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DEVELOPMENT: Thousands March as Food Crisis Deepens

Shari Nijman

NEW YORK, Jun 8 2009 (IPS) - An estimated 300,000 people across the globe hit the streets Sunday to support the World Food Programme (WFP) and its mission to feed hungry schoolchildren and battle malnutrition worldwide.

"End Hunger: Walk the World" mobilised people in 70 countries, covering all 24 time zones. The event started in Sydney, Australia, where the famous Harbour Bridge was climbed by local celebrities, and ended 24 hours later on the Polynesian island of Samoa.

In New York City, some 700 people, dressed in white, blue and orange, turned out to support the WFP, which provides both emergency food aid and also works to help reach the longer-term U.N. Millennium Development Goal of halving the proportion of hungry people in the world by 2015.

"Food prices have gone up dramatically, and the global economic crisis is pushing more and more people into the vicious cycle of hunger," Karen Sendelback, president of the group Friends of World Food Programme, said at the rally.

Most of the world’s hungry live in developing countries. According to the latest Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) 2008 statistics, there are 963 million hungry people in the world and 907 million of them are in developing countries. They are distributed like this: 565 million in Asia and the Pacific   230 million in Sub-Saharan Africa   58.4 million in Latin America and the Caribbean   41.6 million in the Near East and North Africa

Other factors driving world hunger are an increase in natural disasters such as floods, tropical storms and drought; armed conflict (since 1992, the proportion of short and long-term food crises attributable to human causes has more than doubled, from 15 percent to more than 35 percent); extreme poverty and inadequate agricultural infrastructure, such as roads, warehouses and irrigation; and the threats to farmland posed by erosion, salination and desertification.

According to the WFP, hunger and malnutrition remain the world's number one health risk, greater than AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis combined.

"One in six people go to bed hungry every night," Bettina Luescher of the World Food Programme told IPS. ‘"People always think that hunger is such an overwhelming problem, that it can’t be solved. But it takes only 25 cents a day to feed a child."

"In theory, we could feed every hungry schoolchild in the world for three billion dollars. And we know that it’s possible," she added.

Children's early development is critical to their future. Economists estimate that every child whose physical and mental development is stunted by hunger and malnutrition stands to lose 5-10 percent in lifetime earnings.

The gathering in New York City was by no means the largest in the world. The most impressive numbers were seen in Africa, where 53,000 people walked in Malawi. In Tanzania, another 50,000 people walked the five kilometres for WFP.

"Every walk is five kilometres long," Berthilde Heijmeskamp of the global mail and express delivery company TNT told IPS. "This represents the average distance that poor schoolchildren walk every day from home to school to get education and meal."

In Kenya, the event started a day earlier, on Saturday, so its participants could attend mass on Sunday. The most famous walker in Nairobi was Paul Tergat who, as a little boy, received school feeding himself.

He walked many miles every day to get an education and a healthy meal. Eventually, he grew up to be one of the fastest marathon runners in the world, winning the New York Marathon and establishing multiple world records.

"This is a perfect example how a bit of food can help children realise their talent and passion," Luescher said.

‘End Hunger: Walk the World’ started in 2003 as an employee engagement initiative by WFP and TNT. That year, a relatively small number of people walked the five kilometres on the Great Wall of China.

In the next few years, the event grew so fast, that WFP decided to include two other corporate partners, Unilever and DSM, in the walk.

Unilever, one of the biggest suppliers of consumer goods in the world, joined WFP in 2007. They participated in the walk as part of their ‘Together Child Vitality’ programme.

"We use this walk to raise awareness among our employees and the rest of the world about child hunger and malnutrition," said Amanda Sourry, an executive vice president of Unilever.

The latest addition to the walk was DSM, a life sciences and materials sciences company, which joined for the first time this year.

"Giving children just any food isn’t good enough. It has to have enough nutritional value to develop things like eyesight," Jim Hamilton, president of DSM Nutritional Products in New Jersey, explained to IPS.

DSM partners with WFP to create packages with micro-nutrients providing schoolchildren with the necessary vitamins to develop their bodies and skills.

"This is a good example of corporate responsibility – people in big corporations actually also enjoy inspirational stuff," Hamilton said.