Worldwide Food Insecurity

The Food and Agriculture Organization has developed a new statistic for measuring food insecurity. Called "Depth of Hunger," the new statistic measures the daily calorie deficit experienced by undernourished people. It makes for stark reading. Congo and Haiti top the list --undernourished people in those states consume 400+ fewer calories per day than the needed minimum. (credit for World Food Programme map showing most affected areas in red)
There are very few success stories, and even those are hardly cause for joy. Mozambique for example has reduced the calorie deficit of its undernourished people from 400 calories/day in 1990 to 320 calories/day in 2005. During the same period the percentage of Mozambique's population food insecurity fell from 59% to 38%. At least their trajectory is moving in the right direction, even though the absolute number of malnourished people is still painfully high.
What is particularly startling about the Depth of Hunger statistic is how remarkably consistent the daily calorie deficit has remained for food insecure people over the past 20 years. Across the world, the story remains the same: the prevalence of hunger has remained stubbornly high. Eight hundred and fifty million people do not have enough to eat. Think about that stark fact. That is roughly one in five people on the planet.
These facts are particularly depressing because they come despite high profile UN efforts under the Millenium Development Goal and World Food Summit banners. (Again, there are a few bright spots: Nicaragua, for example has reduced food insecurity from 50% of its population to 22%.)
We have a long way to go if we are going to achieve the goal of halving by 2015 the number of people who experience hunger.
This Valentine's Day, my gift of love is a contribution to Oxfam.

"Do more." costs more

In the United States, criticism of the United Nations is old news. For years critics have drummed the "Do more." beat, urging the 63-year-old international organization to be more efficient, more effective, to keep the peace and feed the poor, here, there, and everywhere. A number of recent articles underscore an obvious response:
"Do more." costs more.
The Washington Post's Colum Lynch reported that the United Nation has just

presented its top donors with a request for nearly $1.1 billion in additional funds over the next two years -- boosting current U.N. expenses by 25 percent and marking the global body's highest-ever administrative budget ...

Lynch attributed the increased to "Bush administration demands for a more ambitious U.N. role around the world," with particular reference to Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Sudan/Darfur.
And as for those U.N. peacekeepers in Darfur, there's this report from Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times:

The force, a joint mission of the African Union and the United Nations, officially took over from an overstretched and exhausted African Union force in Darfur on Jan. 1. It now has just over 9,000 of an expected 26,000 soldiers and police officers and will not fully deploy until the end of the year ....
Even the troops that are in place ... lack essential equipment, like sufficient armored personnel carriers and helicopters, to carry out even the most rudimentary of peacekeeping tasks. Some even had to buy their own paint to turn their green helmets United Nations blue ...

Nor is it just peacekeeping operations that are in dire straits. The Los Angeles Times' Tracy Wilkinson reported that rising food and fuel prices have spurred another U.N. agency to declare a global food emergency:

The World Food Program called on donor nations for urgent help in closing a funding gap of more than $500 million by May 1. If money doesn't arrive by then, Executive Director Josette Sheeran [left] said in a letter to donors, the WFP may be forced to cut food rations 'for those who rely on the world to stand by them during times of abject need.'

Official U.S. response? Despite linkages between some U.N. programmatic weaknesses and the strength of U.S. demands, in the Post article Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States' Permanent Representative to the United Nations, criticized the ballooning budget:

'I want to have a Ferrari, but if I can't afford it I would have to take something else or defer' additional spending .... 'There have to be trade-offs; there has to be savings from reforms.'