By The Editorial Board, Opinion, September 22, 2017<\/p>\n
As the leaders of the world posture and sermonize for the United Nations General Assembly this week, a growing global specter should spur common concern among them: World hunger, after a decade-long decline, spiked last year, because of scourges like global warming and civil conflicts that show little sign of abating.<\/p>\n
The number of undernourished human beings on the planet increased from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimated<\/a>, in a report timed for the world leaders\u2019 annual review of their hopes and fears for the planet. That means 11 percent of the world\u2019s population went hungry every day \u2014 a 5 percent increase in two years and a severe setback for the United Nations\u2019 goal of eliminating global hunger by 2030.<\/p>\n The human suffering underlying the data includes almost one in four children under 5 years of age \u2014 155 million \u2014 with stunted growth and a greatly heightened risk of cognitive damage and susceptibility to infection. Another 52 million children are considered \u201cwasting\u201d \u2014 weighing too little for their height, for lack of food.<\/p>\n The report didn\u2019t specify precise factors that drove the decade of success in diminishing world hunger. But it stressed rising civil strife and climate disruption in explaining the sudden downturn.<\/p>\n \u201cThere is more than enough food produced in the world to feed everyone, yet 815 million people go hungry,\u201d the United Nations food agency summarized plaintively.<\/p>\n At the same time, obesity continues to rise for adults all over the world, with a significant increase lately among children in most regions. \u201cMultiple forms of malnutrition therefore coexist, with countries experiencing simultaneously high rates of child undernutrition and adult obesity,\u201d the report warned.<\/p>\n A recent investigation by The Times<\/a> delved into this paradox, finding food corporations exploiting the poor in Brazil with products richer in sugar than in balanced nutrients, thereby feeding obesity and its attendant life-threatening diseases.<\/p>\n A stark measure of the complicated problems is that a vast majority of those going hungry \u2014 489 million of the 815 million \u201cfood insecure\u201d and malnourished \u2014 are fighting for survival in countries afflicted by violent conflicts, with children suffering the most, the United Nations report said. Battles between armed groups within nations have increased 125 percent since 2010, with hunger often enlisted as an allied aggressor. Conflict in South Sudan produced \u201ca humanitarian catastrophe on a massive scale.\u201d Famine was declared in some parts of that country this year, with two out of five people suffering severe hunger and food deprivation \u201cbeing used as a weapon of war,\u201d the report noted.<\/p>\n In Yemen, 60 percent of the population \u2014 17 million people \u2014 live in hunger and need urgent help. Similar conditions were underlined in Nigeria and Somalia. The human destruction wrought by rampant conflict was clearest, perhaps, in Syria, whose once-vibrant middle-income population has been decimated by civil war. An estimated 85 percent struggles in poverty now, with more than six million people suffering persistent hunger in a land where agriculture has been devastated.<\/p>\n Compounding these problems globally are the disruptions of climate change \u2014 droughts and floods, as well as political crises and severe economic drops in nations reliant on commodity exports, the study found.<\/p>\n If the diplomats at the United Nations are paying attention to the world out there, the report should prod them into a fresh look at hunger and an increased resolve to drive it back down. There are signs of hope, notably an increase in better nutrition through the breast-feeding of infants.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, President Trump, for all the spotlight he commanded this week at the United Nations, has already proposed a severe cut<\/a> in funding for the organization. But the United Nations is larger than any of its members. Its ultimate constituency is humanity itself. The planet\u2019s diplomats have been put on notice that, whatever their differences, they cannot afford to let up in the fight against global hunger.<\/p>\n