SENEGAL: Walkers across the world back fight against hunger

Record ID: 375682

  • Title: SENEGAL: Walkers across the world back fight against hunger
  • Date: 22nd May 2006
  • Summary: (W1) DAKAR, SENEGAL (MAY 21, 2006) (REUTERS) THOUSANDS OF CHILDREN WALKING IN STREET OF DAKAR
  • Embargoed: 6th June 2006 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Senegal
  • Country: Senegal
  • Topics: Health
  • Reuters ID: LVA8ER1UGQLUIYF5PW5IGDDIVWUS
  • Story Text: In West Africa, one of the world's worst hunger zones, tens of thousands of schoolchildren wearing white T-shirts bearing the slogan "Fight Hunger-Walk the World" joined anti-hunger marches in several capitals.
    ''Every 5 seconds there is a child that dies of hunger. That adds up to 18000 children per day dying of hunger while we know there are the resources to be able to cope with this problem'' WFP representative in Senegal Omar Bula Escobar told Reuters as the march there streamed out of the capital Dakar's Independence Square.
    "We need people out on the streets to shout out that this is unacceptable, that hunger must go," Escobar added.
    As Pope Benedict appealed from Vatican City for "concrete and swift action" to stop world hunger, walkers in more than 100 countries across 24 time zones took part in the worldwide initiative organized by the United Nations World Food Programme.
    Similar marches were also held in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and other countries of the world's poorest continent.
    Elsewhere, anti-hunger marchers turned out in Auckland, Bangkok, Moscow and most other capitals and were also due to walk in cities across the Americas.
    Humanitarian agencies say wealthy governments are not putting up sufficient money to fight hunger, which affects millions across the planet and kills more people than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria put together.
    Every day, 24,000 people die from hunger, 18,000 of them children, according to the WFP.
    The United Nations said this month it had received under a fifth of the $92 million it needs to help save some 300,000 children threatened with starvation in Africa's parched Sahel belt incorporating Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.
  • Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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