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United Nations: Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon warned on Monday that the rapidly escalating global food crisis has reached emergency proportions and threatens to wipe out seven years of progress in the fight against global poverty.
He called for short-term emergency measures in many regions to meet urgent food needs and avoid starvation and longer-term efforts to significantly increase production of food grains.
The "international community will also need to take urgent and concerted action in order to avoid the larger political and security implications of this growing crisis," Ban told international finance and trade officials at a UN meeting following their weekend talks in Washington. "The UN needs to examine ways to lead a process for the immediate and longer-term responses to these global problems," he said.
The secretary-general echoed World Bank President Robert Zoellick's appeal to governments on Sunday to quickly provide the UN World Food Program with $500 million (Dh1.85 billion) in emergency aid it needs by May 1.
Hunger and violence
Zoellick said the international community has "to put our money where our mouth is" to deal with rapidly rising food prices that have caused hunger and deadly violence in several countries.
Ban said the recent steep rise in food prices "has already raised the cost of WFP's needs to maintain its current operations from $500 million to $755 million". WFP, the world's largest humanitarian agency, issued an "extraordinary emergency appeal" to donor countries for $500 million last month, saying the money was needed by May 1 to avoid cutting rations to some of the world's most impoverished regions. The Rome-based agency said its funding gap was growing weekly.
"The rapidly escalating crisis of food availability around the world has reached emergency proportions," Ban said.
UN humanitarian chief John Holmes was more cautious in his assessment.
While the world should recognise that "it's a very serious problem which has global ramifications", Holmes said, "I think we should be a little bit careful of being too alarmist about it and suggesting there are mass problems around the corner, or that it's a global emergency we have to solve with every detail tomorrow."
"I would call it a global food price crisis for the moment ... which is having knock-on effects in other areas," Holmes said.
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