UN ‘blows whistle’ in media campaign against hunger
The UN food agency launched a worldwide media campaign to “blow the
whistle” on hunger, a scourge that affects nearly one billion people.
“I’m mad as hell and I hope you are too, so let’s go out there and
blow the whistle on hunger together,” said Olympic gold medalist Carl
Lewis, among a galaxy of sporting and film stars lending their voices to
the campaign.
“I’ve broken a lot of records in my career but the record we want to
break now means much more,” Lewis said.
The campaign centres on an on-line petition urging governments to
make the elimination of hunger their top priority, with the slogan “I’m
Mad as Hell” and a yellow whistle icon.
Its website, www.1billionhungry.org, features a clip in which British
film star Jeremy Irons says: “People around the world suffer hunger,
chronic hunger. One billion people, one billion of us. Now that’s bad,
worse than bad, that’s crazy!”
Getting angrier by the second in the takeoff of a famous scene from
the film “Network” starring Peter Finch, Irons says: “We’ve got to get
mad. I want you to get mad. I want you to get up right now, stick your
head out outta the window and yell: ‘I’m mad as hell... and I’m not
gonna let one billion people go hungry.’ You tell ‘em!”
The Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation hopes the petition
will spread through social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and
YouTube.
FAO Director General Jacques Diouf, addressing the event by video
link from Brasilia where he was stranded by the Icelandic ash cloud,
said: “I have a feelng of revolt. I exhort you to express this feeling
of revolt... in both developed and developing countries.”
If the world continues at the current pace of hunger reduction, the
Millennium Development Goal of halving the percentage of hungry people
by 2015 will not be met, the FAO warns.
The UN agency estimates that global agricultural production needs to
grow by 70 percent if the estimated nine billion people that will
inhabit the planet in 2050 are to be fed.
AFP |
