The Well-fed Have Many Problems,
The Hungry Only One
Continued from previous page

This is emphasized in the Lending Policies and Criteria by IFAD, where it states that “… the group deserving more particular attention is poor rural women, who are the most significant suppliers of family labour and efficient managers of household food security”. Given the general consensus on the basic issues involved in household food security and nutrition, and the types of activities being promoted by the international community, why then are our efforts still falling short of the mark?

FAO Photo

Progress in alleviating poverty and ending chronic hunger depends primarily on the people and Governments of the developing countries themselves. However, the international community must offer stronger support, and development cooperation needs to be strengthened. During the 1990s, aid to agriculture and rural development declined significantly. To regain the momentum necessary for meeting the goal of the World Food Summit, this trend needs to be reversed, and aid for rural development and agriculture should be raised substantially.

In this context, it can be hoped that more countries will follow the examples of Denmark, Norway, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and Sweden in reaching the international aid target of 0.7 per cent of gross domestic product and in directing an increasing proportion of their assistance to the rural areas, where the poor live, and to agriculture, which provides them with their livelihoods. Improved trade access for developing countries in the markets of the developed world should be a high priority. The recent decision by the European Union to allow duty-free imports from least developed countries of “everything but arms” is welcome, but it is only a first step.

Arguably, we in the UN system and the many other organizations working in international development can do more. Collectively, we can take action to help reverse the trend of declining assistance targeted toward rural agricultural communities and begin scaling up appropriate activities in the field. Two such actions deserve particular attention: collaborating effectively, and generating and demonstrating impact.

Each UN agency has its mandate, and it is the continuing work of each to ensure that those mandates dovetail rather than overlap - to find synergy rather than organizational inertia. A case in point is the movement toward convergence of the international development goals, the goals of the Millennium Summit and those of the World Food Summit. This is a significant step in facilitating a framework for inter-agency collaboration and disciplining ourselves to communicate with the public more clearly and consistently. The ongoing inter-agency work on food insecurity and vulnerability information and mapping systems is a sound example of practical collaboration in building international and national networks to assemble, analyze and disseminate information about the problems of food insecurity and malnutrition. Addressing those problems at the country level requires combined efforts on the part of Governments, donors, civil society organizations and communities.

Lack of coordination in the field - and even competition - among donors and aid organizations, and an absence of dialogue with national governments, can result in wastage of valuable resources. A mutually agreed framework for global goals can also assist in generating and demonstrating impact at the community level. For IFAD, being better able to capture and measure impact in project areas is a high priority. “Impact”, as it is intended here, refers specifically to meaningful changes in the lives of the rural poor, as opposed to “outputs”, such as the number of committees formed, people trained or facilities constructed.

Some of the most promising advancements in this regard involve the use of measures of malnutrition among young children (anthropometric indicators). The Dialogue among Civilizations framework now recognizes childhood malnutrition as an indicator of economic well-being, as well as a reflection of basic household food security and nutrition status. These indicators have the advantage of being applicable at community, country and global levels, and are inherently gender-sensitive.

Reduction in chronic malnutrition, also known as “stunting”, or low height-for-age, is particularly relevant for IFAD projects. Elevated levels of chronic malnutrition indicate persistent deprivation over a period of months or years. Children who suffer from chronic malnutrition can be irreversibly disabled in terms of mental and physical development. This, in turn, causes poor performance in school and impaired physical capacity, depleting the primary source of development potential in communities and contributing to the inter-generational transmission of poverty. Conversely, as noted in the Rural Poverty Report 2001, “… a virtuous circle emerges from outlays for better child nutrition: it brings better adult health, education and productivity, which further improve child nutrition”.

The Rural Poverty Report 2001, produced by IFAD earlier this year, has underlined key findings relevant to the discussion on the adequacy of current efforts by the international community. Although eradicating poverty and ending world hunger are often described as overarching priorities in development cooperation, the fact that the majority of the poor are in rural areas is not reflected adequately in either domestic policies or aid allocations. As the Report shows, there is little correlation between aid allocations and the location of the rural poor. Its key findings are: Approximately 75% of the world's poor people live in rural areas. The rural poor depend primarily on agriculture and related activities for their livelihoods. The proportion of official development assistance for agriculture has fallen from 20% in the late 1980s to 12% today. Overall, the real value of aid fell sharply between 1987/1988 and 1997/1998. The share of aid going to low-income or least developed countries, where over 85% of the poor live, stayed around 63%.

Establishing benchmark measures of childhood malnutrition enables the estimation of project impact on household food security and nutrition through repeat surveys at the project's mid-term and completion evaluation. Of course, these measures are used only as anchor indicators of impact. Any comprehensive evaluation requires an appropriate balance of quantitative and qualitative information, and the full participation of all project participants.

Progress in reducing poverty, household food insecurity and malnutrition, necessary to achieve the goal of the World Food Summit, will require scaling up the present level of activity. Acknowledging that we are not currently on track to meet the Summit goal is in no way an admission of defeat. Rather, it should be taken as an early warning call, an unambiguous message that we in the international community need to redouble our efforts.

In the preparation for the World Food Summit Five Years Later, it is time to hear that early warning call and take substantive action. If we are better able to collaborate effectively, increase the impact of our work and demonstrate that impact at all levels, these actions should also encourage a reversal in the trend of declining resources dedicated to rural development.