INTERVIEW-Aid groups plan renewed fight on hunger

Mon Feb 23, 2009 11:36pm GMT

(Corrects name of organization to Catholic Relief Services in second paragrah, no other changes to text)

By Roberta Rampton

WASHINGTON, Feb 23 (Reuters) - Lost jobs, faltering banks and recession have pushed the issue of world hunger out of U.S. headlines, but U.S. aid groups are set to launch a plan to refocus attention on the issue, former U.S. Senator George McGovern said on Monday.

The plan, to be announced on Tuesday by aid organizations including Feed the Children, Oxfam America, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and Catholic Relief Services, may be the key to persuade President Barack Obama's administration to move ahead on hunger issues once the domestic economy is stabilized, said McGovern, an veteran of the effort to end world hunger.

The pressing need to feed the nearly 1 billion people around the world who are chronically hungry has faded from public attention, McGovern said.

"It's back on the back-burner right now, but there's still a flame there. It's a focus now on our own domestic economic problems that transcends the focus on anything else in government," he said.

Food prices soared last year, causing riots and hoarding in some countries. But commodity prices have since plunged, and the economic crisis has preoccupied policy makers.

McGovern said the groups want Obama to create a White House Office on Global Hunger and appoint a coordinator for U.S. efforts, which have been criticized as fragmented.

The organizations are also set to recommend a shift in the type of food aid provided, balancing traditional donations of U.S.-grown commodities for emergencies with longer-term aid to help countries develop agriculture and food security.

The plan will call for more flexibility to allow emergency aid to be bought locally rather than spending extra money and time to ship it from the United States.

The idea could face strong opposition from farm groups and shipping companies who prefer food for aid is bought in the United States and transported via American carriers overseas.

In their detailed "roadmap" to be released on Tuesday, the groups propose more than a three-fold increase in U.S. spending by 2014 to meet the goal of halving world hunger by 2015.

The United States, which spent almost $4 billion last year on world hunger, should boost funding to $13.31 billion per year by 2014, starting with a 60 percent jump to $6.36 billion in 2010, the organizations will propose.

"It's going to take more money and it's going to take more effort but I think we can literally transform life on this planet if we can eliminate hunger among children," said McGovern, the UN's global ambassador on world hunger.

McGovern said he envisions U.S.-led programs delivering more food aid to women and young children.

McGovern, the Democratic presidential nominee in 1972, has been part of U.S. efforts to decrease hunger abroad and at home since the early 1960s when he was appointed by the Kennedy administration to coordinate food aid.

He said he first resolved to try to help tackle the problem after he was stationed in Italy during World War Two, and witnessed people on the brink of starvation.

"I saw women, young housewives, selling themselves on the street to get a few dollars to get their children fed. I saw them pawing through our garbage dump at the air base ... to get scraps of food," he said.

McGovern, 86, said he gets "impatient" with the lack of progress toward goals, but is not discouraged.

"I still have faith in the human heart and the human soul and the human mind, and I still believe we're going to have a victory, and I hope I'll be around when we're able to say that," he said.

He acknowledged it will be a challenge to boost aid spending in tight economic times, but he said funds could come from ending the war in Iraq, which he said costs billions each month, and restoring some taxes on the wealthy.

"We need to increase our revenues and decrease war spending before this program becomes reality," McGovern said. (Editing by Christian Wiessner)








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