THE “F-WORD” – HUNGER IN THE MEDIA;
WFP & THOMSON REUTERS FOUNDATION HOST LONDON HUNGER EVENT
Women from Dadinga tribe wait in line for World Food Program (WFP) staff to start distributing food in the village of Lauro, Budy county, in Eastern Equatoria State, south Sudan, April 3, 2010. REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic
– Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), and Monique Villa, CEO of Thomson Reuters Foundation, will open a day of discussions on the issue of Hunger on Friday 2 July.
Somalia, a WFP staffer explains to militiamen that the agency wants to feed the hungry and is not aligned with any faction.
21-month-old Sushila, who weighs 4.5 kg and suffers from severe malnutrition, sits in her mother's lap in Kirwara village of Sheopur district in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh April 6, 2010. India ranked 65th out of 84 countries in the Global Hunger Index of 2009, below countries including North Korea and Zimbabwe -- hindering India's ambitions to channel its demographic dividend to fuel its global economic ambitions. Picture taken April 6, 2010. REUTERS/Reinhard Krause
@Radhika/ WFP Interesting comment. I'd love to hear what journalists have to say about your idea of having regular columns in newspapers about hunger. Would that just be a form of charity that few can afford in this time of falling circulation? Or could it draw a following of interested readers and add value to a paper?
@Adrian we're talking about the danger, yes, but also about the challenge of building trust with militias or warring parties whose consent we need to deliver food, while at the same time not taking sides in conflicts. We have to remain neutral even when people's attitude is: you're either with us or against us.
Another of the challenges WFP faces is simply the cost of delivering food in hostile environments. It costs more to deliver food in Haiti than it does in some other countries. One of the panel discussions tomorrow will home in on this very point.