One person dies of hunger in the world every four seconds, according to estimates from 238 NGOs in an open letter published on Tuesday (20). The document aims to pressure leaders gathered at the opening of the 77th UN General Assembly in New York to “act and stop the world food crisis”.
Organizations from 75 countries signed an open letter to express their outrage at the explosion in the number of people suffering from hunger in the world. According to the document, “345 million people in the world suffer from acute hunger, a number that has more than doubled since 2019”.
Among the 238 participating organizations are Action Against Hunger, Care International, Oxfam, Save the Children, Concern Worldwide, Islamic Relief Worldwide, Plan International, World Vision International and Yemen Family Care Association.
The letter was opened for signatures online on September 15th and published this Tuesday (20th) by the collective of civil society entities (advocacy hub) responsible for the UN’s Second Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). The United Nations has set a list of 17 SDGs that must be achieved by 2030. The second is to eradicate hunger, achieve food security and improve nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture.
The document was published on the opening day of the annual meeting of the UN General Assembly, where a large number of political leaders and representatives of civil society meet for a week. The event is regarded as the most important diplomatic meeting in the world.
“It is unacceptable that with all the agricultural technology today, we are still talking about hunger in the 21st century,” says Mohanna Ahmed Ali Eljabaly of the Yemen Family Care Association in a statement.
“We are not talking about a specific country or continent and hunger does not have a single cause. We are talking about an injustice that affects all of humanity. It is extremely difficult to see people suffering while others, who share the same planet, have a lot of food”, completes the activist.
The method used by NGOs for the calculation is explained in a footnote in the communiqué. They were based on figures from the latest September report from the World Network on Food Crises, created in 2016 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Program (FAO), the World Food Program (WFP), the European Union and NGOs.
Women and children are the main victims of food shortages, the document stresses and denounces that “the international community and national governments are failing in their obligations, prioritizing economic and political interests over the well-being of the most vulnerable”.
The group calls for a fund to be created immediately to save the lives of 882,000 people and prevent another 50 million from facing “catastrophic levels of hunger”.
The organizations estimate that approximately US$ 700 billion of investments would be needed between 2020 and 2025 to finance actions for sustainable agriculture and guarantee a future without hunger.
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