|
Press
Release..............................
UNESCAP News Services
|
10 October
2003
Press Release No: L/35/2003; SG/SM/8927; OBV/381
TRUE INTERNATIONAL ALLIANCE NEEDED TO WIN FIGHT
AGAINST HUNGER, SAYS SECRETARY-GENERAL IN WORLD FOOD DAY MESSAGE
Following is Secretary-General Kofi Annan's message
on World Food Day, observed 16 October:
Despite the extraordinary technological and agricultural
advances of the modern era, the ancient and most basic affliction
of hunger is still with us. Every day, 840 million people do
not have enough to eat. In South Asia, one person in four goes
hungry. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion is as high as
one in three.
One of the Millennium Development Goals is to
eradicate poverty and hunger. The Millennium Declaration calls
for halving, by 2015, the proportion of people who live in less
than a dollar a day and the proportion of people who suffer
from hunger. The 1996 World Food Summit also called for cutting
by half the number of hungry people by 2015 - a goal reaffirmed
at the 2002 World Food Summit: five years later.
These targets are challenging, and we only have
twelve more years to reach them. But they are achievable.
They demand action on many fronts to increase
food production and improve food distribution. They also require
action to achieve the other Millennium Development Goals, since
food security is linked to education, sanitation, gender equality,
environmental sustainability and the control of infectious diseases.
And, as the theme of this year's World Food Day
reminds us, the goals will be met only if we forge a true "International
Alliance against Hunger" - an alliance encompassing governments,
international organisations, civil society, the private sector,
religious groups and individuals. Indeed, such a global partnership
for development is itself one of the Millennium Development
Goals.
Large-scale hunger is an affront to human dignity
and should shock the conscience of humankind. The United Nations
remains committed to the goal of banishing hunger and poverty
from our world. I urge all our partners at the national, regional
and international level to band together and bring to bear the
political will, resources and expertise that is needed to win
the fight against hunger - a fight as worthy and as vital as
any in which the world is engaged.
* *** *
