Pope calls for action on world hunger

Pope Benedict XVI has urged world leaders to combat hunger affecting 1 billion people — more than half in the Asia-Pacific region — by rethinking the way they conduct international relations.

Poor villagers in Myanmar make do with the little food they have. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization says that of the 1.02 billion people in the world who are hungry or malnourished, 642 million live in Asia and the Pacific

“Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty. Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever greater proportions,” he told the World Summit on Food Security in Rome.

The world needs “a public conscience that considers food and access to water as universal rights of all human beings,” he said on Nov. 16.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization´s (FAO) annual report says that of the 1.02 billion people in the world who are hungry or malnourished, 642 million live in Asia and the Pacific, including 251.5 million in India, 127.4 million in China, 40.2 million in Bangladesh and 36.5 million in Pakistan.

The FAO, which is running the Nov. 16-18 summit, says 25 percent of Cambodia´s population, 29 percent of Mongolia´s and 32 percent of North Korea´s 23.6 million people are undernourished.

The Pope, addressing delegates from 192 states at the summit including 60 world leaders, said “the dramatic growth in world hunger” has nothing to do with population. “Sufficient food is produced on a global scale to satisfy both current demands and those in the foreseeable future,” he said.

The root causes of the problem include a lack of “a network of economic institutions capable of guaranteeing regular access to sufficient food and water.”

The global economic and financial crisis had made the problems worse, driving up food prices and slashing economic resources available to the poor, he added.

The Pope stressed that it was necessary not only to promote sustainable economic growth and political stability but also to seek out ways of building “a relationship of parity between countries at different stages of development.”

He urged the leaders to open international markets to products from poor countries.

The Catholic Church “is committed to support, by word and deed” every reasonable action by the international community to eliminate hunger. “This is the most immediate and concrete sign of solidarity inspired by charity, and it brooks neither delay nor compromise,” the Pope stressed.