DEVELOPMENT
REPORT - World Hunger Up, UN Study Says
By Jill Moss
This is Robert Cohen with the VOA Special English
Development Report.
The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
says world hunger has increased. The agency released its newest estimates
in a report called "The State of Food Insecurity in the World Two-thousand-three."
Researchers say world hunger had dropped by thirty-seven
million people during the early part of the nineteen-nineties. In the
second half of the decade, however, the number grew by eighteen-million.
Today, the Food and Agriculture Organization estimates
that more than eight-hundred-forty-million people do not get enough
to eat. That is one in seven people in the world. Most live in developing
nations.
Hartwig de Haen helped write the F-A-O report. He
says a lot of progress has been made to reduce hunger. In nineteen-seventy,
almost forty percent of the world population was underfed（吃不饱）.
By two-thousand, the percentage was down to less than half that.
However, Mister De Haen says it is too early to tell
if the recent increase represents a major change. He says the increase
may be temporary, caused by a series of crises and conflicts. For example,
the F-A-O says seventy-five percent of Congolese（刚过人）were
underfed as of a few years ago, because of war.
The U-N report shows how nations with higher economic
and agricultural growth have had more success reducing hunger. It says
Brazil, for example, has cut the number of hungry people through programs
to increase employment and food production. The Brazilian government
also offers free or low-cost meals at schools and workplaces.
But the U-N report also shows how world hunger has
been worsened by the AIDS crisis. In southern Africa, wage earners in
many families have become infected with the AIDS virus and have had
to leave their fields. The F-A-O says it expects AIDS to claim one-fifth
or more of agricultural workers in most southern African nations by
two-thousand-twenty.
The recent increase in world hunger is bad news for
efforts to reduce the number of hungry people in the world by half by
two-thousand-fifteen. World leaders set this goal in nineteen-ninety-six
at the World Food Summit in Rome. The United Nations also approved it
as a Millennium Development Goal in September of two-thousand.
This VOA Special English Development Report
was written by Jill Moss. This is Robert Cohen.
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