Hunger in Cities: A New Report

In 2004, following a symposium called “The Urban Bomb” in Paris, the international Action Against Hunger network commissioned a study, Urban Hunger, based on bibliographical research and field work. The study was recently completed. It looks at the principal causes of urban hunger worldwide and focuses on specific conditions in four cities: Kinshasa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo; Gonaives, Haiti; Buenos Aires, Argentina; and Monrovia, Liberia. The following is excerpted from the report.

Over the course of the twentieth century, world population increased fourfold, growing from 1.5 to 6 billion people. This unprecedented evolution coincided with major expansion in urban zones. Cities provide tremendous potential for employment, as well as for the fulfillment of all types of desires and innovations. But cities also produce more and more outcasts, people marginalized from society who cling to survival by a fragile thread.

Experts predict that shantytown populations will grow by 100,000 people a day over the next 30 years. This relatively new phenomenon appears to be the result of chaotic agricultural evolution and progressive development of armed conflict in cities. From 1975 to 1980, low-intensity conflicts, originating in poor, isolated rural regions, spread throughout the Third World. Ruthless repression and enlistment spurred the exodus of rural populations and kept migrants moving toward cities.

How Destitute City Dwellers Cope

Underprivileged populations and crisis victims use a wide variety of methods to secure the means for resolving their food insecurity. Needy city dwellers survive despite extremely poor living conditions by collecting recyclable materials, illicit dealing of all kinds, small-scale businesses, domestic agriculture, seeking assistance, and monetizing even the smallest services. Such populations usually find themselves “trapped” in districts devoid of all urban infrastructures, in the outer peripheral zones, or in unsanitary housing concealed in the very heart of urban centers.

As a consequence, urban hunger often takes on new appearances: children enlisted in gangs, people reduced to begging, substance addiction. All of these examples illustrate social problems that can now be found on every continent.

Urban hunger has given rise to entire generations of children suffering from slow physical and intellectual development and serious pathologies associated with poverty. Because they have no access to schools or health care, they are doomed to a precarious existence.

Old Social Structures Have Been Abandoned

In many cities, the weakening of the State and the intermixing of populations has made the codes that once structured society and solidarity obsolete. Today, major urban areas everywhere are stricken by the absence of commonly accepted rules, the spread of dangerous behavior, and the relegation of certain individuals to the status of social outcasts.

Women generally show a great capacity to adapt to urban professions, often in the service sector. They contribute considerably to household budgets. However, there is a negative impact on their children’s health and education due to the long distances they must travel to find work. Mothers leave younger children with older siblings who, unfortunately, are not capable of feeding them adequately or monitoring their health. Urban women breast feed their babies an average of 2 to 3 months less than rural mothers. Transmission of knowledge from mothers to daughters has been lost.

To compensate for their low income, urban families tend to favor quantity over diversity in their diets. The principal consequences of severe malnutrition in children are slow development (both psychomotor and intellectual) and behavioral problems in school-aged children and adolescents. Visible signs of obesity can mask serious nutritional deficiencies.

How Governments and Aid Organizations Must Respond

The challenge now facing governments and local authorities alike is to assert their legitimacy and define new rules, in consultation with civil society, public authorities and the private sector. By working together, they can establish better governance and make countries attractive to investors (creditors, etc.) needed to improve living conditions in urban areas, especially in underprivileged neighborhoods. It is now up to NGOs [non-governmental organizations, such as Action Against Hunger] to find ways of integrating the newly-defined standards into their modus operandi, and of acquiring the means and methods to lend more weight to social and institutional issues, civil society involvement and support for institutions.

Preventing social exclusion is a long-term process rarely compatible with the missions of international aid organizations dedicated to emergency and post-emergency operations. This being so, NGOs can use their specific fields of competence to contribute to the reintegration process of populations in need, particularly through personalized follow-up.

It is also the responsibility of international aid organizations to bring the many problems involved with hunger (street children, anemia, etc.) to the attention of governments, thereby participating in defining pertinent public policy.

In order to adequately meet the needs of the most destitute members of a community, as well as to reestablish communication between underprivileged neighborhoods and public authorities, the organizational abilities of grassroots organizations and intermediary parties must be developed and confirmed. Only then can we reach the goal of creating social and technical references through concrete projects (potable water and wastewater infrastructures, health care units, etc.), and of testing the viability of these references before adapting and implementing them on a larger scale.