engage partners throughout the aid world – humanitarian organisations, foundations and businesses, as well as governments – to eliminate the extreme hunger that still threatens the lives of an estimated 400 million children in the developing world today.
Public silence
“Some 18,000 children will die of hunger and malnutrition today. That is hard for people in the US or Europe to comprehend,” Morris said.
“But within a month, we will lose more children to hunger than there are people living here in Washington. Yet there are no headlines and no public outcry. Instead, these poor, forgotten children die in silence in places like Guatemala, Bangladesh and Zambia – far from our sight. This need not happen: we have every tool we need to solve hunger.”
The physical damage and ill health brought on by malnutrition have lasting impact on children, Morris added.
Impact
Poor nutrition affects every stage and aspect of life, not only stunting bodies but slowing mental growth – dropping IQ by 10, 15 points or more. In some countries, stunting rates exceed 60 percent.
“Imagine the impact on poor countries, seeking to develop their economies,” Morris said.
“How can their workers compete? The bottom line is that very little – not education and certainly not development – can happen where hunger rules,” he said.
Halving hunger
Morris said the initiative aimed to end child hunger and undernutrition within a generation – starting by meeting the UN Millennium Goal of halving the proportion of hunger by 2015.
The initial push will focus on helping developing countries to double the rate of reduction in the number of underweight children under five years old.
This would accompany a push to improve the nutrition levels among pregnant and lactating women – vital to early child survival and health.
Starting early
“We must help these children early on in life,” Morris said. “Once severe malnutrition takes its toll, it cannot be reversed later on. There’s no such thing as retroactive nutrition.”
Morris said a significant part of the child hunger initiative would promote an “essential package” of health and nutrition interventions that would address the immediate causes of hunger.
Such a package would include the basic daily health, hygiene and nutrition practices together with a set of life-saving commodities – micronutrients, clean water, hand-washing with soap and parasite control such as de-worming.
All told, he said, the package would cost an estimated $79 per family.
Ambitious
Although Morris acknowledged that the initiative was ambitious, he said it was doable – not only from an economic standpoint, but a practical one, since the population of undernourished children tends to be highly concentrated.
For example, in Africa, more than half of the underweight children live in just 10 percent of administrative districts.
This makes it easier to target assistance, and support national and community efforts.
According to the plan, the estimated incremental cost of assisting 100 million families to protect their children from hunger and undernutrition is estimated at roughly eight billion dollars per year.
Of this amount, Morris said, it is estimated that approximately one billion dollars of new international resources could be effectively programmed immediately.
“This investment can change lives – even generations,” Morris said. “And the cost of action is but a tiny fraction of the enormous costs we will shoulder by continuing to do ‘business as usual.’”
