The World Food Program appealed on Tuesday for 1,3 million tons of emergency food to help up to 13 million people in six southern African countries avoid famine as the World Food Summit in Rome entered its second day.
”This is the largest single food crisis in the world today,” WFP head James Morris told reporters after making the appeal for food aid for Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, Swaziland, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
”We have a very, very serious matter in front of us,” Morris said.
The crisis is the most immediate challenge before the summit, which has reiterated a goal to slash to 400 million the number of those going hungry within 13 years, though little progress has been made since the first gathering in 1996.
Morris said soaring rates of AIDS – in some countries more than a quarter of the population is infected with HIV – is compounding the problem, as is land reform.
Of the 800 million going hungry, 40% are children, Morris said, and ”half of the children don’t go to school.
”A WFP program – which has had success in Cameroon, Morocco, Niger and Pakistan – aims to feed the 300 million undernourished children either in school or give them take-home rations.
”We can provide a powerful incentive to cause children to come to school. A hungry child has no chance to learn. A well-fed child can have a functioning brain and can begin to learn properly,” Morris said.
”We can feed a child in school for 19 US cents or 22 Euro cents a day,” he said. ”For a very small investment, we can change a child’s life and it can happen rapidly.” – Sapa-AFP