Development & Aid, Headlines, Latin America & the Caribbean

LATIN AMERICA: Anti-Hunger Fight Requires Reducing Rich-Poor Gap

Gustavo González*

SANTIAGO, Aug 26 2003 (IPS) - The great disparity between rich and poor is preventing Latin America from achieving the U.N. Millennium Goal of halving its malnourished population, says the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) in its new report ”Social Panorama 2002-2003”.

There are some 55 million Latin Americans – 11 percent of the population – suffering some degree of malnutrition, a ”very marginal improvement” over the 13 percent recorded 10 years ago, says Gustavo Gordillo, regional director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which contributed to the report.

If Latin America and the Caribbean are going to confront the hunger problem decisively, ”it is going to require a deliberate effort by governments and civil society to significantly reduce the disparities in the distribution of income,” Gordillo said in comments to IPS.

According to the report presented Monday by José Antonio Ocampo, ECLAC executive secretary, 18.8 percent of the regional population is extremely poor, 11 percent is undernourished and nearly nine percent of children age five suffer acute malnutrition.

This is the panorama despite the fact that in 20 of the 24 countries in the region saw an increase in food supplies in the past decade.

But in spite of some advances, ECLAC and the World Food Programme (WFP), both United Nations agencies, estimate that at least nine countries, particularly in Central America and the Caribbean, will not achieve the Millennium Goal for reducing hunger.

Basing their predictions on FAO reports, the two entities say that only seven countries in the region are assured of achieving this Millennium Goal, established by the U.N. General Assembly in 2000, to cut the number of people suffering hunger in 1990 in half by 2015.

Peru is the country with best indications of meeting the goal, having reduced the incidence of malnutrition from 40 percent to 11 percent of the population.

Haiti was able to reduce rates of malnutrition from 64 to 50 percent, but remains one of the countries with highest hunger levels in the Latin American-Caribbean region, Gordillo noted.

”The most dramatic cases of countries whose situations have worsened are Guatemala, where the undernourished population expanded from 14 percent to 25 percent in a decade, and Venezuela, where the portion jumped from 11 percent to 21 percent in the same period,” the FAO official told IPS.

The countries with lowest percentages of populations suffering hunger, according to figures from 2000, were Argentina, with two percent; Uruguay, three percent; Chile, four percent; and Costa Rica, Ecuador and Mexico, with five percent each.

But Gordillo and Ocampo both pointed out that there are no reliable updated statistics available that take into account the impact of Argentina’s ongoing economic crisis on hunger in that country, though all indications are that it has risen dramatically.

In Argentina, the recession aside, the relationship between income inequality and lesser access to food is manifest, given that this country of 37 million people has the agricultural potential to feed a population of 300 million, and there are Argentines who go hungry, said Zoraida Mesa, Latin America regional director of WFP.

Food assistance destined for the region has not diminished, and has seen some increases, but has become more bilateral than multilateral, added Mesa, referring to the possible consequences of different types of international aid for nutrition indicators.

Nearly 57 percent of food aid is monetary, which creates distortions towards the purchase of products like wheat flour, for which there is little demand among the population most in need, Mesa explained in a conversation with IPS.

Food assistance ”does not necessarily reach those who most need it,” she said, adding that focussing the food aid and programmes is crucial for ensuring that financial assistance produces results.

This requires planning and establishing country-specific programmes, under the criteria of providing food access for the portions of the population hardest hit by hunger. ”We can’t assure access thinking only of the market,” Mesa stressed.

Gordillo highlighted the FAO’s proposed ”International Alliance Against Hunger”, under which each country strengthens its political commitment to eradication hunger, involving government, political forces, the private sector, non-governmental organisations and civil society in the effort.

ECLAC’s ”Social Panorama” report states that in 2002 there were 220 million Latin Americans living in poverty, or 43.4 percent of the region’s population, and 95 million, or 18.8 percent of inhabitants, in indigence.

”The process of overcoming poverty stagnated during the last five years, with poverty and indigence rates remaining nearly constant since 1997,” said Ocampo as he presented the report.

This lack of improvement is related to the continued consequences of the 1997 Asian economic crisis, with the exception being the year 2000, when there was a brief economic recovery in Latin America, which meant four million fewer people in poverty.

>From 1999 to 2002, there were small variations in poverty rates at the national level, with the exceptions of Argentina and Uruguay, ”which suffered serious deterioration in their living standards,” says ECLAC.

In Argentina’s urban areas, the poverty rate nearly doubled from 23.7 percent to 45.4 percent in the 1999-2002 period, while indigence multiplied three-fold, from 6.7 to 20.9 percent, states the U.N. regional agency’s text.

In May, urban poverty in Argentina reached 54.7 percent, and indigence 26 percent, according to official figures.

* This report is part of a special IPS series on hunger in Latin America.