A Roadmap to End Global Hunger

How to End Global Hunger

1. Implement a smart and comprehensive plan:

• Enable a faster and more efficient response to emergencies. Traditional commodity-based food assistance, which is purchased in the U.S. and shipped across the world, has been a lifeline to people in desperate need for more than half a century. While commodities are an effective response in some emergency settings, U.S. programs should aim for increased flexibility through greater reliance on cash-based emergency assistance that can be easily adapted to suit immediate needs and local conditions. Under this plan, commodity-based assistance would be matched by a like amount of cash over the next five years, allowing for a variety of program options, including local and regional purchase of food or voucher programs.

• Provide more flexibility in fighting chronic hunger. In addition to food assistance, the plan dramatically increases the amount of cash available to invest in self-help initiatives, again providing humanitarian agencies with much more flexibility. This will also expand “safety net” programs to aid the most vulnerable people, including the very young, elderly and sick.

• Expand nutrition programs, especially for young children. Research shows that if children are malnourished, their physical and intellectual development will be permanently impaired. This plan stresses early nutrition programs particularly aimed at infants and preschoolers, with an emphasis on comprehensive nutrition before age 2. It would also expand school meals programs to include children from birth to age 5.

• More than quadruple investment in market-based agricultural and market development to reach parity with emergency food assistance. This will be aimed at low-income farmers, particularly women, and will reverse two decades of insufficient attention to this area. Because the vast majority of the world’s poor rely on agriculture for their livelihoods, improving the profitability of smallholder farms is critical for breaking the cycle of hunger and promoting long-term development. In addition, the U.S. should collaborate with other governments to develop critically important agriculture infrastructure and provide technical assistance on trade and regulatory issues, as well as enhance trade relations so that they stimulate agricultural production in the developing world.

• Provide government-to-government technical assistance. U.S. agencies have considerable technical expertise in key areas needed to address global hunger, such as micronutrient fortification, nutrition, agricultural development and land tenure. Resources are needed to enable U.S. experts to share their knowledge with developing countries, with the ultimate goal of countries providing these services for their own people.

2. Assert Executive leadership:

The Obama administration should create a White House Office on Global Hunger and appoint a Hunger Coordinator. Until now, there has been no single overall accountable official and no comprehensive plan to integrate U.S. policies on global hunger. A key step in effectively enacting the Roadmap is to create a White House Office on Global Hunger, which would take the lead in putting the comprehensive strategy into action and in improving the intergovernmental coordination needed to successfully address global hunger. The Roadmap is being launched in the context of broader foreign assistance reform, and the Office on Global Hunger should eventually be moved to a prominent position in a newly-elevated development structure.

3. Revive Congressional coordination:

Congress should restore the now-defunct Congressional Select Committee on Hunger and establish a Senate Select Committee on Hunger. These bipartisan, bicameral committees would perform the vital task of coordinating the multiple congressional committees with legislative authority over global hunger issues.