Last Update: May 11, 2007
Youth Writing Contest
A future with no one living in poverty and hunger
Tell us your vision of how we can arrive there
Tell us your vision of how we can arrive there
Some Background Figures and Facts
- Over one billion people around the world are poor, living on less than one dollar a day.
- Many of these poor people survive with much less, say half a dollar a day, and live a very vulnerable life in nearly permanent hunger.
- In the year 2000, the Millennium Declaration combined the fight against poverty and hunger into Millennium Development Goal Number One: reducing the share of the world's poor and hungry people by half by 2015.
- In the year 2000, more than 800 million people were food insecure, and this number has not changed much over the last seven years.
- The struggle to reduce poverty and hunger shows varying results across countries. China, for one, has cut down the number of hungry people from 194 million to 142 million, and the numbers continue to decrease. Meanwhile the figure has gone up in other parts of the world, from 625 million to 672 million. Even with the best of our imaginations, these numbers, reflecting as they do so many suffering individuals, are impossible to understand.
- South and Southeast Asia and North Africa have made marked progress in reducing poverty. And large parts of the world have progressed in reducing hunger. These areas have a realistic chance to cut the share of poor and hungry people in half by 2015. But most of Africa south of the Sahara is unlikely to reach the targets.
- The prospect for the immediate future is that 700 million people in the world will still be poor by 2015, and 600 million of them will probably not have enough to eat every year.
- A very high proportion of those left behind are the children and youngsters, men and, not least, women of Africa. But also a great number in South Asia, maybe as many as 200 million people, will stay in poverty.
- Beyond 2015 the outlook is difficult to predict. The efforts to cut poverty and hunger for "the first half" might prove to be the easiest part of the task, as these are the people more able to grasp an opportunity to escape their situation. "The other half" might call for other solutions, and for thinking along different lines. Eliminating poverty and hunger for the other half is the long-term challenge we face.
