Conflict prevention, food security and the HIV/AIDS pandemic

Conflict prevention, food security and the HIV/AIDS pandemic have become three of the most important issues of our time. While there is relative decline in the number of conflicts in Africa the number of people facing hunger is growing and spread of the HIV/AIDS pandemic is alarming and shocking. With respect to food security, steep rises in the price of staples such as wheat and rice are having an even bigger impact on poor countries leading to food riots in several countries. In Cameroon, more than 20 people have been killed in food riots during this year while in Haiti, protesters chanting, "We're hungry" forced the prime minister to resign. There have also been food riots in Egypt, Cote d'Ivoire, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Madagascar. The World Bank now believes that some 33 countries are in danger of being destabilized by food price inflation, while it could push another 100 million people deeper into poverty. Ten per cent of these will be children under age five (5). Malnutrition already contributes to the deaths of more than 3.7 million children under age 5 every year, and the ones that survive are more likely to suffer and die from diseases like pneumonia, diarrhea, acute respiratory illness, malaria, measles, including AIDS. As a result the higher food prices are risking wiping out progress towards reducing poverty and could harm global growth and security.

Food price inflation inevitably hits the poor hardest. Food represents about 10 to 20 per cent of consumer spending in the rich world, but as much as 60 to 80 per cent in developing countries, many of which are net food importers. Since January 2007, the price of wheat has risen by as much as two and a half times, while the rice price has almost trebled. According to Joachim Von Braun, Director of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) the food price index calculated by the United Nations' Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), rose by nearly 40 percent last year . The increase had been nine percent the year before. In the first months of 2008 prices had again increased drastically.

Since 2000, a year of low prices, the wheat price in international markets had more than tripled, and maize prices had more than doubled. The price of rice had jumped to unprecedented levels last month; while dairy products, meat, poultry, palm oil, and cassava had also experienced price hikes the increases had raised serious concerns about the food and nutrition situation of poor people in developing countries, about inflation, and, in some countries, about civil unrest. The much higher international prices could mean serious hardship for millions of poor urban consumers and poor rural residents who are net food buyers, undermining all the efforts to achieve the Millennium Development Goals, set by world leaders in 2000, aiming at reducing the proportion of hungry people in the world by half by 2015.These people need direct assistance (This means approximately 150 million people will have to be fed on a regular basis).