Fighting Hunger Together:
World Food Day 2003

Progress has been slow in efforts to reach the World Food Summit goal of cutting by half the number of the world’s chronically hungry and under-nourished people by 2015. The FAO estimates that 840 million people remain chronically hungry, 799 million of them in the developing world. The number has been decreasing by barely 2.5 million per year over the last eight years. At that rate, we will reach these goals one hundred years late, in 2115.

This year’s World Food Day theme, International Alliance against Hunger, is a way to build greater momentum to achieve our goals.

Many different groups must work together in a united effort. The International Alliance will bring together the strengths of: food producers and consumers, international organizations, agribusiness firms, scientists, academics, donors, policy-makers, private individuals, religious groups, NGOs and all others committed to reducing the suffering caused by hunger.

On this World Food Day, let us all join together and make a collective call to make the International Alliance against Hunger. Working together, we must urge governments to put in place the right policies and to implement anti-hunger programmes. And, we should remind the international community of its commitments to make more development assistance available for fighting hunger. Let us all give priority to the war against hunger.