Food Index at its highest; FAO

“In a world overflowing with riches, it is a outrageous scandal that more than 852 million people suffer hunger and malnutrition and that every year over 6 million children die of starvation and related causes . We must take urgent action now.” Jean Ziegler, April 2008

Jean Ziegler was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000-2008. He is now a Member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee, where he works as an expert on economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to food.

It is hardly a revelation, but according to Jacques Diouf, the director of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), currently escalating food and energy prices could bring about political instability and riots in developing nations – a situation that is presently being played out in some African countries such as Niger, Burkina Faso, Guinea and in Yemen and Mexico.

Already, the FAO’s food price index now stands at its highest levels since its records started in 1990 and has increased 70 percent since 2000. That is a troubling amount, considering that around 2 billion people worldwide live on less than $2 a day, with much of their income being spent on basic necessities such as food.