FAO's broad mandate is to help governments to eradicate world hunger, with the goal of halving it by 2015. We are seeking to carry out this mandate with the support of other UN organizations and civil society partners. We have promoted a number of initiatives designed to bring about food security in developing countries, such as the Special Programme on Food Security and the International Alliance against Hunger. This year, 2004, is the United Nations International Year of Rice, which aims at promoting improved production of, and access to, this vital food crop, which feeds more than half the world's population, while providing income for millions. As stated by the Director General of the FAO when he launched the IYR last year "Rice systems support a wide variety of plants and animals, which also help supplement rural diets and incomes. Rice is, therefore, on the frontline in the fight against world hunger and poverty." World Food Day, observed annually on 16 October, presents another opportunity to promote the important goal of hunger eradication. This year, the is "Biodiversity for Food Security" . It was chosen to pay tribute to biodiversity's role in ensuring that people have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives.

Unfortunately dear friends, as we speak about reaching the MDG goals today, we also must recall a point about world hunger that FAO has been making over the past three years: that if current trends in reducing the number of hungry people continue we will not reach the goal of eradicating hunger by 2015, rather it will not be until 2150, some 100 years later.

FAO's latest published estimates indicate that, in 1977-99, there were 815 million undernourished people in the world (current estimates put the figure at 816 million) . 777 million in the developing countries, 27 million in transition countries, and 11 million in the industrialized countries. For the developing countries, the latest figures represents a decrease of 39 million since 1990-92 (the benchmark period used at the World Food Summit). During the time of the Summit in November 1996, FAO estimated that there were 792 million undernourished people in the developing world. This means that only 6 million people are now weaned off the hunger list every year. The figure used to set the Summit goal of halving the number of hungry by 2015 was an annual reduction of 20 million. At the pace of only 6 million, we will need more than 50 years to reach the target set in 1996. To reach the goal between now and 2015, the number weaned off the hungry list every year will have to be 22 million.

Some of the dimensions of hunger and malnutrition are indeed alarming:

• an estimated 174 million children under five years were malnourished in 1996-98. It is now recognized that some 54 percent of young child mortality in the developing countries, is associated with malnutrition. This represents some 6.6 million out of 12.2 million deaths among children under five years.

• The largest number of undernourished people were found to be in Africa. The continent alone accounted for 192 million chronically undernourished. That is more than a quarter of the population, or twenty-eight out of every one hundred Africans lacking access to enough food to lead a healthy and productive life. Within Africa the state of food insecurity varied greatly – 42% of those living in East and Southern Africa, 16% of the population in West Africa and 4% of the people in North Africa were found to be in this state.

Although the number of undernourished people in Africa has been increasing, several countries have achieved remarkable success in fighting hunger and food insecurity. Morocco and Ghana are examples of countries having excelled in reducing undernourishment, decreasing by half in Morocco and one-sixth in Ghana from 1980 to 1996. Four common factors contributing to success in reducing food insecurity in African countries were:

• Political stability and absence of conflict.

• Significant and sustained economic growth.

• High priority given by governments to agriculture and rural development.

• The existence of various forms of social safety nets benefiting in particular the poorest and the food insecure.

Many accept hunger as a grim but inevitable fact of life. This need not be the case; hunger and malnutrition are not inevitable in a world of plenty. Nor are they tolerable. We have the knowledge, technology and resources to make a rapid progress in the global fight against hunger. It is primarily the lack of collective will that is preventing us from eliminating hunger.

Recent experiences indicates that chronic hunger can be dispelled within this century. In the last few decades, significant achievements have been made in the areas of food supplies, nutrition, health and access to basic social services. As a result, the world's population is better fed, healthier, and lives longer than that of 30 years ago. The number of undernourished people in the world has declined from approximately 920 million in 1970 to the present 820 million in 2000. Global food supplies have outpaced dramatic population growth, with per caput food availability growing by 32 percent while the population increased by 2 billion people.

The improvement of life of millions of people is very encouraging. This fact is positive proof that we have the tool and the ability to address and overcome the major causes of hunger and malnutrition. Of course the positive trends are expected to continue. But will they continue at a rate sufficient to improve further the conditions of today's population and adequately provide for the next generation to come? Will additional improvements occur rapidly enough to alleviate the immense suffering of the millions of men, women and children afflicted by chronic hunger and malnutrition?

I wish I could reply with a "yes" to these questions. Unfortunately I can't. As mentioned earlier, the current rate of progress in reducing the number of undernourished is not sufficient even to meet the World Food Summit goal of reducing by at least half the number of undernourished people by the year 2015, let alone surpass that goal. Clearly, we have much more to do and no time to waste if we are to make the vision of a world free from hunger became a reality.

• How can this be done? There are no simple answers, but there are common approaches that have proven to be effective in accelerating progress. As a fundamental first step, the elimination of hunger and malnutrition must be adopted as a primary goal of national, social and economic development.

  Poverty, Food Insecurity and Agriculture in Africa Who are the poor in Africa? Who are the hungry and malnourished?

• The hungry are the poorest of the poor. Their productivity is the lowest and they have the highest incidence of nutrition-related health problems.
• The children in chronically undernourished families are the least likely to be in school. Most of the poor and hungry live in rural areas and essentially all of them depend upon agriculture, including forestry and fisheries, either directly or indirectly for their livelihood.
• Africa is the only region of the developing world where the regional average of food production per person has been declining over the last 40 years. This has compelled many agriculturalists to engage in practices that degrade land resources, deplete forest and other natural vegetation, and harm marine and other aquatic resources.

It is well known that poverty is at the root of hunger and undernourishment. What often escapes our attention, however, is that hunger and malnutrition are also major causes of poverty. Hunger compromises productivity and often the only asset that the extremely poor possess: their labor. Undernourishment, through productivity losses and nutrition-related health problems, is an economic handicap of individuals, but also for communities, and even for entire nations, when the prevalence of hunger is widespread.

This predominantly rural character of hunger and poverty in Africa leads me to a first conclusion: In Africa, the battle against poverty and hunger over the next decades, will be won or lost in rural areas. Therefore, the improvement of rural livelihoods and the development of the agricultural and rural sectors must be at the center of national and international poverty reduction programs in Africa. There is ample opportunity to do so in Africa, as the use of water and the other productivity enhancing inputs to produce food are far below potential. Steady and sustainable gains in productivity will enable food producer families to move to or towards food security due to increases in food consumption or in incomes from the sale of products excess to the families needs. Increases in food production create jobs on and off the farms, setting the stage for further advances in agricultural service and supply businesses, credit facilities, marketing and food processing facilities and so forth (i.e. rural development).

Food Insecurity in Urban Areas
Less I leave you with the impression that only the rural dwellers are poor and hungry, let me address this issue briefly. The food security of urban households is increasingly at risk as urban growth accelerates and poverty increases in the rapidly expanding cities of the developing world. Urbanization of poverty is a growing phenomenon; it is estimated that between one-quarter and one- third of all urban households in the world are now living in absolute poverty. Access to adequate, safe and nutritious food by the poor is threatened as existing food supply and distribution systems fail to cope with and cater for, the increasing food quantities that need to be produced, moved to cities and distributed within the rapidly expanding urban areas.

Under the initiative "Food Supply and Distribution to Cities", FAO has been active in drawing the attention of the international community to the relationship between urban growth, poverty and food security. Important regional events, as well as numerous city-level workshops, have been held in Asia, Africa, the Near and Middle East and in Latin America and information and technical literature on various aspects related to urban food security have been produced and widely distributed.

Emphasis has been given to the need for city and local authorities to play a more direct and effective role in improving the efficiency of food supply and distribution systems, through formulating and implementing appropriate food supply and distribution policies and programs embracing urban, peri-urban and rural areas upon which the cities depend for their food supplies. This requires capacity building through information, sensitization and training activities. Extending and improving rural – urban linkages is seen as a necessity to secure profitable markets for rural producers whilst, at the same time, improving food availability for urban consumers. Actions to improve productivity in food production, especially in low-income food-deficit countries, through programs such as FAO's Special Program for Food Security, are essential to urban food security.

Fortunately, urban food security is increasingly being acknowledged as a priority area for action by local governments as evidenced in the declaration of the 34th World Congress of the International Union of Local Authorities (IULA), held in Barcelona, Spain, in 1999. This matter was also included in the agenda of their 35th World Congress, held in Rio de Janeiro in early May 2001.

To build upon these initiatives and actions we encourage the inclusion of urban food security as a priority to be addressed by the international community and by local governments in the Instanbul+5 "Declaration on Cities and Human Settlements in the New Millennium". Urban food security is essential for the sustainable development and stability of the world's cities and should be considered as a key component in urban poverty alleviation policies and program. A final point relates to the on-going debates on the Right to Food. Two days from now, on 24 November, the Council, the executive governing body of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), is expected to adopt Voluntary Guidelines that would "support the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security." The adoption of the Right to Food Guidelines comes two months to the day after the FAO Committee on World Food Security endorsed them following some 20 months of often difficult, but constructive negotiations.

According to FAO, the Guidelines were conceived "to provide practical guidance" to help countries implement their obligations relating to the right to adequate food. This should improve the chances of reaching the hunger reduction goals set by the 1996 World Food Summit and the Millennium Assembly of the United Nations. Both agreed to cut the number of hungry people in the world by half by 2015. Unless people are moved off the roles of hungry at a much greater rate than is currently the case, it is very unlikely that the goal will be met, said FAO.

The Voluntary Guidelines establishes far reaching universal principles. They take into account a wide range of important human rights principles, including equality and non-discrimination, participation and inclusion, accountability and the rule of law, as well as the principle that all human rights are universal, indivisible, inter-related and interdependent.

According to FAO, various non-governmental groups and intergovernmental organizations contributed significantly in the preparation of the Guidelines. These included the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and the North-South Alliance, which is a coalition of a large number of NGOs.

A practical tool to implement human rights - Hartwig de Haen, Assstant Director-General, Economic and Social Department, said "The Guidelines are a human rights-based tool addressed to all states to help implement good practices in food security policies. They cover the full range of actions that need to be taken at the national level to construct an enabling environment for people to feed themselves in dignity and to establish appropriate safety nets for those who cannot. This land mark event signifies universal acceptance of what the right to food really means."

Giuliano Pucci, FAO Legal Counsel, said, "Now we face the challenge of putting these Guidelines into everyday practice in a way that will bring an end to the injustice of hunger. The Guidelines provide us with a new instrument to better define the obligation of the state and to address the needs of the hungry and malnourished and we should use them to empower the poor and hungry to claim their rights."

According to FAO, the guidelines must be implemented to have any hope of reducing by half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015.