Everyone has the right to be free from hunger. It is the most fundamental and enabling human right of them all. Hunger dulls the intellect, hinders development and thwarts productivity.
Sixteen thousand children will die today because they didn't get enough to eat.
That's one child every five seconds. These deaths could have been prevented.
Hunger isn't caused by scarcity of food in the world, but by poor political decisions. Government policies are creating an unequal distribution of food and access to and control over resources.
Enough food is produced twice over every year than is needed to feed the world. There's no reason for anyone to go hungry.
Hunger Inquest Film
In the run up to the November World Summit on Food Security in 2009, ActionAid released the Hunger Inquest film uncovering the true causes of hunger.
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VIDEO: See how ActionAid is using women's empowerment in Nepal to reduce food insecurity
Hunger hits women and children the hardest.
Seventy percent of the hungry are women. Despite growing more than 60 percent of food, women own less than 1 percent of land in poor countries.
Each year 18 million children are born with preventable mental disorders caused by dietary iodine deficiency.
Over two-thirds of the world's hungry live in rural areas and depend on land, proximity to water, and seeds to earn a living. They go hungry because they do not have enough access to these resources.
Often they only have small plots of land that are not secure, or have no land at all. They can't afford the seeds and fertilisers they need to farm or don't have access to water for irrigation.
Land grabbing and inheritance practices discriminate against women.
Three factors in particular are exacerbating world hunger:
Global Warming: Climate change caused by excessive fossil fuel consumption in rich countries is hitting the poor hardest, subjecting small farmers to more frequent and serious floods and droughts.
Corporate Abuse: Large multi-national corporations such as Nestle have gained control of the global food chain - all the way from seed to supermarket shelf. They are threatening the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of poor farmers and undermining their basic rights.
Trade Justice: Free trade isn't fair trade. No country has ever become developed by following a free trade model from the outset. Yet the world's richest countries continue to force the poorest countries to open their markets to global competition. Poor countries should have a right to protect their agriculture sector and population from the impact of unfair subsidies in rich countries.
Governments have it in their power to end hunger and make the right to food a reality.
What is ActionAid doing about hunger?
-Sustainable, low-impact farming is the the key way to tacking hunger. From Haiti to Vietnam, and everywhere in between, we're providing the seeds, tools and training that smallholder farmers need to feed the world.
-ActionAid aims to put the issue of hunger on top of the political agenda as one of the greatest and most urgent crises facing the world today.
We are working alongside civil society groups, farmer's movements, consumers, women's organisations and other national and international organisations to hold governments responsible and promote alternative development agendas.
-We have developed a plan of action to end hunger setting out what needs to be done both in the short and long term by the governments of the world. We call it HungerFREE. All we need now is your support to build the political will to make it happen.
Examples of our food rights work:
HungerFREE campaign to halve hunger
In 2007 ActionAid launched an ambitious five year campaign - HungerFREE. It is driving change by forcing governments to deliver on their commitment to 'halve hunger' by 2015 and demand action from states, intergovernmental organisations and corporations to end hunger-related deaths by providing appropriate and sustainable access to food.
Scorecard report ranking governments on their efforts to end hunger
ActionAid's annual HungerFREE Scorecard report examines the causes of hunger and the extent to which governments around the world are doing their part to end it. The scorecard is the first of its kind to track actions that governments are actually taking to reduce hunger and in 2009 ranked Australia 17 out of 22 developed countries in our efforts to end hunger.
Campaign against biofuels
Millions more people could go hungry if governments around the world continue to push biofuels as a quick-fix to global warming. ActionAid is leading the charge against the global rush to biofuels production that is pushing up food prices and diverting food away from the people who need it most.
