On World Food Day, World Vision calls on EU and global leaders to eliminate hunger and preventable child deaths

On World Food Day (16 October), development organization World Vision will call on the EU and global leaders to eliminate child hunger and bring the number of children dying from preventable causes to zero.

“More than 842 million people go to bed hungry, despite an abundance of food worldwide,” says World Vision EU representative Marius Wanders. “According to a recent Lancet report, malnutrition is responsible for the deaths of 45 per cent of children under five years of age, resulting in the loss of around 3.1 million lives each year. Estimates also indicate stunting affected at least 165 million children worldwide in 2011, irreversibly damaging their cognitive and physical development, contributing to a vicious cycle of poverty.”  

The theme of World Food Day is 'Sustainable Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition' and World Vision is calling for a focus on healthy food systems, including the land, water and soil on which food production depends, as well as on small family farmers who are the majority of the world’s food insecure. These calls are supported by World Vision practices, such as the ‘Farmer-Managed Natural Regeneration’ programme, an approach receiving recognition from the United Nations.

“Eliminating hunger requires a deliberate effort to restore the health of food systems, allowing them to become resilient, sustainable and more productive,” says Wanders. “When people have the ability to provide for their families, combined with the knowledge and behaviours needed to make good dietary choices, we will have healthy food systems leading to healthy communities.”

Wanders acknowledges the EU and other global donors have shown an increasing interest in the problems of hunger and undernutrition. World Vision is particularly supportive of the EU’s recent external policy focus on maternal and child nutrition, which tackles the underlying causes of poor nutrition through a multi-sectoral approach.

However, Wanders concludes “the global community needs to increase momentum over the coming years to reduce global hunger and undernutrition through every possible means. World Vision is calling on EU and global decision-makers to consign hunger to the history books and to reduce the number of children who die from preventable causes to zero.”

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