Rabu, 17 September 2008

'Emergency' fear for 220m people

The number of people living "on the edge of emergency" has nearly doubled to 220m in just two years, one of the world's biggest aid agencies has said.

Care International says billions of dollars in aid will be wasted if it continues to be spent in the wrong way.

Hungry mother in Africa, file pic
Halving global poverty by 2015 is one of the UN's key goals

Failure to resolve underlying issues trapping people in extreme poverty has left millions unable to cope with surging food prices, the agency warns.

Halving poverty and hunger around the world by 2015 are key UN goals.

"The world's inaction on food emergencies has proved costly and it is the world's poorest people - stripped of enough to eat - who are paying the price," said Geoffrey Dennis, chief executive of Care International UK.

The report, "Living on the edge of emergency: Paying the price of inaction", comes ahead of a UN summit on the organisation's Millennium Development Goals (MDG), to be held in New York next week.

The top priority of the MDGs is to halve the number of people whose income is less than $1 (56 pence) a day by 2015.

Coordination call

Care's report, released on Thursday, says the international community has failed to learn the lessons of countless emergencies.

Too often aid arrived too late, was short-term, and policies were targeted too heavily on saving lives rather than building resilience in the population, the report says.

"It is a disgrace that, despite warnings, money is still being spent in the wrong ways," said Mr Dennis.

The report calls for donors to better coordinate their emergency aid and long-term development commitments, and focus on food production and support for the world's poor, as well as developing early warning systems for disasters.

"Governments, the UN, donors and aid agencies must take this opportunity to deliver the long-term structural reforms to the aid system that will protect the most vulnerable from emergency and build their resilience to food price rises, drought and other shocks."

The report comes a day after the head of the UN's food agency, Jacques Diouf, said the number of people suffering from acute hunger rose by 75m to an estimated 925m last year.

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