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The politics of hunger: Good governance effective at fighting malnutrition

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Much needed food aid being distributed in Sukkur, Pakistan. Photo: <a href= "http://www.flickr.com/photos/14214150@N02/4973650367/"> Rob Holden, UK Department for International Development (Flickr)</a>
Much needed food aid being distributed in Sukkur, Pakistan. Photo: Rob Holden, UK Department for International Development (Flickr)

Malnutrition, which prevents children from reaching their physical and intellectual potential, is falling. The most significant cause? It's becoming a politically important issue in its own right.

Today, 925 million people do not have enough to eat. About 98 percent of those people live in developing countries and 60 percent are women. In sub-Saharan Africa, one third of all child deaths are caused by hunger.

But these rates are lower than they have been in the past. In Brazil and Peru, malnourishment in some regions has been nearly eradicated. A likely cause for these improvements is economic development: as economies grow, people should have more money for food.

But a recent study found no such correlation in many parts of the world. In Peru, a mining boom occurred that boosted the incomes of certain regions. But these regions were not those that saw the most dramatic drop in malnutrition rates. In Southeast Asia, where economies have been growing rapidly, hunger rates have not seen a corresponding drop. As the World Bank’s chief economist for South Asia describes it, "For a region that's clocked something like 6 percent growth on average over the past decade, the statistics on malnutrition are just truly astonishing and unacceptable.”

Growth hasn’t exactly led to glut for much of the developing world. But many regions have seen a sharp decline in hunger rates.

Children in Haiti waiting for food and school supplies to be distributed. Photo: <a href= "http://www.flickr.com/photos/un_photo/5686946857/in/photostream/">UN Photo/Marco Dormino (flickr)</a>
Children in Haiti waiting for food and school supplies to be distributed. Photo: UN Photo/Marco Dormino (flickr)

What caused the plummet? Proactive politicians. Increasingly, politicians are seeing tackling malnutrition as a means of getting elected. The humanitarian news and analysis service IRIN reports that malnutrition has been a neglected issue in the politics of many developing countries. One researcher from the Institute for Development Studies recalls being told by Indian journalists that hunger was a difficult issue to get past editors “because it’s not an election issue.” Looking at the figures for global poverty, it is easy to note that the world’s poorest tend to be the most politically neglected. This may be changing.

The study attributes this attitude shift to civil society networks that are getting better at lobbying governments, and to governments that are themselves becoming more responsive amid democratization of the developing world. According to the World Health Organization, “disparities in health outcomes between the poor and the rich are increasingly attracting attention from researchers and policy-makers, thereby fostering a substantial growth in the literature on health equity.” More attention has led to more action in many parts of the world.

Former Peruvian president Alan Garcia was elected on his “5x5x5” campaign, which pledged to reduce malnutrition for children under age 5 by 5 percent in 5 years. After his election proved it to be a popular issue, he raised the figure to 9 percent.

Some leaders learn the hard way that hunger is something to be taken seriously. In Niger, former president Mamadou Tandja all but banned the subject of hunger from the press. A growing hunger crisis led to his ouster in a military coup. Knowing that its power rested on a promise to provide food, the interim government acted quickly to coordinate relief efforts.

For most countries that have reduced malnutrition, success came after national governments began coordinating and implementing broad anti-poverty campaigns. In Malawi, the federal government began coordinating its own programs with those of non-profits operating in the country to increase efficiency and monitor what worked and what didn’t. Cash transfer programs that were established to incentivize behavior in the community best pulled people out of poverty. While international groups have been doing good work in Malawi for quite some time, it was the government’s engagement of the issue that proved crucial to increasing efficiency and providing real results. “The government’s remarkable engagement and leadership on fighting hunger and undernutrition cannot be overstated,” according to reports from Tripode Proyectos, the research group that conducted the study.

So malnutrition is being elevated in importance around the world. But it is still a huge problem. In Asia, Latin America, and Africa, despite recent improvements, malnutrition remains a leading cause of death for children. As many developing countries head for economic growth, this study should remind us that bigger GDP does not always mean healthier people. But prosperity should mean more money and resources to fight hunger, and politicians are learning that healthy voters are more likely to be happy voters.

According to one Peruvian governor, “In the past, politicians didn’t care about issues like nutrition, because children don’t vote. But now they have realized that their mothers do.”

Ben Osborn is a 2011 graduate of Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon. Read his other contributions to Global Envision.


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