Hunger in Haiti is echoed globally

One month after the earthquake in Haiti that killed 230,000 people,
almost three million people are in need of food aid.  Trócaire which has received €3.5 million to date from the public for its work in response to the disaster, said plans to rebuild Haiti must look at ways of eradicating the chronic hunger that already existed in the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Director Justin Kilcullen was speaking at the launch of the agency’s annual
Lenten campaign on hunger, which he hopes will raise €12 million to support work that helps thousands of families in the developing world to grow more food and increase their incomes.
 

He said even before the earthquake in Haiti, almost two million people needed assistance to stave off hunger. “More than half of Haiti’s nine million people live
on less than one dollar a day,” he said. “Our work in Haiti, too, will include programmes to help families long-term, to grow and sell food and to earn a living.

Mr Kilcullen said high profile crises such as natural disasters and war are responsible for less than eight per cent of hunger’s victims. There are now 1.02 billion hungry people in the world. That’s one in six people, more than the combined populations of the European Union, the United States and Canada.

Five million children under the age of five die from hunger and diseases caused by hunger every year.   “In 2000 we said we would halve the number of hungry people by 2015. Have we made progress? No. The number of hungry people has actually increased over this decade and now it’s the highest it has even been – with one in six people in the world hungry. We have seemingly learned to tolerate the intolerable.”

The bitter irony, Mr Kilcullen said, was there is enough food in the world to feed everyone.  “Most of the hungry are in poor rural areas and they have been
abandoned. They don’t have the resources or support to produce enough food
and they don’t have the money to buy it. We know who the hungry people are. We know where they are. We know what it takes to respond to the problem. But there’s no political will to eradicate hunger and little or no money. The same effort and money that went into sorting out the banks is required to solve the problem of world hunger.”

In 2008 Ireland, through its Hunger Task Force, pledged to increase the productivity of smallholder, mainly women, farmers in Africa; implement programmes focused on maternal and infant under-nutrition; and ensure real political commitment, at national and international levels, to give hunger the absolute priority it deserves.

In September, governments, including Ireland, will gather at the UN to report on progress on the Millennium Development Goals, which they agreed in 2000. The first goal set out to halve the number of people living with hunger by 2015.

“If Ireland is serious about helping to eradicate hunger it will require tough political decisions about our aid, trade and climate change policies,” Mr Kilcullen said. “But this comes against the backdrop of a 24 per cent cut in our overseas aid budget in recent times.  Trócaire is now calling on the government to clearly outline how it is implementing the key recommendations in its Hunger Task Force report and how it intends to meet its commitments to the MDGs. We cannot let this scandal of hunger continue.”