By Tracy Lee
23 APRIL 2009 [MEDIAGLOBAL]: For millions of people living in least developed countries, the effects of rising food and energy prices has exacerbated a living situation already filled with vulnerability and uncertainty.
Where resources are scarce and prices are high, families have had to scale back on nutrients, often sacrificing quality food for the cheapest and most accessible provisions.
“High food prices have had a particularly harsh impact, in particular on the urban poor, who rely on cash income and buy increasingly expensive basic foods,” said Marcus Prior, Regional Public Affairs Officer at the United Nations World Food Progamme (WFP), in an interview with MediaGlobal. “The price of maize, [Kenya’s] national staple, is 120 percent higher than the long-term average for this time of year. For some time, families have been cutting back on the amount and the quality of food they are eating.”
The global food crisis impacts roughly one third of children in developing countries. Lack of micronutrients hinders physical and cognitive development. According to WFP, a child dies from malnutrition and hunger related diseases every six seconds.
The United Nations General Assembly held a thematic debate on the global food crisis in New York earlier this month and examined the right to food and the challenges that those living in poverty face just to survive. Economists, human rights specialists, and officials had gathered to assess the current agriculture production methods in an attempt to solve the challenge of hunger and to satisfy the basic human right to food.
Exploring the context of the global food crisis, a joint statement from the WFP, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) revealed the contributing factors, namely poverty, lack of access to land, migration, and climate-related events that hurt harvests. Due to the current economic crisis, investments in and development aid to poor countries have declined.
According to the joint statement, “the global food crisis is not a new crisis, but the sudden worsening of a structural crisis that even before the food price surge has prevented over 850 million women, men and children from having access to adequate food necessary for an active and healthy life.”
At the debate, UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter, underscored the crucial need of the international community to initiate of national strategies in support of the right to food and to examine various models of agricultural development in relation to the world’s poorest. He urged that the rights of agricultural workers be improved, providing social protection and the right to a living wage.
He broke down the one billion hungry people into three categories of vulnerability: small-scale farmers and self-employed food producers, which make up 60 percent of the hungry; landless agricultural workers at 20 percent; and the urban poor which comprise the remaining 20 percent. Citing it as a “rights-based approach to the global food crisis,” and building on the recommendations in the Right to Food Guidelines, the Special Rapporteur stressed that it was important to view each category with equal attention and to make sure each groups’ rights were “adequately protected.”
“By focusing on the most vulnerable, the human rights-based approach ensures that targeted action will benefit the food insecure without discrimination,” said the joint statement by WFP, FAO, and IFAD.
Programmes, such as WFP’s “Fill the Cup,” work to feed the 59 million hungry children in developing regions. The red cup that symbolizes the campaign is used to feed children at schools, and has become a powerful representation of the daily challenges that confront young children. Twenty-five cents per day ensures that one child is fed through a WFP school meal. In schools where WFP provided meals, enrollment increased by 28 percent for girls and 22 percent for boys during the first year of assistance.
According to Prior, the most vulnerable are under five years of age and WFP has created targeted programmes for this age group. Prior told MediaGlobal, “In particular, this has meant the increased use of products such as Supplementary Plumpy Nut for children with moderate acute malnutrition. This product has extremely high nutritional properties and allows children to be treated at home.”
Officials at the UN General Assembly debate reinforced the importance of the basic right for all people to have equal access to food. But for the children who live in hunger daily, this is often elusive and hard to obtain.
