Hunger 101

(On October 16, we mark World Food Day. Since 1979, the Philippines and other UN Food and Agriculture Organization member nations mark WFD to focus on hunger and ways to alleviate it. On WFD 2012, here is an article on “Hunger 101” that I wrote earlier – JLM)

“The lola sat down and ate the rice I gave. Then, she cried,” our 6-year grand-daughter Kathie explained: “There were two children with her,'' 9-year old sister Kristin added. "They ate the sardines I put on their rice".

Welcome to Kindergarten 101 on hunger.

Kristin is a third grader and Kathie is in kindergarten. Both study at Cebu International School. Sundays, their parents drive them to where grimy out-of-school kids cluster. The two share food packs they’ve prepared.

“Happiness never decreases by being shared,” the Buddha taught. For now, that’s enough for Kristin and Kathie.

Later, they’ll learn that 17 out of every 100 youngsters can’t even enrol in primary school. Then, they may see that kids they shared food had little chances for full human lives. But that’ll be long after the wife and I will have passed on.

“Large numbers start dying after they are born”, says the report Winning the Numbers, Losing the War. Scrawny stunted kids here are “comparable to the prevalence of underweight children, under 5 year of age, in Sub-Saharan Africa.

In Burundi, Madagascar, and Malawi, poor nutrition stunts about half of the children, says 2010 Global Hunger Index Ineffective government, conflict, and political instability interlock. These spiral into hunger and high infant mortality.

That’s a stark snapshot for “World Food Day 2012”. Over 150 nations mark, on October 16, their commitment to fill granaries ---and failure to do so.

Remember the 1974 World Food Conference? Then U.S. Secertary of State Henry Kissinger proposed a gung-ho ideal: Food and Agriculture Organization member-nations should ensure that “within a decade, no child should go to bed hungry”.

It didn’t work out that way.

Bolting food prices, the financial crisis and ecological corrosion saw the number of hungry people breach the one billion threshold last year. ”Don’t trust a hungry man to watch your rice,” a Tibetan proverb cautions.

Social Weather Station reports 23% of homes went hungry So, what happened to our pledge to meet Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The eight Goals set minimum targets that’d tamp down hunger, keep kids in school, cut down maternal deaths and enlarge freedoms.

MDG Goal 1 committed us to “halve the proportion of people who suffer hunger” by 2015. How far have we lagged?

About 3.4 million families today periodically must skip a meal. . Only four out of every 10 Filipino households get “the recommended energy intake per person,” the last national nutrition survey reports. Scrub the technical jargon and that reads: Far too many Filipinos don’t get enough to eat.

Social Weather Stations tracked quarterly, since 1998, penury and empty bellies. Leery of “window dressing”, SWS uses “self-rated hunger” as it’s main gauge. Food lack sweeps away fuzz that blurred traditional peso-and-centavo yardsticks.

Hunger levels see-sawed, SWS found. But starting June 2004, these climbed to double digit levels. They’ve dropped under President Aquino. But malnutrition still cuts a deadly swath in

The poor and excluded, in 2010, live in rural communities far from Manila,” the report notes. They are the landless, homeless, jobless, underemployed, uneducated, sick, malnourished and discriminated against. Many are women, Muslims and indigenous peoples.

Chipping away at chronic hunger isn’t enough. Three out of 10 kids are undernourished. Over 26 percent kids, under 5, are underweight. Those stunted crest at 28 percent. The highest incidence of ill-fed kids cluster in places like Bicol, the Zamboanga Peninsula and Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.

The MDG target on hunger alleviation “is way off track” If we’re to catch up, business-as-usual approaches will no longer do.

Studies of 122 developing and transition countries “show the window of opportunity for improving nutrition spans from conception to age two. After age two, the negative effects of undernutrition are largely irreversible,” cautions the International Food Policy Research Institute in a WFD report.

Child undernutrition could be cut by 25-36 percent, IFPRI adds. But countries must “make nutrition, especially for young children, a political priority.” Funnel where scarce taxes will do the most good – among pregnant and breastfeeding women and children in their first two years of life."

President Benigno Aquino righly worked in larger allocations the Conditional Cash Transfer Program, supported by World Bank, EU and Asian Development Bank. That is a welcome thrust. But "one swallow does not make a summer.”

Philippine Institute of Development Studies’ Rosario Manasan estimates P100.4 billion should beef up allocations for education, health, water and poverty reduction. That didn’t happen when a Gloria Macapagal Arroyo feasted at $20,000 Le Cirque dinners and Tesda spent P66 million for GMA T-shirts.

NGO coalitions offer the "Alternative Budget Initiative. These focus on where the poor are, explains Leonor Magtolis Briones, convenor of Social Watch Philippines which organized the ABI. Priorty should go to agriculture and fisheries women, indigenous peoples and Mindanao.

“I don’t like marshamallows,” Kathie gripes. “Don’t say that,” her sister Kristin snaps. “Many children have nothing to eat.” There is hope. Perhaps, both will come of age when officials no longer “drink the tears of orphans and play deaf to the sighs of widows.”*

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