Eradicating hunger - a third of the countries on track - hot spot Africa Ingeborg Schäuble: One in seven people go to bed hungry every day

Berlin, 12th October 2007. Cuba and Peru in Latin America, Mozambique and Ghana in Sub-Saharan Africa, Indonesia and Vietnam in South Asia - these developing countries are all on the right path towards achieving the hunger-related Millennium Development Goals. The objective remains to halve the number of starving people in the world by 2015, as well as reduce the number of undernourished children under the age of five by half and cut the child mortality rate by two-thirds. These measurable indicators are recorded by the Global Hunger Index (GHI) developed by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Deutsche Welthungerhilfe (German Agro Action). It has been updated on the occasion of World Food Day on 16th October.

Sub-Saharan Africa continues to be a problem. Although most countries in this region are making progress, the present trend predicts that only 6 out of the total of 42 countries in this region will achieve their hunger-related Millennium Development Goals. According to the GHI progress indicator, around a third of the 91 countries evaluated are on track. Just over another third has also made progress, but not fast enough achieve the goals by 2015. The food situation has hardly changed or worse still deteriorated in just under the remaining third. Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo, the two countries at the bottom of the ranking list, fall under this category. Both countries still suffer in the face of armed conflict. "In the case of a country like Ethiopia, the significantly improved value goes to show that progress is possible during peacetime if and when money is invested in health, education and farming," says Doris Wiesmann, a nutritional scientist at IFPRI.

"Any progress is encouraging," comments Ingeborg Schäuble, Welthungerhilfe's chairperson, "but we mustn't relax our efforts. It's still the case that one in seven people go to bed hungry every day." She points to the successes seen in Welthungerhilfe's Millennium Villages. Development in the 15 selected villages in Africa, Asia and Latin America is carefully documented by household surveys and a monitoring system. These villages have seen a decline in the child mortality rate and underweight amongst children under five. The Millennium Village in Ethiopia, Sodo, is a good example: whereas an average of 38% of children are undernourished in the rest of Ethiopia, only 18% of boys and 25% of girls are underweight in Sodo.

"We have to raise investment in rural development," explains Schäuble. "Three in four of the poorest of the poor live rurally. It's a disgrace that industrial nations continue to neglect the world's poorest. Although the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) did increase its funding for rural development from 382.3 million euros in 2005 to 576.8 million euros in 2006, it still remains only 7% of the entire 8.25 billion euros of state development assistance funding in Germany."

For further information and graphics to download see www.welthungerhilfe.de