Food-related Resources: World Hunger

Hunger is as old as history itself. Indeed, it appears to be a timeless and inescapable biological condition. And yet perceptions of hunger and of the hungry have changed over time and differed from place to place. Hunger has a history, which can now be told. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, hunger was viewed as an unavoidable natural phenomenon or as the fault of its lazy and morally flawed victims. By the middle of the twentieth century, a new understanding of hunger had taken root. Across the British Empire and beyond, humanitarian groups, political activists, social reformers, and nutritional scientists established that the hungry were innocent victims of political and economic forces outside their control. Hunger was now seen as a global social problem requiring government intervention in the form of welfare to aid the hungry at home and abroad. James Vernon captures this momentous shift as it occurred in imperial Britain over the past two centuries. Rigorously researched, Hunger: A Modern History draws together social, cultural, and political history in a novel way, to show us how we came to have a moral, political, and social responsibility toward the hungry. Vernon forcefully reminds us how many perished from hunger in the empire and reveals how their history was intricately connected with the precarious achievements of the welfare state in Britain, as well as with the development of international institutions, such as the United Nations, committed to the conquest of world hunger. All those moved by the plight of the hungry will want to read this compelling book.

The paper illustrates the constraints that have limited action towards improving nutrition in the developing world. The understanding of how to best promote the needed changes in policies, programs, and institutional capacities has grown over the past decade, but remains limited. The international community has systemized its knowledge of what actions are likely to improve nutrition, but less effort to systemizing its knowledge of how to intervene in the sociopolitical processes--from community to national and international levels.The assessment recommends a five-point program of action to apply to known solutions with the intensity needed to eliminate nutritional deprivation. Each dimension of the program is an entry point; while local conditions and existing capacity will determine which one is most appropriate in any one context, ultimately all five dimensions need action for maximum impact.The paper concludes that UNICEF and the World Bank, with their complementary approaches and in partnership with countries and other agencies, should initiate a global effort to jump-start action to eliminate nutritional deprivation once and for all.