Goal #1End Hunger & Extreme Poverty
Introduction
Over the years, we've been inundated with the statistics and the pictures of poverty around the world-so much so that many people in both the North and South have come to accept it as an unfortunate but unalterable state of affairs. The truth, however, is that things have changed in recent years. The world today is more prosperous than it ever has been. The technological advances we have seen in recent years have created encouraging new opportunities to improve economies and reduce hunger.
The targets
Goal 1 of the Millennium Development Goals sets out by the year 2015:
1. Reduce by half the proportion of people living on less than a dollar a day.
2. Reduce by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger.
Did you know?
Did you know that in our world today:
- One third of deaths – some 18 million people a year or 50,000 per day – are due to poverty-related causes. That’s 270 million people since 1990, the majority women and children, roughly equal to the population of the US. (Reality of Aid 2004)
- Every year more than 10 million children die of hunger and preventable diseases – that’s over 30,000 per day and one every 3 seconds. (80 Million Lives, 2003 / Bread for the World / UNICEF / World Health Organization)
Achieving the Goals
Doctors at a local health clinic in Brazil learned the reason their patients who regularly came in with health problems related to poverty stopped coming was due to a national anti-hunger program that gave children three meals a day.
“It was simply that these children were starting to eat better,” says Nélia Maria Cruz, the clinic’s chief.
The children were among thousands who have benefited from Fome Zero (“Zero Hunger”), a national effort to eliminate hunger in Brazil.
The program’s formula is simple: Give each Brazilian the opportunity to have at least three meals a day. It might not seem like such a bold challenge but approximately one quarter of Brazil’s 170 million people currently live below the poverty line.
To meet the immediate needs of everyone who goes hungry in the country, the government needs to provide emergency help to 11 million families, according to official estimates. At the same time, the effort must include long-term actions to enable the population to manage on its own, so that in the future every family is able to buy its own food.
by Rogerio Waldrigues Galindo from Perspectives in Health
Goal News
Nairobi, April 30- As the world marks this year’s Labor Day, the United Nations Millennium Campaign is calling on African governments to use human rights approaches to tackle poverty if they are to halve the proportion of people whose income is less than $1 a day by 2015.
A city in Brazil recruited local farmers to help do something U.S. cities have yet to do: end hunger.
“To search for solutions to hunger means to act within the principle that the status of a citizen
surpasses that of a mere consumer.”
CITY OF BELO HORIZONTE,
BRAZIL
UN MILLENNIUM CAMPAIGN URGES WORLD LEADERS TO PRIORITIZE SOLUTIONS FOR THE POOR AT G-20 MEETING
As economic crisis threatens to reduce development assistance by at least $4,5 billion and push more than 50 million more people into poverty, UN Millennium Campaign urges world leaders to prioritize solutions for the poor at G-20 Meeting.
Millennium Campaign cautions that while additional resources are urgently needed to
help the world’s poor survive the economic crisis, they must be free of harmful
conditionalities that increase indebtedness and put at risk the achievement of the
Millennium Development Goals
In early 2008, soaring food prices drew extensive public attention to the issue of hunger in the Asia-Pacific region. The food price crisis threatened to reverse critical gains made toward reducing poverty and hunger as outlined in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Much of the increased attention focused on the issue of price rather than the structural causes of hunger, including social exclusion, inequitable distribution, access to natural resources and low agricultural productivity.
Over the past two days, high-level ministers, representatives of international organizations and several non-government and civil society organizations gathered at the Madrid High Level Meeting on Food Security for All. The event, hosted by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero was held to discuss the challenges to presented by soaring food prices, ways to stimulate agricultural development and food production and to address obstacles to food access.
