In 2000, world leaders committed themselves to halve the proportion of people who suffer from hunger within the framework of Millennium Development Goals (concretely MDG1). It was an unprecedented collective effort ever made to eradicate world hunger and poverty; however, progress made so far is behind the schedule and it is beyond the reach of keeping the deadline of 2015. Even though the number of hungry people in the world declined again in 2010 (after it had exceeded 1 billion for the first time in history), it still remains unacceptably high.
The reasons of hunger are manifold and the situation of the millions of hungry people was worsened in 2007 when the price of many staple crops (maize, wheat and rice) reached their highest level in 30 years. Unfortunately, poor countries were hit hard by the economic and food crisis they themselves did not cause. The following economic slowdown reduced incomes and employment opportunities of the poor and significantly lowered their ability to buy food. However, nowadays we are witnessing another wave of soaring prices of staple food. It seems that no country is protected from external shocks in this interconnected world which makes eradicating hunger even more difficult.
The goal of this policy paper is to present the topic of hunger in the global context as it seems to be a vicious circle. It starts with a defi nition on what hunger really is and raises the questions of who are the hungry, and in which part of the world they live. We will also focus on the explanation of why hunger, which is perhaps one of the most shameful “achievements” of recent history, exists in the modern time of the 21st century.
