World has failed to tackle hunger for 20 years: survey

The world has failed to reduce hunger over the past decades, a survey released yesterday said, with the global financial and food crises threatening to cancel out small recent gains.

"Twenty-nine countries around the world have alarming or extremely alarming levels of hunger, and 13 countries have actually seen increases in hunger levels since 1990," according to the Global Hunger Index report.

The index released by the International Food Policy Research Institute showed that Democratic Republic of Congo scored the worst, followed by Burundi, Eritrea, Sierra Leone, Chad and Ethiopia.

The report said that while some gains had been recorded globally, mainly in Asia, the data used to compile the index was two years old and did not fully factor in recent developments.

"Rankings only partially account for the impact of food crisis and do not reflect the effects of the financial crisis," a press release said.

The index ranks 84 countries worldwide by combining three main indicators: Prevalence of child malnutrition, child mortality rates and the proportion of calorie deficient people.

Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe also contributed to the global hunger index, which was being released in advance of World Food Day on October 16.

A report by UN agencies released in Rome yesterday said the number of people going to bed hungry every night topped one billion and painted a bleak picture for the globe's poorest nations.

One of the Millennium Development Goals outlined in 2000 was to halve a global figure of 800 million people suffering of hunger by 2015.