Bangkok--Oct 20--wfp
With natural disasters battering the world's hungry poor, and certain areas of Asia still facing long-term food insecurity, the UN World Food Programme has convened a meeting of key Asian partner nations to explore ways that the region can cooperate to overcome these crises.
"Countries in Asia continue to take on increased responsibilities on the world stage. They now have a unique opportunity to come together to fight long-term hunger and cooperate in disaster preparedness and response," said Anthony Banbury, WFP's Regional Director for Asia.
The meeting, convened on 20-21 October in Bangkok, will focus on areas of collaboration such as information exchange, policy support, and optimization of personnel, logistics and procurement capacities. Representatives are attending from nine Asian nations that are emerging as key partners for WFP — Bangladesh, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. Many of these countries have "graduated" from being recipients of food aid in the recent past to being donors to WFP.
"The response to the Indian Ocean tsunami shows what Asia is capable of when national governments and aid agencies work together," said Banbury. He noted that Asia on average experiences more natural disasters than any other region of the world, and that cooperation is critical to save lives and deliver emergency assistance following disasters such as the tsunami and the devastating earthquake in Kashmir.
Asian countries are notable for being major exporters of commodities, especially rice, but also wheat, beans and oil. Over the past quarter century Asia has also had the highest economic growth rates in the world, with GDP growth in recent years twice the world average. A number of nations in the region have cut rates of hunger substantially and set up mechanisms such as safety nets and invested their own resources in feeding their populations.
However, collectively Asia is home to more hungry people than the rest of the world combined. Over 500 million people in the region are undernourished. At the current rate of change, Asia will not be able to meet the first Millennium Development Goal — reducing hunger in half by 2015.
WFP is the world's largest humanitarian agency: each year, we give food to an average of 90 million poor people to meet their nutritional needs, including 56 million hungry children, in at least 80 of the world's poorest countries. WFP -- We Feed People..
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For more information please contact
(email: [email protected]):
Nick Keyes, WFP/Bangkok,
Tel. +66-2-655-4115 ext.2020,
Mob. +66-1-9230362
Anthea Webb, WFP/ Rome,
Tel: +39-06-6513-2411,
Mob. +39-340-863-6509 End.