UN Prepares To Feed More As Financial Crisis Bites
The UN food agency expects to feed around a third more hungry people next year, as the global financial crisis adds to the pressure of high food prices on poor nations, a top official said on Wednesday.
Sheila Sisulu, Deputy Executive Director at the UN World Food Program (WFP), said an increase of around 30 million in the number the agency helps would offset a decline in food and fuel costs.
WFP is providing aid to some 90 million people in 2008, and plans to widen assistance to the newly poor in urban areas who have been hit hard by food inflation in the past two years, she said at a conference on hunger organized by aid agency Concern Worldwide in Dublin, Ireland.
Sisulu said the impact of the global food crisis would deepen just when it was slipping down the agenda. – Just because it is off the headlines, people think it is gone, noted she.
But in the coming months, countries where crops have failed, such as Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, will need increased food aid.
Much of the world today is consumed by fears of recession and unemployment. But for nearly a billion people, the fear is more basic – having nothing to eat. Experts from Africa, Europe and the US gathering in Dublin for a conference on combating world hunger say the two are connected. The conference began Thursday, UNs World Food Day.
Sisulu, a South African, said donor governments preparing their 2009 budgets are being lobbied to at least stick to their current spending on overseas aid. – We are reminding our partners that the main street in the north and the village road in the south have to be considered equally, she said.
She stated that means buying more food from small African farmers and giving them support to boost their yields: fertilizer, high-tech seeds, irrigation, and mechanical equipment.
Se også telegrammet www.u-landsnyt.dk/indhold.asp?ID=16208&mode=Nyhed
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
