120 Million Surviving on $2 a Day

Jakarta Globe | September 15, 2010

Amid the backdrop of towering buildings at Petamburan, Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, slum dwellers live in squalor along the railway tracks. (Antara Photo/Yudhi Mahatma)

Jakarta. Indonesia has gained the notorious distinction of being among seven countries that are home to two-thirds of the world’s one billion undernourished people, an upcoming report reveals.

The “State of Food Insecurity in the World,” to be published in October by the Food and Agricultural Organization and the UN World Food Program, says two-thirds of the world’s almost one billion undernourished people live in the following countries: Bangladesh, China, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethio pia, India, Indonesia and Pakistan.

n a press release, the FAO and WFP said the number of hungry people in the world remained unacceptably high despite expected recent gains that have pushed the figure below one billion.

The new estimate of the number of people who will suffer chronic hunger this year is 925 million — 98 million down from 1.023 billion in 2009 — with over half of the total in Asia Pacific.

“With a child dying every six seconds because of undernourishment-related problems, hunger remains the world’s largest tragedy and scandal,” FAO director general Jacques Diouf said.

The continuing high global hunger level “makes it extremely difficult to achieve not only the first Millennium Development Goal but also the rest of the MDGs,” Diouf warned.

“The achievement of the international hunger reduction target is at serious risk,” he added, noting that recent increases in food prices could hamper efforts to further reduce the numbers of the world’s hungry.

Details of the report were released ahead of its official launch at the Sept. 20-22 UN General Assembly in New York.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono unveiled a plan to slash the hunger rate by tackling unemployment, which he said would have a direct impact on the poverty rate.

He also said reducing poverty was just one of four of his administration’s key economic policies, the other three being boosting economic growth, creating jobs and protecting the environment.

Yudhoyono said with “maximum effort,” these policies would result in GDP growth of 6 percent by the end of 2010, up from 4.5 percent last year.

The 2009 Global Hunger Index categorizes Indonesia’s situation as “serious.” The index ranks countries on a combination of three indicators: child malnutrition rate, child mortality rate, and the proportion of people who are calorie deficient.

The WFP Web site, meanwhile, says 6 percent or about 14.7 million people of Indonesia’s population is undernourished.

It also says 52 percent of Indonesians live on less than $2 (Rp 17, 980) a day. Of those, 35 million live on less than 65 cents a day and are classified as poor.

The number of “near poor,” or those at risk of becoming poor if they lose a single month’s income, is estimated to be 115 million.

The WFP noted the government’s efforts in helping the poor, such as cash transfers and subsidized rice program. However, despite its progress in achieving MDG targets, Indonesia is still “a low-income food-deficit country,” the WFP says.

Additional reporting from Antara