Freeing Latin America and the Caribbean from hunger

In Latin America and the Caribbean, more than 52 million people — 10 percent of the region’s population — suffer from malnutrition or hunger, yet paradoxically the region is the biggest
exporter of food on the planet, this illustrates that the main cause of undernutrition in Latin America and the Caribbean is not a lack of food-production capacity, but poor distribution of and
access to food.

Still, there is room for hope. According to current trends, the region is on its way to achieving the first Millennium Goal of reducing by half the proportion of people who suffer from hunger
by 2015. In order to meet — and even surpass — this goal the Latin America and the Caribbean without Hunger Initiative was established with the hope of completely eliminating hunger in the
region within one generation.

The initiative is supported by a large number of countries and social organizations who are all committed to promoting strategies to combat hunger and providing governments with the legal and
technical tools needed to guarantee people’s right to food. Spain’s Agency for International Cooperation (AECI) is one of the main driving forces behind the effort.

The Latin America and the Caribbean without Hunger Initiative works on three fronts:

* Raising awareness regarding the problem of hunger and the right to food and promoting cross-sector responses.

* Enhancing national capacities to carry out public policies and programmes aimed at eliminating hunger and ensuring the right to food. This is being achieved through training to improve
understanding of the scope of the hunger problem and build knowledge on programmes, policies, projects and methods of fighting it.

* Promoting monitoring of food and nutritional security (FNS) in the region and conducting analysis and systematization in order to expand national FNS programmes.

Through this work, the Initiative seeks to act as a catalyst and organizer of regional efforts to fight hunger.