Campaigns
TOWARDS A HUNGERFREE FUTURE
In September 2000, world leaders met in New York and committed to a series of goals related to reducing global poverty and suffering. These goals which are called the Millennium Development Goals included the goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015. Nine years later, and in spite of the fact that there is enough food to feed the planet twice over, hunger is increasing in the world’s poorest countries. ActionAid International launched a global campaign, called HungerFREE, to highlight the current situation in relation to hunger and poverty and to lobby governments to meet their commitments to end world hunger.
THE HUNGERFREE CAMPAIGN IN IRELAND
As a result of the global economic crisis the Irish government has reduced Ireland’s budget for overseas development by EUR 95 million. With one billion people going hungry across the world it is crucial that Ireland tries to stick to its own target of reaching 0.7% GNI by 2012.
On 9th July 2008, ActionAid and Concern held a joint seminar in Dublin on the world food crisis. The event was organised to mark the 60th anniversary of the universal declaration of human rights and had as its keynote speaker Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and one of the world’s leading human rights advocates.
Mrs. Robinson described the current food crisis and the consequences of rising food prices for the world’s poor. She urged world leaders to act now and spoke of their obligation to tackle the global food crisis or risk reneging on the commitments they made with respect to the right to food for all.
“Food is a human right to which every woman, man and child is entitled. Everyone from political and business leaders, to the world’s hundreds of millions of small farmers must join together to solve this crisis. Investing more in agricultural production and improving our trade and food aid policies to stimulate local production are just some of the ways that we can address this problem now. Otherwise the right to food will remain out of the grasp of millions of people for years to come.”
Chris Kinyanjui, ActionAid International Regional Director for East and Southern Africa, added. “Protection of the right to food has never been more urgent, yet unacceptably the recent Rome High Level Conference failed to win the financial commitments for vital aid to agriculture. The Irish government, and Mary Robinson have been leading lights in the struggle to end hunger, but we must work together to deepen our resolve and increase the investment in long term solutions like support for women farmers.”
A HUNGERFREE WORLD
As part of the HungerFREE campaign, several ActionAid offices organised a special exhibition on International Women's Day (March 8th), called ‘HungerFREE Women Speak Out’. Through pictures and stories about women from all over the world, the exhibition highlights the link between women’s lack of access to land and the experience of poverty and hunger.
Log onto www.hungerfreeplanet.org to learn more about ActionAid’s work around the world and join our HungerFree campaign!
Check out our most recent ActionAid report called "Who’s really fighting hungar" with ActionAid's HungerFREE Scorecard report that looks at the performance of 51 governments in tackling hunger. Unlike other hunger indices, which assess outcomes only, it also evaluates government actions and commitments.