The stalwart people who fight world hunger have an immensely frustrating job, and you can understand why. Despite notable advances in agriculture and health care, and despite decades of work by thousands of people, malnutrition and hunger are still increasing in many countries.
This could get discouraging, perhaps even to the point that some people will be tempted to dismiss global assaults against hunger as hopeless. But this would be catastrophic, especially now, when decades of battling against chronic hunger are showing promising results.The results - and the promise - are no more keenly felt than across the vast realm of the world's children who are chronically poor, chronically ill and chronically hungry.
Over the past 20 years, mortality rates for children under the age of 5 in developing countries dropped by at least half, according to the United Nations Development Program, while the coverage of child immunization more than doubled during the 1980s alone. At the same time, however, hunger and disease claim the lives of 40,000 - yes, it is an appalling figure - children every day.
Far from being discouraged by such grim figures, many hunger experts are determined to look on the positive side. They see childhood hunger and disease as ills that can be largely conquered. What is more, they feel that if a can-do perspective takes hold among the nations of the industrialized world, it may energize a historic attack on chronic hunger and disease in most of the world's poor areas.
One such cautiously optimistic expert is Kenneth Phillips, president of Plan International USA (formerly Foster Parents Plan). Along with its affiliates abroad, the organization assists some 500,000 especially needy children in 26 developing countries - and is growing fast.
For $22 a month, a family can sponsor a specific child through Plan International, providing assured supplies of food, medical care, drinkable water and other essentials. The families of children help define their greatest needs. Recipients' families and field staff write regular letters to sponsors about how the child is faring.
As with many other child aid agencies, Plan International is finding that its approach is catching on. In the past eight years alone, Phillips says, the number of American sponsoring families has more than tripled, to 100,000. Four-fifths of them renew their support each year. This backing, he adds, helps show why international causes form the fastest single growth area in American philanthropy.
The cause of the world's children is gaining in many quarters. The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted last November, has been submitted to member governments for signature and ratification. This landmark treaty, which creates a body of international law protecting children, has been submitted to member governments for signature and ratification. How soon the United States may act is unclear: The Bush administration is still reviewing its provisions.
It would give the fight against hunger a welcome lift if President Bush were to sign the U.N. document before the "World Summit for Children" opens at the United Nations in late September. This gathering of world leaders, which will seek to mobilize world opinion on behalf of the world's children, reflects a dual concern. While realistic strategies exist to eradicate most world hunger at relatively modest costs, many populations are booming and social outlays are declining. It is for this reason that hunger experts feel a sense of urgency about their mission.
To Phillips, the best response to this urgency is to get people involved in issues of global hunger on a personal basis. For this reason, his agency encourages its sponsoring families and aid recipients to exchange letters and photographs.
This kind of patient teaching and salesmanship may seem like slow going, when measured against the challenge of persistent global hunger. But recent advances, in science and toward peace, are striking enough that many experts believe major assaults on hunger can succeed by the end of the century. There is knowledge; there is money; and there is evident a newly cooperative spirit. What remains needed is the public and political will.