WFP And UNICEF Call On Congress: Help End Child Hunger Now

The Executive Director of the UN World Food Program (WFP),
James Morris, has sounded a call to action to end child hunger, describing
the plight of hundreds of millions of poor, malnourished children who die,
or fail to develop properly, as "an affront to conscience".



Morris made the remarks before the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee on
Tuesday alongside Ann Veneman, UNICEF's Executive Director and core partner
in the Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative. The two UN agency
heads are working to engage partners throughout the aid world -
humanitarian organizations, foundations and businesses, as well as
governments - to eliminate the extreme hunger that still threatens the
lives of an estimated 400 million children in the developing world today.



"Some 18,000 children will die of hunger and malnutrition today. That is
hard for people in the US or Europe to comprehend," Morris said. "But
within a month, we will lose more children to hunger than there are people
living here in Washington. Yet there are no headlines and no public outcry.
Instead, these poor, forgotten children die in silence in places like
Guatemala, Bangladesh and Zambia - far from our sight. This need not
happen: we have every tool we need to solve hunger."



The physical damage and ill health brought on by malnutrition have lasting
impact on children, Morris added. Poor nutrition affects every stage and
aspect of life, not only stunting bodies but slowing mental growth -
dropping IQ by 10, 15 points or more. In some countries, stunting rates
exceed 60 percent. "Imagine the impact on poor countries, seeking to
develop their economies," Morris said. "How can their workers compete? The
bottom line is that very little - not education and certainly not
development - can happen where hunger rules."



Morris said the initiative aimed to end child hunger and undernutrition
within a generation - starting by meeting the UN Millennium Goal of halving
the proportion of hunger by 2015. The initial push will focus on helping
developing countries to double the rate of reduction in the number of
underweight children under five years old. This would accompany a push to
improve the nutrition levels among pregnant and lactating women - vital to
early child survival and health.



"We must help these children early on in life," Morris said. "Once severe
malnutrition takes its toll, it cannot be reversed later on. There's no
such thing as retroactive nutrition."



Morris said a significant part of the child hunger initiative would promote
an "essential package" of health and nutrition interventions that would
address the immediate causes of hunger. Such a package would include the
basic daily health, hygiene and nutrition practices together with a set of
life-saving commodities - micronutrients, clean water, hand-washing with
soap and parasite control such as de-worming. All told, he said, the
package would cost an estimated $79 per family.
















Although Morris acknowledged that the initiative was ambitious, he said it
was doable - not only from an economic standpoint, but a practical one,
since the population of undernourished children tends to be highly
concentrated. For example, in Africa, more than half of the underweight
children live in just 10 percent of administrative districts. This makes it
easier to target assistance, and support national and community efforts..



According to the plan, the estimated incremental cost of assisting 100
million families to protect their children from hunger and undernutrition
is estimated at roughly eight (B) billion dollars per year. Of this amount,
Morris said, approximately one (B) billion dollars of new international
resources could be effectively programmed immediately.



"This investment can change lives - even generations," Morris said. "And
the cost of action is but a tiny fraction of the enormous costs we will
shoulder by continuing to do 'business as usual.'"







To read the full statement by James Morris, please click on the link:
documents.wfp/stellent/groups/public/documents/newsroom/wfp106205.pdf




WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: each year, we give food to
an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs,
including 58 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world's poorest
countries.



For further information please go to:
World Food Program WFP - We Feed People



WFP Global School Feeding Campaign - For just 19 US cents a day, you can
help WFP give children in poor countries a healthy meal at school - a gift
of hope for a brighter future.