Photo: WFP/ Ana Mascarenhas
On Wednesday morning, April 24th, the World Food Programme (WFP) Centre of Excellence against Hunger in Brazil took part in a lecture entitled ‘The work of the WFP and FAO in the world: fighting hunger and poverty in Latin America’, at the Taguatinga Unit of the University Center of Brasiíia (UniCEUB). The lecture aimed to reach the university’s students and was organised by the International Relations Department.
The speakers focussed on how WFP and FAO work in Brazil and around the world to combat hunger. Participants included the Technical Assistant of the Centre of Excellence’s Projects team, Osiyallê Rodrigues, the Technical Area Coordinator at FAO, Sérgio Dorfler, the PhD professor of International Law and International Relations at UniCEUB, Renato Zerbini, and the International Relations student, Gabriela Vieria.
Besides highlighting the WFP’s work at global level as the largest humanitarian agency of the United Nations, Osiyallê presented to the students the work of the Centre of Excellence in South-South and Trilateral Cooperation with countries in Africa, Latin America and Asia, as well as the work to strengthen school feeding as a successful public policy in the fight against hunger. ‘Today, some of the main challenges for promoting healthy and adequate food are the price of food, climate change, political crises and conflicts in the world,’ he said.
Osiyallê also presented the Nurture the Future Project, which is dedicated to tackling the multiple burdens of malnutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean by working in Brazil, Colombia and Peru, promoting an exchange of knowledge between the countries, especially in the fight against overweight and obese children.
According to data from the latest report ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World’ (SOFI), between 2020 and 2022, approximately 70.3 million people suffered from moderate or severe food insecure in Brazil, and 256 million in Latin America and the Caribbean in 2022. In the world, between 691 and 783 million people are currently suffering hunger.
As well as presenting the FAO’s work, Sérgio Dorfler conceptualised what hunger and food and nutritional insecurity are and stressed that having access to food is not enough, you also need to learn how to use it and maintain a healthy diet over time.
“The data indicates that by 2022 hunger in Latin America decreased, but we don’t know if this will be enough to achieve the goal of eradicating hunger in the world by 2030,” said Sérgio. The projections are that around 670 million people will still be facing hunger in 2030, around 8 per cent of the world’s population, it means the same percentage as in 2015, when the 2030 Agenda was launched.
At the end of the lecture, the students made some questions. Among the main issues, how the pandemic has impacted the progress of the 2030 Agenda and the fulfilment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), food waste in the world and the impact on hunger, the actions of agencies in the face of the climate emergency and the impact on the world’s food systems. Finally, how the logistical process of food procurement and distribution by the WFP takes place, especially in emergency and conflict zones.