High food prices threaten U.N.
program for kids
Agency short $755 million it needs to feed the needy
this year
Wednesday, April 23, 2008 3:00 AM
By Kevin Sullivan
The Washington Post
LONDON -- More than 100 million people are being
driven deeper into poverty by a "silent tsunami" of
sharply rising food prices, which have sparked riots
around the world and threaten U.N.-backed feeding
programs for 20 million children, the top U.N. food
official said yesterday.
"This is the new face of hunger -- the millions of
people who were not in the urgent-hunger category
six months ago but now are," Josette Sheeran,
executive director of the United Nation's World Food
Program, said at a London news conference. "The
world's misery index is rising."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, hosting Sheeran and
other experts at his 10 Downing St. offices, said
the growing food crisis has pushed prices to their
highest levels since 1945 and rivals current global
financial turmoil as a threat to world stability.
"Hunger is a moral challenge to each one of us as
global citizens, but it is also a threat to the
political and economic stability of poor nations
around the world," Brown said. He added that 25,000
people a day are dying from hunger-related causes.
"With one child dying every five seconds from
hunger-related causes, the time to act is now,"
Brown said, pledging $60 million in emergency aid to
help the U.N. agency feed the poor in Africa and
Asia, where in some nations the prices of many food
staples have doubled during the past six months.
Brown said the "vast" food crisis was threatening to
reverse years of progress to create stronger middle
classes around the world and lift millions of people
out of poverty.
Prices for basic food supplies such as rice, wheat
and corn have skyrocketed in recent months, driven
by a set of factors including sharply rising fuel
prices, droughts in key food-producing countries,
ballooning demand in emerging nations such as China
and India, and the diversion of crops to produce
biofuels.
Sheeran noted that the United States, which she said
provides half of the world's food assistance, has
pledged $200 million in emergency food aid and that
Congress was considering an additional
appropriation.
The WFP has budgeted $2.9 billion this year -- all
from donor nations -- to conduct its feeding
programs around the world, including large efforts
in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia and other nations that
could not otherwise feed themselves.
The WFP now needs another $755 million to meet its
needs, Sheeran said. That "food gap" jumped from
$500 million just two months ago as prices keep
rising, she said.
"We hope we have reached a plateau, but this is a
rapidly evolving situation," she said.
Hunger and anger have led to violence recently in
Haiti, where food riots earlier this month resulted
in several deaths, as well as in Bangladesh, Burkina
Faso, Ivory Coast, Cameroon, Egypt, Indonesia and
Senegal. Argentina's attempt to control prices led
to a strike by producers.
The WFP is being forced to cut back on
school-feeding programs that serve 20 million
children, Sheeran said. Without more emergency
funding, she said, a feeding program in Cambodia
would be eliminated and programs in places such as
Kenya and Tajikistan would be cut in half.
"These are heartbreaking decisions to have to make,"
Sheeran said. "We need all the help we can get from
the governments of the world who can afford to do
so."
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