"Since the hungry billion in the world community believe that we can all eat if we set our common house in order, they believe also that it is unjust that some die because it is too much trouble to arrange for them to live."
Stringfellow Barr. Citizens of the World
(Garden City, N.Y. Doubleday, 1952, 285pp)
On 28 July 2025, the United Nations published its detailed report "The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World" highlighting that some eight percent of the world's population suffer from hunger and malnutrition.
The U.N. Sustainable Development Goals (2015 - 2030) aims by 2030 to "Double the agricultural productivity and income of small-scale food producers, in particular women, indigenous people, family farmers and fishers, including through secure and equal access to land, other productive resources and inputs, knowledge, financial services, markets and non-farm resources."
As the Food Security Report indicates, we are far from reaching these goals by 2030 especially in Africa and the wider Middle East. Armed conflict is a prime cause of hunger as we see in the dramatic events of the Gaza Strip. Armed conflict is also a major factor in the hunger situation in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sudan, and the Sahel States. The war in Ukraine has also limited the export of food grains that had been a major export of Ukraine.
There is a consensus that strong measures are needed to deal with worldwide food needs. These measures must be taken in a coordinated way with actions going from the local level of the individual farmer to the national level with new positive government policies to the world level with better coordinated activities through United Nations agencies. Unfortunately, some national policies such as U.S. reduction of international aid and cuts in funding of other major national programs are having a negative impact on food security.
World Citizens stress that solutions to poverty, hunger, and the consequences of climate change require an agriculture that promotes producers' livelihoods, knowledge, resiliency and equitable gender relations.
René Wadlow, Association of World Citizens
#The_UN_Goals #endhunger #apart
