UN SAYS HUNGER IS ASIA'S "SILENT KILLER"

Thai Press Reports, June 15, 2000

In the last quarter-century, Asia has undergone an economic boom unparalleled in human history.

The effects can be seen everywhere, in Thailand as well as in neighbouring countries. Not only have the middle classes grown, but entirely new middle classes have been created in countries where there were none previously. Extreme poverty has been cut to a fraction of what it once was.

But a silent killer lurks in the shadow of this achievement. No, not bird flu. Or Sars. Something much less dramatic and much more old-fashioned: hunger.

The facts speak for themselves. Asia, the world's fastest-growing region, still has more hungry people than the rest of the world combined. More than half a billion people in the region are chronically undernourished. Seventeen percent of children in Asia regularly go to bed hungry. For children in particular, hunger is the silent killer. Underweight children, weakened from malnutrition, are much more likely to die from diseases like malaria, measles and pneumonia. In Asia, one child dies every 11 seconds due to hunger-related causes.

Tomorrow in Bangkok, thousands of people are expected to participate in Walk the World - an event being held in cities around the world to raise money and awareness to fight global hunger. Agriculture Minister Sudarat Keyuraphan will open the walk, which will benefit the UN World Food Programme's assistance to school children in poor and remote areas.

Nothing has changed the prospects for regional humanitarian cooperation more than the catastrophe that hit Asia on December 26. Regional militaries cooperated smoothly and efficiently on a life-saving mission. Within days, governments were donating the use of their facilities to help the humanitarian effort. Thailand donated the use of U-tapao Royal Thai Air Force Base for military coordination. In Malaysia, thousands of tonnes of relief supplies were flown out of Subang Air Base. Despite the devastation in Thailand's South, the Thai government was still able to help even harder-hit neighbours like Sri Lanka and the Maldives.

Members of the public and private companies gave like never before. In Bangkok, donations of clothing, food and money flooded into relief offices. In Hong Kong, not known in the past for its international giving, individuals gave to the relief effort at one of the highest per capita rates in the world. Even countries that had never been humanitarian donors before, such as Afghanistan, were able to make a contribution.

So when Asia was so clearly able to work together to prevent hunger and disease in the aftermath of the tsunami, why is so little being done to fight long-term hunger when children are dying from hunger-related causes at an annual rate 12 times the total death toll of the December tsunami? One reason is the invisibility of the problem. For many middle-class people in Asia, hunger is something that exists far away or in the past, or in the present only in remote areas or "undeveloped" neighbouring countries. Another is that most people are unaware of the scope of the problem. Finally, before the tsunami, problems like this simply seemed too big for the region to tackle.

That is no longer the case. Governments, humanitarian groups and the private sector are increasingly working together to fight long-term hunger in the region. The UN World Food Programme has been at the forefront of building such coalitions, which are growing in scope and strength. But we cannot do the job alone. We need support to fight child hunger in poor areas and neighbouring countries. Support us by joining Walk the World tomorrow. Donate money or time to local groups that are devoted to fighting hunger and poverty, both here in Thailand and around the region.

The time for change is now, now that the region has proven what it can do. Hunger in the region needs to be seen as an emergency, just as the tsunami was an emergency. In particular, long-term child hunger is unacceptable. In a region of such wealth, agricultural richness and technical know-how, there is no reason for millions of children to go to bed hungry night after night, year after year. A solution is within reach, and everybody can be a part of it.