Minister Flanagan speaking at the UN
Foreign Affairs and Trade Minister Charlie Flanagan is today co-hosting a major international summit at the United Nations to galvanise international action to end hunger within a generation.
The ‘Delivering Zero Hunger’ event is being hosted by Ireland, the Netherlands, Mexico, and the three major UN agencies tasked with tackling hunger, to encourage governments, businesses and civil society organisations to adapt five key actions to eradicate global hunger.
Minister Flanagan will sign the UN Zero Hunger Declaration on behalf of Ireland at today’s event. Speaking in New York ahead of the event, Minster Flanagan said:
Ireland is recognised as a global leader in the battle against hunger. It is at the heart of our aid programme, Irish Aid, and of our foreign policy. We invest 20% of Irish Aid funding in actions to end hunger, focusing in particular on tackling child under-nutrition, which is responsible for the deaths of 8,000 children every day.
Although the number of hungry people in the world has declined by more than 100 million, there are still more than 800 million women, children and men suffering the scourge of hunger every day. Malnutrition destroys their chance to lead full and productive lives and saps the potential of families, communities and entire societies.
The Taoiseach last year committed Ireland to doubling our development funding for nutrition by 2020 and I am re-affirming that promise at the UN today.
“The Great Famine of the 19th century scarred our nation and lives on in our collective conscience. We have a deep sense of the injustice of hunger in a world of plenty. Ireland is offering our expertise, our experience and our resources to the fight to end hunger and under-nutrition.
We are investing in cutting-edge research to support poor, smallholder farmers. Many of these farmers are women, whose simple priority is their children’s survival. Working with them, we have fostered partnerships to promote crops like groundnuts and beans, which improve families’ diets, provide income and enable them to send their children to school. Critically, they also improve soil fertility and help reduce erosion, thus tackling the effects of climate change. By making our aid so focused and effective, we believe we can help these farmers to achieve zero hunger in their communities, zero malnutrition, and sustainable farming.
The challenge of eradicating hunger within a generation was set by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon in 2012. Some 137 countries have committed to pursue the vision of Zero Hunger.
Minister Flanagan said:
The UN Secretary General challenged us three years ago to end hunger – and this is a dream which can be achieved, through policy change and practical action. The Zero Hunger Challenge complements Ireland’s existing approach to hunger by bringing together issues of food security, sustainable food production, nutrition and food waste.