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UN says world hungry people falls to under 800 mln people, UN report says

Xinhua, May 28, 2015 Adjust font size:

The United Nations on Wednesday said that the number of hungry people in the world has dropped to under 800 million people, representing a decrease of 12. 9 percent of the population, down from 23.3 percent a quarter of a century ago, in the developing countries.

According to the latest annual UN hunger report called "The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2015," the number of hungry people in the world has dropped to 795 million, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric said at a daily news briefing here.

The new report, which was jointly published by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP), reveals that the number of hungry people is 216 million fewer than in the 1990 -- 1992 biennium and nearly 100 million fewer than in 2012.

The UN agencies attributed the decline to the success in the world's developing regions.

"In the developing regions, the prevalence of undernourishment has declined to 12.9 percent of the population, down from 23.3 percent a quarter of a century ago," he said, citing the new UN report. "An estimated 72 countries have achieved the Millennium Development (MDG) target of halving the proportion of chronically undernourished."

MDG is a set of eight anti-poverty targets to be reached by the end of 2015.

"The developing regions as a whole are missing the target by a small margin, as progress was hampered in recent years by challenging global economic conditions, extreme weather events, natural disasters and political instability," he said.

"Large reductions in hunger were achieved in East Asia and very fast progress was posted in Latin America and the Caribbean, southeast and central Asia, as well as some parts of Africa," Dujarric said. "Sub-Saharan Africa is still the region with the highest prevalence of undernourishment in the world -- almost one in every four people."

African nations, however, that invested more in improving agricultural productivity and basic infrastructure also achieved their MDG hunger target, notably in West Africa.

Some 24 African countries currently face food crises, twice as many as in 1990, and around one of every five of the world's undernourished lives in crisis environments characterized by weak governance and acute vulnerability to death and disease. Endite