Halving hunger by 2015: a framework for action

The objective of the Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force is to create a plan for how the nations of the world can achieve the Millennium Development Goal for Hunger: to reduce the proportion of hungry people by half by 2015.

The action plan will be presented in the Millennium Project’s Hunger Task Force’s final report in December 2004 and integrated with the plans of the other nine Millennium Project Task Forces to produce the final global plan for presentation to the Secretary-General of the United Nations in mid-2005. This interim report summarizes the current research and thinking.

The Hunger Task Force recommends the following overall strategy to achieve the Hunger MDG, which consists of three major elements:

• mobilise political action to end hunger — at the global scale as well at the national and local scales, in rich and poor countries
• align national policies that restore budgetary priority to agriculture as the engine of economic growth, build rural infrastructure, empower women, and build human capacity in all sectors involved in hunger-reduction actions
• implement and scale-up proven actions that improve the nutrition of vulnerable groups, raise agricultural productivity in smallholder farms and improve market functions—in ways that create synergies and result in positive transformations

[adapted from author]