UN food director in plea to help starving millions

UN officials urges Arab nations to contribute more to help rescue women and children who are starving as a result of rising food prices.

DUBAI // Just one per cent of the trillions of dollars spent on bailing out the world's banks would save millions of lives around the world, a UN official said yesterday. Daly Belgasmi, the UN World Food Programme's regional director for the Middle East, Central Asia and Eastern Europe, called on wealthy Arab countries to help rescue the women and children who are starving as global food prices climb.

He said he had seen desperate people in some countries "consume some kind of stones or crush down some of the feed they give to camels". Speaking on the second day of Dubai's International Humanitarian Aid and Development Conference and Exhibition, Mr Belgasmi said the world was in a "miserable situation" with the poorest populations - those most reliant on agriculture in disaster-prone areas - forced to dramatically change their lifestyles to cope.

"The increase of prices leads people to change their lifestyle, reshuffling priorities which would lead to buying less costly, less healthy food." He was speaking as part of a panel discussing climate change, the global food and financial crises, and how communities can respond to the challenges they face. During the past two years more than 100 million people had "joined the club of the vulnerable and those affected by the global food crisis", he said.

About 25,000 people die every day from hunger. According to UN statistics, Mr Belgasmi said, by 2050 the world could lose 25 per cent of its global food production as a result of climate change, scarcity of water and degradation of agricultural land. Meanwhile the global population is predicted to double. With six years until the deadline for the Millennium Development Goals, set in 2000 by heads of state, the number of the world's poor has increased. The target was to reduce it by 50 per cent.

Mr Belgasmi estimated that one in three Yemeni nationals was suffering from the food crisis, while in Sudan corn prices had risen by 70 per cent in two years. "Starvation is an obstacle to development," he told delegates at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. "So many people rely on us, let's not let them down." Later Charles Ehrhart, Care International's co-ordinator on climate change, outlined its likely impact on the world's most disaster-vulnerable communities.

"Rains are coming early or late. For many of us in urban environments it is an inconvenience but if you are reliant on agriculture then it is a disaster." Changes in the intensity of extreme weather events - from cyclones to droughts, floods and temperature spikes - caused greater food insecurity, reduced access to water, increased health risks for those diseases affected by the temperature, and more humanitarian disasters.