The sound of the anti-hunger call made in Rome is easily heard in Cairo In Rome on Monday President Hosni Mubarak made a strong appeal for collective world efforts to fight hunger across the world. The call was made during the president's participation in the World Summit on Food Security, reports Dina Ezzat. Pressing hunger problems cannot be left unattended, Mubarak said in a speech at the summit hosted by the Italian capital, the venue of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Mubarak partially attributed the failure of the world to live up to the challenge of combating hunger to the severe economic crisis that hit the globe last year. He, however, insisted that much more political will needs to be applied if the world was to reduce the one billion people facing hunger across the world. The world, Mubarak said, needs a new partnership to confront the serious challenge of hunger. The world, he added, needs to move beyond the debate over the food crisis and to get into a more action-oriented mood to actually address the crisis. The developing countries, where most of those faced with the hazards of hunger live, should be subject to keen anti- hunger action schemes, Mubarak stressed. "But producing food security in the developing countries is inevitably dependent on promoting comprehensive development in these countries -- and on controlling the population growth in these countries," he said. The president also said that more effort needed to be invested in producing new agricultural solutions to serve the cause of food security. And, he added, more aid money should be invested in the agricultural sector in the developing and least developed countries. The president referred to climate change and its impact on crops worldwide. He insisted that combating global warming was essential to the efforts to ease food insecurity. In Rome, Mubarak joined world leaders -- who were not joined by the leaders of the G8 countries -- in adopting a declaration pledging renewed commitment to eradicate hunger from the face of the earth sustainably and at the earliest time. Countries also agreed to reverse the decline in domestic and international funding for agriculture. The Rome summit agreed, moreover, to promote new investments in the agriculture sector, to improve governance of global food issues in partnership with the relevant stakeholders from the public and private sector. A commitment to proactively face the challenges of climate change to food security was also voiced in the declaration on Monday in the Italian capital. In his address to the summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki- Moon called the current food crisis "a wake-up call for tomorrow". The world's top diplomat also said there "can be no food security without climate security." "Africa's small farmers who produce most of the continent's food and depend mostly on rain, could see harvests drop by 50 per cent by 2020," Ban warned. Egyptian officials say that it is the acute awareness of the implication of the food crisis on the 80 million population of a developing country like Egypt that prompted President Mubarak to personally attend the summit. Egypt is not privileged to food security and cannot claim otherwise, they admit. Indeed, state-run Egyptian TV is endlessly broadcasting commercials by Egyptian charities to donate money to help bring food to every table. The commercials that used to be confined to the holy Muslim month of Ramadan are now aired throughout the year and more frequently than before. With the lead up to the Eid Al-Adha holiday, more commercials are being broadcast in the media to call for food charities. A leading effort is being conducted by the Egyptian Food Bank (EFB) that works under the slogan "Together against Hunger". Established less than 10 years ago the EFB is essentially a non-governmental organisation that seeks to cater for the needs of "15 million Egyptians who live under the poverty line, of which 3.5 million suffer acute poverty". The EFB warned that the number of those suffering the worst degrees of poverty could actually double in the next 10 years. The EFB is not the only charity working to combat hunger. Other smaller and lesser known charities are also working to address the same objective. But while EFB is hoping to secure a "hunger-free Egypt by 2025", other charities are not as optimistic. "There was a time when we used to say that in Egypt nobody dies of hunger and nobody sleeps without supper. This is no longer the case," said Safiya, a middle-aged lady involved in charity work. The focus of Safiya's work is the middle class neighbourhood of Heliopolis and its less economically privileged surroundings. "And it is quite a challenge, so imagine what it is like in Upper Egypt or rural areas where there are fewer donors." "In Cairo the charities involved in promoting food security worry about providing people with a healthy balanced meal. In Assiut we are very concerned about bringing just any food to the table," said Madiha. Speaking of her experience in collecting donations for the Eid, Madiha said, "It is becoming more difficult. People are very charitable but some of those who used to give are faced with economic problems," she explained. The World Food Programme (WFP) describes Egypt as a low-income, food-deficit country with some 15 million people living below the poverty line, on less than $1 a day. According to WFP "stark geographical disparities exist between the region of Upper Egypt, desert areas in Sinai and the Red Sea, which are some of the country's poorest areas with high levels of food insecurity and malnutrition, and between the more developed Lower Egypt region."
