Advocacy

Action Against Hunger announces the U.S. launch of an international grassroots initiative calling on Al Gore to make his next film about global hunger—a crisis that kills one child every six seconds. The No Hunger initiative, which began in Madrid, has gathered more than 64,000 signatures for a petition that will be presented to the former Vice President and Nobel Laureate this December at the climate change conference in Copenhagen.

Action Against Hunger applauds the announcement today that the world's leading powers will contribute $20 billion for agricultural assistance to millions of poor farmers over the next three years. The international humanitarian organization commends President Barack Obama for taking a leadership role in tackling hunger, which now affects more than a billion people worldwide, by enlisting the support of the major powers assembled at the G8 summit in L'Aquila, Italy.

A coalition of 100 humanitarian and human rights organizations today called on John Holmes, the UN under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs, to insist that protecting civilians be a top priority of the joint Congolese and Rwandan military operation in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Holmes is due to arrive in Goma, the North Kivu capital, on February 7, 2009.

Delegates at this week’s “High-Level Meeting on Food Security for All” have agreed to prioritize hunger and food insecurity as part of the international community’s response to the global food crisis.

The G8 made the commitment in July 2008 to address the food crisis through the creation of a "Global Partnership”, which is now known as the "Global Partnership on Agriculture and Food Security” (GPAFS), which would take forward the Comprehensive Framework for Action (CFA).

One of the key objectives of the Madrid Conference is to officially launch a consultative and inclusive process which will lead to the creation of the Partnership.

As key stakeholders, we make the following recommendations which we see as critical to an effective GPAFS:

If next week’s Madrid Food Summit does not come up with a concrete implementation and funding plan focused on malnutrition, 55 million children under five will continue to face life-threatening malnutrition, according to global humanitarian organizations Action Against Hunger | ACF International and Doctors Without Borders / Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF).

The International humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger / ACF-USA has been selected to present its findings on the vital role that proper nutrition can play in alleviating the ill effects of AIDS at the upcoming International Conference on AIDS (Mexico City, August 3-8, 2008). The conference’s official scientific committee selected and validated ACF’s groundbreaking field research based on the aid organization’s recent experiences in Malawi and Mali.

Members of the “Group of Eight” (G8)—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK, and the US—have recently announced the creation of a working group to address the global food crisis, a tentative sign of hope for the nearly 860 million people faced with hunger around the world. The challenge, however, is immense: behind the current food crisis looms the threat of a broader humanitarian emergency that could push already vulnerable populations closer to starvation.

To properly address the global emergency in food and oil prices, the international humanitarian organization Action Against Hunger / ACF-USA encourages the G8 to consider the following measures in their efforts to address the global food crisis:

The phenomenon of rising food prices is witnessed by Action Against Hunger / Action Contre la Faim (ACF) in many countries in which it operates (Haiti, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Burkina Faso, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Philippines, Ethiopia,