By Silvia Aloisi
ROME (Reuters) - High food prices
have pushed another 105 million people into hunger in the first
half of 2009, the head of the U.N. World Food Program said Friday,
raising the total number of hungry people to over 1
billion.
Urging rich nations at a meeting
of the Group of Eight's development ministers not cut back on aid,
Josette Sheeran told Reuters the world faced a "human catastrophe"
as more and more people struggle to eat a decent meal.
"This year we are clocking in on
average four million new hungry people a week, urgently hungry,"
Sheeran told Reuters.
"Already for the first six months
of this year, 105 million people have been added," she said, citing
figures to be released by the U.N. Food and Agriculture
Organisation next week that will raise the total number of
undernourished people to over 1 billion.
In 2008, FAO said the world's
hungry numbered 963 million.
The WFP needs $6.4 billion (3.9
billion pounds) this year for food aid, but donors' contributions
have fallen way behind that level -- it had around $1.5 billion at
the end of last week.
The agency says it has had to cut
food aid rations and shut down some operations in eastern Africa
and North Korea because of the credit crunch.
"I know it seems a big figure, but
if you compare it with the global stimulus package, it means that
for less than 1 percent of that we could help meet the urgent human
crisis that is unfolding, and that is just as essential to the
stability of the world," Sheeran said.
She said that despite a decline in
most food prices from record peaks last year, they remained
stubbornly high in developing countries, while global food aid was
at a 20-year low.
The financial crisis has only made
things worse, and in terms of staple food, people in poorer
countries today can only afford about a third of what they could
afford three years ago.
In a statement after a two-day
meeting in Rome, G8 ministers reaffirmed their commitment to more
than double aid to Africa to $25 billion a year by 2010.
But a report this week said the
group was collectively off course in delivering on those pledges,
made at a G8 summit in Scotland in 2005.
The report, by anti-poverty body
ONE, was particularly critical of Italy, saying Rome was trailing
far behind other nations in meeting aid targets and that undermined
its credibility as G8 president this year.
"We have confirmed our commitment
to find the resources this year to bring us back on track and
fulfil our undertakings," Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told
reporters Friday, responding to the report.
ONE said Italy had delivered only
three percent of the aid increase to Africa pledged by Prime
Minister Silvio Berlusconi four years ago.
(Editing by Lin
Noueihed)