United Nations Radio

The situation of hunger in the world is alarming. That's the assessment of the UN Human Rights Council's independent expert on the right to food Olivier de Schutter.

He says rising prices and increasing hunger are driving the world further away from achieving the UN goal of reducing extreme poverty by half by 2015.

He says estimates are that at least 44 million more people have become

hungry as a result of the crisis, pushing the number f hungry people closer to a billion.

"So the crisis has increased the number of people who are hungry and it has had a very severe impact not only by increasing the number of people who are hungry or in extreme poverty but also impacting severely on those who are already poor and who as a result of this crisis have switched to poorer diets, limited the number of meals they take."

De Schutter says the challenge is to remind the public opinion that the food crisis is still with us and it deserves both the attention of the public and mobilization at political level of governments.

This is Donn Bobb reporting for United Nations Radio.

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