They also sought the global leaders to take actions for freeing the world of hunger and ensuring basic services and rights that are necessary for a decent living. The UN Millennium Campaign in Nepal had organized the event as a part of the three-day global ´Stand UP, Take Action, End Poverty Now´ campaign that kicked off on Friday.
Under the campaign, millions of people are expected to participate across the globe, showing their governments that they will not stand for broken promises. Under MDGs agreed in 2000, head of states across the world had committed to halve poverty, hunger, maternal- and child-mortality rates, and to ensure universal primary education and address all root causes of extreme poverty by 2015.
However, nine years down the line, countries across the world have reported that the progress on eradicating extreme poverty actually reversed in 2009. The number of hungry people in the world too crossed over one billion for the first time in the human history.
Although Nepal is doing fairly well on some of the targets of MDGs, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has cautioned that the country looks dangerously off-target in the hunger target.
“Every night 3.4 million Nepalis go to bed hungry. Almost half of all children in Nepal under the age of five are malnourished and 41 percent of all Nepalis are undernourished,” stated Robert Piper, UN Resident Coordinator in Nepal.
Worse is, widening inequality in the country is rendering the steps taken to eliminate poverty inadequate, he noted, and sought specific and targeted programs from the government to achieve the MDGs.
Addressing a function organized to kick off the campaign, President Dr Ram Baran Yadav recalled the spirit of Janaandolan II and the aspirations of the people for peaceful and prosperous Nepal and decent living opportunities.
He, on behalf of the government, expressed commitment that the government will end all forms of deprivation and inequalities through the new constitution.
“We all dream of a New Nepal where no one needs to go to bed hungry, where no mother dies while giving birth to a baby, where no child dies from the lack of access to health or is deprived of education. It is what we fought for and it is what we will achieve,” he said.
On the occasion, which also marked the World Food Day, rights and advocacy agencies such as Actionaid Nepal took out a rally demanding the world leaders to ´free one billion hungry´.
International humanitarian aid agencies such as UN World Food Programme also called on the world leaders to remember the more than one billion urgently hungry people with inadequate access to food.
“World Food Day is actually ´No Food Day´ for almost one out of every six people around the world this year. We can change this,” said WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran, as quoted in a statement, adding that the support from donors have become more vital given the surge in hungry population across the world.
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