by Neville Choi – EM TV News, Port Moresby
Today, the 16th of October, is World Food Day, a day ratified by the United Nations, through the Food and Agriculture Organisation.
The theme for World Food Day 2015, is “Social protection and Agriculture”, which aims to highlight the role social protection plays in reducing chronic food insecurity and poverty, by ensuring direct access to food, or the means to buy food.
“World food day is very important, and this year, of course, it falls immediately after the global leaders have just agreed a set of the new sustainable development goals. Seventeen goals that will shape the international development agenda for the next thirty years in the world,” says United Nations Resident Coordinator, Hemansu-Roy Trivedy.
Established 35 years ago by the United Nations General Assembly, the goal of World Food Day was to raise public awareness about the world’s hunger challenges, and encourage people to take action in the fight against hunger.
It also serves to highlight the link that food availability, its processing, and the way it is consumed, has to other development agenda.
“It’s something that is linked to a whole series of other things, in the way in which human beings live in the world today.
“So this year, one of the things that we’re seeing, is that we have seen in the past 35 years, since this day has been celebrated, quite a lot of progress in ending hunger and undernutrition worldwide,” Says Mr Trivedy.
Right now, the issue of food, and the ability to secure food, is a challenge that is facing up to 2.4 million of our people, who have fallen victim to prolonged drought and frost periods.
“In Papua New Guinea, this falls at a very important time. It falls at a time when we have quite severe drought and frost that has impacted on large parts of the country.
We have, at the moment, up to 2.4 million people who are starting to suffer as a result of the drought and the frost. Who are struggling with food security, and having enough water to drink, and so on,” Mr. Trivedy said.
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