For more than five years, hunger in the world has been steadily increasing. The first nutrition report of the Sufosec Alliance – Sustainable Food Systems and Empowered Communities – released on World Food Day, October 16, confirms this: the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the climate crisis have increased the total number of hungry people to 828 million and the number of malnourished people to 2.73 billion.
Far from simply pointing out this grim upward trend, the report, written by Swiss NGOs specializing in sustainable food, including SWISSAID, highlights the many effective ways we can fight hunger. This includes radically rethinking the distribution and use of agricultural products and transforming current land and food systems. As the problems of food production, climate change, health, and the economy are interconnected, agroecology and the strengthening of local food systems appear to be an answer to many global challenges. A promising path to achieve Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 2 Zero Hunger by 2030.
A conference to offer insights
Is Africa more hungry because of the war in Ukraine? Ways out of the food crisis, which brought together various actors in the field on Friday 21 October in Bern, including the Head of Development Cooperation at SWISSAID, discussed the results of the report. They addressed the roles and duties of the various actors and institutions, promising approaches and instruments for dealing with the current food crisis, as well as useful or obstructive framework conditions in the world trade system.
The participants to the conference – Nicole Stolz, Head of the Development Cooperation Department and member of the SWISSAID Executive Committee, Stellamaris Mulaeh, Country Program Coordinator, Fastenopfer Kenya, Alessandra Roversi, Program Officer, Food Security Division of the Global Program of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, Christophe Golay, Senior Research Fellow, Geneva Academy of International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights and Dr. Wesinew Adugna, Head of Ethiopia Programs, Vétérinaires sans Frontières – Switzerland – discussed the 2022 nutrition reports and the solutions to counter hunger increase.
