The Global Hunger Index report paints a gloomy picture of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. WITH the deadline for achieving the Millennium Development Goals just five years away, the 2010 Global Hunger Index report prepared by the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) paints a gloomy picture of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Some 29 countries in these regions, it says, have levels of hunger that are alarming or extremely alarming....

Basic social security remains out of reach for most people across the world, especially in poorer countries, despite the crucial role it plays in cushioning people from the consequences of economic crises, according to a United Nations report unveiled today. The “World Social Security Report 2010-2011: Providing coverage in times of crisis and beyond,” prepared by the UN International Labour Organization (ILO), examines the gaps in access to social security programmes...

Launched 20 years ago with the simple line that "people are the real wealth of a nation", the United Nations' Human Development Report has become the most trusted annual indicator of progress in developing nations. The 20th anniversary report charts progress going back 20 years before that first publication - so it is an ambitious attempt to chart development achievements - or not - going back 40 years. The UN Development Programme's...

The Director-General of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation, Dr. Jacques Diouf, announced at the Inter-Governmental Committee on World Food Security (CFS) that the combination of global food crisis and Economic Recession had taken the number of people affected across the world to over one billion. He described the number as “unacceptably high,” higher than in 1996 when the heads of states and governments committed themselves to reducing hunger by...

A timely reality check on public policies in the developing world, the Global Hunger Index 2010, (GHI) released by the International Food Policy Research Institute, reveals the disturbing fact that the number of hungry people in the world hovers around the one-billion mark. Although this year's estimates by the Food and Agriculture Organisation place the figure at 925 million, barely a year ago, at the height of the recession, “the...