Global Hunger Event, 12 August 2012

Almost one in three of the world’s poorest children cannot reach their full potential due to malnutrition. As the Olympics closed, Prime Minister David Cameron and Vice President Michel Temer of Brazil called on the world to take action to transform the life chances of millions of children before the next Olympic Games in 2016.

The Global Hunger Event identified pioneering new ways of working to tackle malnutrition and bring in new champions to support the global movement.

Concern Worldwide - Seeds & Tools beneficary Suzanna Bunyere. Masisi, North Kivu, DRC

Statements and announcements: 12 August

Joint statement by Prime Minister David Cameron and Vice President Michel Temer of Brazil

Event outcomes: Three new initiatives were announced

European Development Commissioner Andris Piebalgs: The European Commission will continue to lead the way on food security

Irish Taoiseach confirms that their EU presidency will focus on hunger

Photographs from the event

NGO and media reactions

A joint statement signed by ActionAid, CAFOD, Christian Aid, Concern Worldwide, Global Poverty Project, Oxfam GB, Progressio, Save The Children UK, Tearfund and UNICEF UK said that an end to global hunger would be greatest olympic legacy.

Christian Aid: It's time for banks to ensure they're not fuelling hunger.

World Development Movement: There needs to be local control over the resources on which food production depends

Save the Children: The Olympic summit fires the starting gun in the Race Against Hunger

Progressio: We need a commitment to improve food security for the long term

Baby Milk Action: Don't partner with food giants or forget breastfeeding and the underlying causes

IDS welcomes commitment to tackling hunger and undernutrition

IDS Participation, Power and Social Change blog: No gong for Cameron’s Hunger Summit

Practical Action blog: We need to tackle hunger

Tree Aid: Time for trees at Olympic hunger summit

Media coverage in The Guardian, Telegraph, and Evening Standard

Tweets

News items

Bond Chief Executive Ben Jackson shares his views in a blog post for the Huffington Post

Lawrence Haddad in The Guardian: Malnutrition is like the Olympics: it has our attention, but for how long?

17,000 sign UNICEF's letter to David Cameron calling for action on child hunger and stunting.

Save the Children campaigners delivered the Race Against Hunger petition to Downing Street.

War on Want call the event is a 'distraction'.

Send a Cow urges the Global Hunger Event to 'Think local and low-tech'.

Tom Arnold at Concern hopes the event can generate further political momentum.

Reports

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation position paper: Optimising nutrition outcomes from inventments in Agriculture

Action Against Hunger has a major report, Aid for Nutrition, which calls for all major donors to disburse more overseas development assistance to programmes which treat undernutrition and address its underlying causes in countries where the need is greatest.

The Best Start: saving children's lives in their first thousand days draws on positive experiences in World Vision programmes and beyond to demonstrate how positive nutrition outcomes for mothers and children can be delivered at the community level.

World Vision's policy position: The Best Start: scaling up nutrition for the most vulnerable children.

Food Sovereignty from War on Want contrasts the ‘food security’ approach, based on free markets supplemented by aid, with the alternative of food sovereignty, which returns control over the food system to farmers.

Action Against Hunger's Hunger matters sheds light on the repeated hardships millions of families endure every year and the solutions that exist to build their resilience to cope with crises.

Concern Worldwide and IFPRI produce the Global Hunger Index and map.

Ending the everyday emergency, a joint initiative by World Vision and Save the Children, builds on the findings of Escaping the hunger cycle commissioned by the Sahel Working Group, of which both agencies are members.