Last updated Pictured outside 10 Downing Street on 12 August 2012. From left to right: Brazilian football legend Pelé, vice-president of Brazil Michel Temer, UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Olympic double gold medallist Mo Farah
The 2012 Olympic hunger summit was an international gathering on 12 August, the closing day of the 2012 Summer Olympics, held at 10 Downing Street London. The event was organised largely by the Department for International Development. It was co-hosted by Britain's prime minister, David Cameron, and by Brazil's vice president Michel Temer. The summit was attended by several high-profile athletes and by delegates from various national governments, the United Nations, NGOs and from the private sector.
Since World War II, there had been uneven but substantial progress in reducing the number of people suffering from hunger. Yet in 2007, a lasting period of inflation to the price of food disrupted this progress in several parts of the world. The purpose of the summit was to raise awareness and activity in tackling the problem of world hunger and to announce various concrete initiatives. The event was broadly though cautiously welcomed by aid agencies. It was part of a wider international intensification of efforts to address the problem of hunger.
Gold medal winner Greg Rutherford, one of the athletes who urged David Cameron to use Britains 2013 presidency of the G8 to make the fight against hunger and malnutrition a top priority issue.
The Summit is part of a series of international efforts which have sought to respond to the "return of hunger" [1] as a high-profile global issue. While the problem of hunger had always remained a pressing concern for hundreds of millions of people, the previous few decades leading up to 2007 had seen considerable progress in reducing the number of people suffering from the condition. The Green Revolution of the 1960s and 70s had helped propagate improved agricultural technology throughout the world. Progress had been uneven, yet the years that followed generally saw a reduction in the number of people suffering from hunger both as a percentage of the total world population and even in absolute terms. At the turn of the century, estimates from the World Bank suggested that the numbers suffering from chronic hunger had been reduced to close to 800 million, and the Millennium Development Goals included a commitment to achieve a further 50% reduction by 2015. By 2008 it was apparent that meeting this goal would be challenging. In some parts of the world, the numbers suffering from hunger had stopped falling, rising due to the lasting global inflation in the price of food which began in late 2006. In 2008, a global food crisis saw food riots breaking out in dozens of countries, with governments toppled in Haiti and Madagascar. By 2009, World Bank figures suggested the numbers suffering from chronic hunger had increased to just over a billion. Since the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative which was launched at the July 2009 G8 Summit, hunger has remained a high-profile issue among the leaders of the advanced economies.[2] 2009 also saw the launch of the UN's Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) programme, which has developed into a global movement led principally by developing nations.[3] SUN aims to address the issue of nutrition as well as raw hunger. As a response to the global food crises which began in 2007, some regions have raised production of drought and pest resistant crops such as Cassava. While good for providing raw calories, the crop has limited nutritional value and some strains even have anti-nutritional factors if not cooked properly. Millions of children who do not receive adequate nutrition are at risk of permanent stunted growth, even if they are eating a normal amount of calories. The second global food crisis of the 21st century began in late 2010; the 2011 East Africa drought followed shortly afterwards. By mid-2012, the 2012 US drought and a weak Indian monsoon had raised fears of a possible third global food crisis.[1][4][5][6]
David Cameron announced his intention to hold the Olympic hunger summit in May 2012, a few days after President Barack Obama had launched the "new alliance for food security and nutrition" at the 2012 G8 Summit. British NGOs such as ONE and Save the children had expressed the view that it would be good if Mr Cameron could contribute to the international momentum building to tackle hunger and malnutrition; Britain is due to assume the presidency of the G8 in 2013. Just prior to the summit, Cameron was further urged to do this by a group of athletes in an open letter.[4][7][8]
Attendees
Co host Michel Temer, the vice-president of Brazil, a nation which has made exemplary progress over recent years in reducing hunger among its population, and which will host the next Summer Olympics in 2016.
Irish Taoiseach Enda Kenny, who plans to keep hunger high on the agenda for the European Union when Ireland takes over presidency of the EU in 2013.
Other politicians including Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, EU development minister Andris Piebalgs, plus high-level officials from India and Kenya.
The summit was also attended by members of various aid organisations, business leaders from the private sector and by food scientists.[4][9][10][11]
Announcements
A commitment was made to reduce the number of children left stunted by malnourishment by as much as 25 million prior to the 2016 Olympics, with the EU alone taking responsibility for reducing the number by 7 million. India is doubling their budget for improving nutrition and health, which could affect 100 million women and children. The Children's Investment Fund Foundation announced a multimillion-pound annual investment to reduce stunting and malnutrition.
The UN's World Food Programme is to provide assistance for Rwandan farmers to grow iron-rich beans for emergency food relief. Private sector companies including Unilever, Syngenta and GSK undertook to improving the affordability of nutritious food in poor regions. Britain will fund research into crops that are both drought-resistant and rich in nutrients, as well as research into nutritious seeds and tubers, such as the sweet potato.[4][12][13][14]
Reception
The summit has been broadly welcomed by aid agencies. Justin Forsyth, CEO of Save the Children, wrote that the boost provided by the summit to the fight against hunger could turn out to be the "real legacy" [13] of the 2012 games. Molly Kinder, director for Agriculture and European policy at ONE, told The Guardian she was impressed with the substantive nature of the Summit's outcome, and especially with the EU committing to a specific target, something they rarely do. There has however been concern that the partnerships with big private sector players may distract from the role other large Corporations sometimes have in aggravating hunger, by manipulating global markets to their advantage, and in some cases by purchasing large areas of land in African countries and then driving small holders from their farms. George Monbiot says the summit may distract from the West's role in worsening hunger by setting targets that cause arable lands to be used to produce bio fuel instead of food. Writing just before the summit, British food bank network The Trussell Trust warned that attention is also needed for the growing problem of domestic hunger within Britain, where millions are now suffering from food insecurity.[1][4][10][15]
↑ Whereas prior to the L'Aquila Initiative, interest was mainly restricted to the governments of the worst affected developing countries, multilateral organizations and NGOs.
↑ As is common at international summits, most or all of these initiatives had already been decided in advance, and several of them had already been announced.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations that leads international efforts to defeat hunger and improve nutrition and food security. Its Latin motto, fiat panis, translates to "let there be bread". It was founded on 16 October 1945.
The Group of Eight (G8) was an intergovernmental political forum from 1997–2014. It had formed from incorporating Russia into the G7, and returned to its previous name after Russia was expelled in 2014.
In politics, humanitarian aid, and the social sciences, hunger is defined as a condition in which a person does not have the physical or financial capability to eat sufficient food to meet basic nutritional needs for a sustained period. In the field of hunger relief, the term hunger is used in a sense that goes beyond the common desire for food that all humans experience, also known as an appetite. The most extreme form of hunger, when malnutrition is widespread, and when people have started dying of starvation through lack of access to sufficient, nutritious food, leads to a declaration of famine.
Starvation is a severe deficiency in caloric energy intake, below the level needed to maintain an organism's life. It is the most extreme form of malnutrition. In humans, prolonged starvation can cause permanent organ damage and eventually, death. The term inanition refers to the symptoms and effects of starvation. Starvation by outside forces is a crime according to international criminal law and may also be used as a means of torture or execution.
Food security is the state of having reliable access to a sufficient quantity of affordable, nutritious food. The availability of food for people of any class and state, gender or religion is another element of food security. Similarly, household food security is considered to exist when all the members of a family, at all times, have access to enough food for an active, healthy life. Individuals who are food-secure do not live in hunger or fear of starvation. Food security includes resilience to future disruptions of food supply. Such a disruption could occur due to various risk factors such as droughts and floods, shipping disruptions, fuel shortages, economic instability, and wars. Food insecurity is the opposite of food security: a state where there is only limited or uncertain availability of suitable food.
Malnutrition occurs when an organism gets too few or too many nutrients, resulting in health problems. Specifically, it is a deficiency, excess, or imbalance of energy, protein and other nutrients which adversely affects the body's tissues and form.
Helen Keller Intl is a US-based nonprofit organization that combats the causes and consequences of blindness and malnutrition by establishing programs based on evidence and research in vision, health, and nutrition. Founded in 1915 by Helen Keller and George A. Kessler, the organization's mission is to save the sight and lives of the most vulnerable and disadvantaged.
Make Poverty History were organizations in a number of countries, which focused on issues relating to 8th Millennium Development Goal such as aid, trade and justice. They generally formed a coalition of aid and development agencies which worked together to raise awareness of global poverty and achieve policy change by governments. The movement has existed in Australia, Canada, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, South Africa, Ireland, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom. The various national campaigns were part of the international Global Call to Action Against Poverty campaign.
The Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN) is a non-profit foundation based in Geneva, Switzerland. GAIN was developed during the UN 2002 Special Session of the General Assembly on Children. GAIN’s activities include improving the consumption of nutritious and safe foods for all. The foundation is supported by over 30 donors and works closely with international organisations and United Nations agencies. It has a 20-year history of food system programmes with a focus on adolescent and child nutrition, food system research, fortification, small and medium enterprise assistance, biofortification of crops, and reducing post-harvest losses.
Despite India's 50% increase in GDP since 2013, more than one third of the world's malnourished children live in India. Among these, half of the children under three years old are underweight.
The 38th G8 summit was held in Camp David, Maryland, United States, on 18–19 May 2012.
Food security is defined, according to the World Food Summit of 1996, as existing "when all people at all times have access to sufficient, safe, nutritious food to maintain a healthy and active life". This commonly refers to people having "physical and economic access" to food that meets both their nutritional needs and food preferences. Today, Ethiopia faces high levels of food insecurity, ranking as one of the hungriest countries in the world, with an estimated 5.2 million people needing food assistance in 2010. Ethiopia was ranked 92 in the world in Global Hunger Index 2020.
There were 735.1 million malnourished people in the world in 2022, a decrease of 58.3 million since 2005, despite the fact that the world already produces enough food to feed everyone and could feed more than that.
Chronic hunger has affected a sizable proportion of the UK's population throughout its history. Following improved economic conditions that followed World War II, hunger became a less pressing issue. Yet since the 2007–2008 world food price crisis that began in late 2006 and especially since the Great Recession, long term hunger began to return as a prominent social problem. Albeit only affecting a small minority of the UK's population, by December 2013, according to a group of doctors and academics writing in the British Medical Journal, hunger in the UK had reached the level of a "public health emergency".
The Feed the Future Initiative (FTF) was launched in 2010 by the United States government and the Obama Administration to address global hunger and food insecurity. According to Feed the Future, it is "the U.S. government's global hunger and food security initiative."
Global Open Data for Agriculture and Nutrition (GODAN) is an initiative that seeks to "support global efforts to make agricultural and nutritionally relevant data available, accessible, and usable for unrestricted use worldwide. The initiative focuses on building high-level policy as well as public and private institutional support for open data."
In the early months of 2017, parts of South Sudan experienced a famine following several years of instability in the country's food supply caused by war and drought. The famine, largely focused in the northern part of the country, affected an estimated five million people. In May 2017, the famine was officially declared to have weakened to a state of severe food insecurity.
Hunger in Bangladesh is one of the major issues that affects the citizens of Bangladesh. The nation state of Bangladesh is one of the most densely populated countries in the world and home for more than 160 million people. It progresses immensely in the Human Development Index, particularly in the areas of literacy and life expectancy, but economic inequality has increased and about 32% of the population, that is 50 million people, still live in extreme poverty.
Sustainable Development Goal 2 aims to achieve "zero hunger". It is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations in 2015. The official wording is: "End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture". SDG 2 highlights the "complex inter-linkages between food security, nutrition, rural transformation and sustainable agriculture". According to the United Nations, there were up to 757 million people facing hunger in 2023 – one out of 11 people in the world, which accounts for slightly less than 10 percent of the world population. One in every nine people goes to bed hungry each night, including 20 million people currently at risk of famine in South Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and Nigeria.
In mid-2021, a severe drought in southern Madagascar caused hundreds of thousands of people, with some estimating more than 1 million people including nearly 460,000 children, to suffer from food insecurity or Kere (famine). Some organizations have attributed the situation to the impact of climate change and the handling of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.
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