Europe Must Help Combat Hunger, Malnutrition — Failure Will Only Boost Migration, Stoke Conflicts

Human Wrongs Watch

European governments must help combat hunger and malnutrition on a global level, as failure to do so will only boost migration flows and stoke conflicts, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva.

The faces behind the numbers | Source: FAO

“Food insecurity and conflict go hand in hand” he said, noting that extreme climatic events, troubles in Africa and the Near East and now the Ebola outbreak in West Africa tend to spill over national borders and into other regions in a globalized world, often through forced migration.*

Malnutrition, a Public Issue

“Illegal border crossings are an issue of concern in Europe and other parts of the world,” Graziano da Silva said on 30 September 2014 – at the informal summit of European Union agriculture ministers in Milan. “It is our common responsibility to help build alternatives. Sustainable agricultural and rural development in the countries of origin needs to be one of them,”‘ he added.

He urged EU ministers to consider malnutrition a public issue requiring concerted action.

“Hunger is the most deplorable face of malnutrition, but it is not its only face,” he said, noting that five percent of global economic activity is lost annually and that more than 2 billion people, suffer from undernourishment, micronutrient deficiencies or hidden hunger, which can manifest themselves as obesity. (*Source: FAO Release).

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