The Chief Executive of Concern, Tom
Arnold has been appointed by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute to a high level advisory committee on alleviating world hunger.The committee is chaired by
President Museveni of Uganda and also includes the Presidents of Nigeria and Senegal as well as three Nobel prize winners, including Muhammad Yunus the Bangladeshi economist who was awarded the 2006
Nobel Peace Prize.
Other members of the advisory group are former President, Mary Robinson and Professor Jeffrey Sachs, leading world expert on hunger and adviser to former UN Secretary
General, Kofi Annan.The International Food Policy Research Institute is the leading research and policy organisation on world hunger and the top-level advisory committee advises on the
institute's 2020 Vision Initiative, which seeks to promote a consensus among developed and developing countries on critical pathways to easing the plight of the 850 million people who currently suffer
from hunger.Tom Arnold said he looked forward to bringing the experiences of Concern's innovative work on hunger in 30 of the world's most vulnerable countries to the top-level advisory
body.
"While progress is being made in reducing hunger and poverty, particularly in Asia, the situation in sub-Saharan Africa continues to deteriorate.
Unless there is a dramatic
improvement, Africa will fail to meet the UN Millennium objective of halving the proportion of people who are hungry by 2015.
Even if this objective is reached, the world will still have 600
million hungry people in 2015," he said.
This is the third international appointment for Tom Arnold in recent years. In 2006, he was appointed to the Advisory Board for the UN's Central Emergency Response Fund (CERF), a $500 million fund set up to enable the UN respond more effectively to emergencies.
He was also a member of the UN Hunger Task Force, set up by Kofi Annan in 2003 to identify the key policies necessary to halve world hunger by 2015.
Tom Arnold is a former Assistant
Secretary General and Chief Economist with the Department of Agriculture and Food.
He was chair of the Committee of Agriculture of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OECD) between 1993 and 1998.
[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]
