|
HALVING HUNGER: IT CAN BE DONE
RECOMMENDATIONS FROM THE U.N. TASK FORCE ON HUNGER
In 2005, U.N. Millennium Project’s Task Force on Hunger set forth seven policy recommendations on international hunger. The recommendations, listed below, have been endorsed by the Alliance to End Hunger Board of Directors.
 Halving Hunger: it can be done examines current world progress towards eliminating hunger, and calls for the implementation of seven recommendations in the areas of: political action, national policy reforms, increased agricultural productivity for food insecure farmers, improved nutrition for the chronically hungry, productive safety nets for the acutely hungry, improved rural incomes and markets, and restoration and conservation of natural resources essential for food security.
Recommendations of the U.N. Task Force on Hunger
1. Move from political commitment to action
• Advocate political action to meet intergovernmental agreements to end hunger
• Strengthen the contributions of donor countries and national governments to activities that combat hunger
• Improve public awareness of hunger issues and strengthen advocacy organizations
• Strengthen developing country organizations that deal with poverty reduction and hunger
• Strengthen accurate data collection, monitoring, and evaluation
2. Reform policies and create an enabling environment
• Promote an integrated policy approach to hunger reduction
• Restore budgetary priority to the agricultural and rural sectors
• Build developing country capacity to achieve the hunger Goal
• Link nutritional and agricultural interventions
• Increase poor people’s access to land and other productive resources
• Empower women and girls
• Strengthen agricultural and nutrition research
• Remove internal and regional barriers to agricultural trade
• Increase the effectiveness of donor agencies’ hunger-related programming
• Create vibrant partnerships to ensure effective policy implementation
3. Increase the agricultural productivity of food-insecure farmers
• Improve soil health
• Improve and expand small-scale water management
• Improve access to better seeds and other planting materials
• Diversify on-farm enterprises with high-value products
• Establish effective agricultural extension services
4. Improve nutrition for the chronically hungry and vulnerable
• Promote mother and infant nutrition
• Reduce malnutrition among children under five years of age
• Reduce malnutrition among school-age children and adolescents
• Reduce vitamin and mineral deficiencies
• Reduce the prevalence of infectious diseases that contribute to mal-nutrition
5. Reduce vulnerability of the acutely hungry through productive safety nets
• Build and strengthen national and local early warning systems
• Build and strengthen national and local capacity to respond to emergencies
• Invest in productive safety nets to protect the poorest from short-term shocks and to reduce long-term food insecurity
6. Increase incomes and make markets work for the poor
• Invest in and maintain market-related infrastructure
• Develop networks of small rural input traders
• Improve access to financial services for the poor and food-insecure
• Provide and enforce a sound legal and regulatory framework
• Strengthen the bargaining power of the rural and urban poor in labor markets
• Ensure access to market information for the poor
• Promote and strengthen community and farmer associations
• Promote alternative sources of employment and income
7. Restore and conserve the natural resources essential for food security
• Help communities and households restore or enhance natural resources
• Secure local ownership, access, and management rights to forests, fisheries, and rangelands
• Develop natural resource-based “green enterprises”
• Pay poor rural communities for environmental services.
|
