Concern chief appointed to world hunger body

THE head of an Irish charity has been appointed to a top level international committee to fight world hunger.

Tom Arnold, chief executive of Concern, will be joining the committee chaired by President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda, which also includes the presidents of a number of African states as well as three Nobel prize winners.

Mr Arnold, appointed to the fight world hunger committee of the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute, said he was looking forward to bringing Concern’s experience in 30 of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the 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.

The high level advisory committee working to alleviate world hunger also includes the Presidents of Nigeria and Senegal, and Muhammad Yunus the Bangladeshi economist who was awarded the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize.

Other members of the group are former President Mary Robinson and Professor Jeffrey Sachs.