Hunger is a political choice. How do we end it in 2025?

In November at the G20 in Brazil, the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty was established to address poverty and hunger. The mission of the global alliance is to support and accelerate global efforts to eradicate hunger and poverty, which have also been set out in the globally agreed UN sustainable development goals. 

This new alliance has pledged to reach 500 million people with cash transfers through social protection programmes, increase nutritious school meals for 150 million children and increase access to healthcare for 200 million more mothers and their infants.

The launch of this alliance is very timely as it comes a year before the end of the UN’s Decade of Action for Nutrition, which aimed to end hunger by 2025. But most targets are off track, such as reducing acute and chronic hunger, the number of infants with low birth weights, or the number of mothers with anaemia. 

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So, as part of the alliance, 66 countries have promised to promote programmes and policies to address inequality, food security and poverty. These new targets are ambitious as only 32.4% of the population in lower and middle-income countries are covered by at least one social protection benefit, and only 9.7% of the population in low-income countries.

How do we achieve these goals and move towards ending hunger?

At the recent World Public Health Nutrition Congress, hosted by the University of Westminster and the World Public Health Nutrition Association (WPHNA) in London, political commitment and leadership were highlighted as essential in addressing these global targets and overcome challenges, such as the lack of global resources (both financial and technical) for trained support health workers. Attendees at the congress also discussed the importance of people centred solutions with active engagement of communities in planning solutions.

In the UK our diet is increasingly focused on consuming ultraprocessed foods (67%) which are linked to obesity, cancer and other non-communicable diseases. Many policy platforms are funded by big food corporations resulting in a conflict of interest. We need to reduce the power of these ultra-processed food corporations in our policy environment and focus on enhancing our food systems, especially in early childhood. In the UK only 1% of our infants are exclusively breastfed until six months (the global target is 50%). Companies spend billions advertising artificial milk as the same as breastmilk, however research indicates that bottle-feeding increases risk of non-communicable diseases and obesity in later life.

The distance our food travels and how we grow our food is also impacting our health and the health of the environment as we add pesticides, growth hormones and antibiotics to grow food faster and larger. We need to reduce plastics in our food chain but also in our make-up, nappies and clothes. Changing these practices is not easy and although treaties and promises are being made, action is much slower.

Promoting peace and solidarity was also raised at the World Public Health Nutrition Congress at the University of Westminster which was attended by 700 participants from 66 countries. Communities living in conflict-affected countries endure the negative impact of food and health being used as weapons of war. These practices need to be halted.

The London free nutritious school meals programme is demonstrating impact on enhancing social and education outcomes while also helping to increase willingness to learn and reducing obesity. Also, cash transfer programmes given to mothers have had the most impact on reducing poverty of children, however timely access to quality healthcare, free at the point of access is another key policy lever not implemented in many of middle or low-income contexts, resulting in millions of preventable deaths annually.

In 2012, the UN secretary general launched the women and children’s global health strategy with ten key actions. One of the priorities was ensuring national mechanisms for community voices to feed into health planning and policies, but to date countries have not prioritised establishing these systems. Putting communities back in the centre of health and nutrition is essential.

Brazil and the UK have led the way for decades in social protection and health programmes reaching the marginalised, but low-income countries will require both financial and technical support to achieve global targets. Countries need to ensure that systems are developed with communities and reach the most marginalised. School meals need to be nutritious and young people and parents should be included in the planning, preparation and growing of the food, reducing the distance from farm to fork. Healthcare needs to be free at point of access and equitable in access and availability.

We need to care for our carers and stop relying on the third sector and community charities to feed those struggling. Our public health systems need to adopt a health in all policies approach, ensuring that governance and leadership focus on a livelihoods approach, to ensure health and nutritious food is available for all as well as employment and education opportunities. We produce enough food to feed the world and there are enough universities to train health workers, but these sectors are not always prioritised. Hunger is a political choice, and we need to ensure that this new global alliance succeeds and does not become another failed global target.

Dr Regina Murphy Keith is the course leader for the Global Public Health Nutrition MSc at the University of Westminster.

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