Report from Dublin Hunger Conference
I’m in Malahide, Dublin, this week for a two-day conference on world hunger, along with about 200 people from United Nations agencies, nongovernmental organizations, and governments around the world.
The purpose of the conference is to update the United Nation’s Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA), which is a set of recommendations produced in July 2008 by a U.N. task force in response to the dramatic rise of global food prices and the crisis it triggered.
“The food riots of 2008 provided a wake-up call, highlighting the political and economic importance of people having enough to eat,” wrote Peter Power, Ireland’s minister of state for overseas development aid, in Monday’s The Irish Times. “The future security of humankind, as well as basic social justice, requires us all to act now.”
Power also spoke at the conference yesterday, saying we need to end the scandal of hunger. “Nothing short of total eradication should be our goal,” he said.
“Some people look at the world as a glass half-empty,” he said. “How can we feed an extra 3 billion people within 30 years when we can't feed the world today? I look at the world as a glass half-full: We know what we have to do; now we have to go do it. We have to transfer ideas into realities on the ground with greater focus on science, technology, and research.”
“We have to walk that last mile of unpaved road with hungry and poor people.”
Inspiring words!
Next up: A report on the food assistance working group I attended.
Monica Mills is director of government relations for Bread for the World.
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Thanks, Monica, for the update!
Posted by: Elizabeth on May 18, 2010 at 06:33 PM