World Food Day is 'no food day' for more than one billion of world's hungry

MANILA, Philippines - Marking World Food Day yesterday, the United Nations World Food Program (WFP) called on the world to remember the more than one billion urgently hungry people with inadequate access to food.  

“World Food Day is actually ‘No Food Day’ for almost one out of every six people around the world this year,” WFP executive director Josette Sheeran said yesterday in Rome. “Our challenge is to turn ‘No Food Day’ back into ‘World Food Day’ for the hundreds of millions without food on their table tonight.”

In the Philippines, 17.5 percent or an estimated 3.2 million families have experienced involuntary hunger at least once in the past three months, according to the most recent Social Weather Stations survey.

Since its return to the Philippines in 2006, WFP has been supporting the national efforts to address hunger by assisting vulnerable people in the conflict-affected areas of Mindanao where people are particularly food insecure. The organization has established a number of programs, including school meals, food-for-work and food-for training activities, maternal and child nutrition and food assistance to internally displaced people (IDPs).

At the same time, WFP supports national disaster response efforts, as demonstrated by ongoing emergency operations to assist the victims of tropical storms in Metro Manila and Luzon.

Marking World Food Day, WFP has launched a series of activities aimed at highlighting the critical importance of its partnerships with government and the private sector in the battle against hunger in conflict-affected areas of Mindanao.

In keeping with the theme of this year’s World Food Day – Achieving Food Security in Times of Crisis – WFP’s ceremonies focused on the communal garden that the organization has developed in Lanao del Norte to assist returning families originally displaced by the Mindanao conflict in August 2008.

A youth forum on hunger mitigation and food insecurity was conducted by Mindanao State University-Iligan Institute of Technology (MSU-IIT), with some 200 students from Iligan City participating.

“WFP needs more partners to meet our commitment to fight hunger at these critical times,” said WFP Philippine country director Stephen Anderson. “The needs are rising as the available funding is falling, so we have to reach out to as many people as possible.”

“In Mindanao,” he continued, “we are working closely with the government and our private sector partners to ensure that the food and nutrition needs of beneficiaries in the conflict-affected areas are fully supported. We don’t want anyone to go hungry, neither the victims of conflict in Mindanao, nor the victims of nature’s fury in Metro Manila and Luzon.”

WFP is the world’s largest humanitarian agency fighting hunger worldwide. In 2009, WFP aims to feed 108 million people in 74 countries.

Last year, governments responded with record donations to WFP, contributing more than $5 at a time when high global food prices were spreading misery and threatening instability as hungry communities took to the streets in protest.

This year, as the number of hungry people passes one billion for the first time in human history, support from key donors is vital. WFP reported that many of its traditional donors are striving to maintain the levels of funding they have committed to in the past, with some even exceeding the amounts they had given in previous years.

Sheeran added that for decades, WFP has been able to feed around ten percent of the world’s hungriest people, but this year, for the first time, the agency is unlikely to reach that target. As an agency that responds to emergency needs, WFP has also had to meet many unforeseen demands in 2009, such as the response to the recent floods in the Philippines.