President Michael D Higgins this week described the food crisis facing the world in strong language more often heard at conferences on torture or other human rights issues.

Speaking at a two-day conference on hunger, nutrition and climate justice in Dublin, President Higgins said urgent problems face us.

“Global hunger in the 21st century represents the grossest of human rights violations, and the greatest ethical challenge facing the global community.

“The source of this hunger is not a lack of food, but the moral affront of poverty, created and sustained by gross inequalities across the world - inequalities of power, economics and technology,” he said in an opening address to the 350 delegates from 60 countries.

The conference, part of Ireland’s EU presidency, was hosted by the Irish government and the Mary Robinson Foundation - Climate Justice (MRFCJ) in partnership with the World Food Programme.

President Higgins went on to talk about “the great ethical failure of the current global system” saying it is striking how rarely famine is caused by natural disaster or war.

He said: “Although many people might imagine that deaths from hunger generally occur in times of famine and conflict, the fact is that only about 10% of these deaths are the result of armed conflicts, natural catastrophes or exceptional climatic conditions.

“The other 90% are victims of long term, chronic lack of access to adequate food which represents, I repeat, the great ethical failure of the current global system.”

Syria and the Sahel region of Africa will be among those to benefit from a €21m agreement signed between Ireland and the UN World Food Programme this week.

The three-year agreement commits Ireland to donating a minimum of €7m annually for the next three years to hunger relief programmes including those which already have a strong Irish element.

One of the crucial programmes which Ireland supports is the ‘UN Humanitarian Relief Depots’. These are like one-stop shops for disaster relief with everything from medical kits to IT equipment stock-piled in six locations.

The depots are in Ghana, UAE, Malaysia, Italy, Spain and Panama giving the WFP a global reach and the ability to react quickly to disaster in any region.

Irish Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney and Minister for Development Joe Costello signed the papers this week with Ertharin Cousin from the WFP.

When drought comes to Mongolia it can spell disaster for a country which counts 15 animals per person on its dusty plains so climate justice is far more than just a phrase for herders.

Risk reductions strategies applied in the Jinst area formed the basis for one of the case studies presented at a hunger, nutrition and climate justice conference in Dublin this week. The conference was exceptional in bringing together communities affected by climate change with key international and Irish decision makers.

Herders like Ms Bayarmaa Baljinnyam face drought linked to an average temperature rise of 1.6°C during the past 60 years. But they are also suffering the effects of increasingly severe ‘dzud’ (winter freeze) seasons which leave animals dead and families without food.

In a study co-authored with researcher Batkhishig Baival from the Nutag Action Research Institute, Ms Baljinnyam looked at the impact of the changing climate on the 2.87m population.

Predominantly a rural economy, Mongolia’s 44m camels, cattle, horses, sheep and goats are key to survival – sold for money and providing milk and skins for everyday use. In an economy in flux following the 20-year transition to the free market from the centralised Communist system, animals should be a point of stability.

So when herders in Jinst were hit with a devastating combination of climate issues resulting in a drop in livestock numbers from 125,185 in 2000 to just 24,104 in 2002, they realised they had to work together to resolve the problems.

Improvements in nutrition and stronger government policies have led to a decline in childhood stunting, according to a new report on child nutrition by the UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF). However, the condition continues to affect some 165 million children under the age of five globally.

Stunting can lead to irreversible brain and body damage in children, making them more susceptible to illness and more likely to fall behind in school. Based on UNICEF’s report, IRIN has put together a round-up of the nutrition situations in six East and Central African countries that are among 24 countries with the largest burden and highest prevalence of stunting.

April is the start of the lean season in the Sahel region of Africa, and empty fields in Mali are just one sign of a growing food crisis again this year. But with less than 1,000 days to a global deadline for eradicating poverty an alliance of charities say a new approach is needed.

Seven NGOs including Irish-based charity Concern Worldwide are working with the European Commission to cut down duplication in relief efforts. The group ‘Alliance2015’ plans to harness their considerable joint budget to reach their aims in 84 countries.

Their name is taken from the deadline set by the UN for eradicating poverty by 2015 through the ‘Millennium Development Goals’. Many of these targets have been achieved, but for others including food security the battle has yet to be won.

In Mali partner group Welthungerhilfe from Germany delivers emergency food and mosquito nets to some of the estimated 450,000 refugees. But they also work on agriculture in an effort to break the drought cycle.

Speaking at an Alliance2015 roundtable event in Dublin to discuss scaling up the EU’s impact on community resilience and nutrition, an aid worker said the problem of ‘undernutition’ needs as much focus as famine.

[UPDATED April 16, 2013]

Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Food security alerts, updates and briefings

RefWorld Refugee updates from the UNHCR, OCHA and others

The World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI) 2012 (forthcoming c. April 15, 2012)

UNICEF Improving Child Nutrition: The achievable imperative for global progress (Story, April 15, 2013)

Hunger • Nutrition • Climate Justice Dublin 2013 conference papers and media resources (April 15-16, 2013)

UN FAO FAO Food Price Index April 11, 2013 (forthcoming: May 9, 2013). Currently 212 (March 2013 Index), the Index is high by historical standards but below the (real and nominal) peak of 238 in February 2011.

ODI At cross-purposes: subsidies and climate compatible investment (Fuel subsidies dwarf climate efforts, April 11, 2013)

ODI, DIE, ECDPM European Report on Development 2013: Post 2015: Global Action for an Inclusive and Sustainable Future (press release April 9, 2013)

Economic Commissions on Africa Economic Report on Africa 2013: Making the Most of Africa’s Commodities: Industrializing for Growth, Jobs and Economic Transformation (press release: Africa must boost commodity-based industrialization to grow economy, end poverty March 25, 2013)

UN 2013 Human Development Report: The Rise of the South (press March 14, 2013)

Milo Vandemoortele et al.Building blocks for equitable growth; lessons from the BRICS (ODI press release: What makes Brazil the fairest BRIC of all? March 6, 2013)

John P. Banks et al. Top Five Reasons Why Africa Should Be a Priority for the United States (Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings, March 2013)

Jerry Z. Muller Capitalism and Inequality: What the Right and the Left Get Wrong (Foreign Affairs, March/April, 2013)

UN MY World global survey

Andy Sumner Who are the poor? New regional estimates of the composition of education and health ‘poverty’ (ODI working paper 378, March 2013)

David Booth Facilitating development: an arm’s length approach to aid (ODI March 2013)

Anna Locke, Giles Henley, Sharada Keats and Steve Wiggins Diverting grain from animal feed and biofuels: can it protect the poor from high food prices? (ODI March 2013)

Romilly Greenhill, Annalisa Prizzon, Andrew Rogerson The age of choice: how are developing countries managing the new aid landscape? (ODI March 2013)

Katie Harris, David Keen and Tom Mitchell When disasters and conflicts collide (ODI press release: Somalia, Afghanistan and Niger ranked the most vulnerable countries to ‘deadly duo’ of conflict and disasters February 2013)

Freedom House Freedom in the World 2013 (release materials January 16, 2012)

Isabella Massa et al.Shockwatch Bulletin: monitoring the impact of the euro zone crisis, China/India slow-down, and energy price shocks on lower-income countries (ODI press release: Shockwatch: a look at Africa’s most vulnerable economies January 2013)

More 2013 publications from January to April to be added soon

2012 Development and Media Publications and Resources

Despite water being fundamental to our existence, many people around the world still lack access to clean water. The enormity of the problem is underscored by its inclusion in the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) which challenges the global community to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to basic sanitation by 2015.

According to Professor Ben Braga, President of the World Water Council, 780 million people still live without safe drinking water and many more without proper sanitation. In an interview with UN Water, he said that Council’s priority was to “universalise the access to safe drinking water and sanitation and to incorporate the idea of water as an engine for social and economic growth.”

Similarly UN Water states that a coherent, coordinated approach is clearly required as water issues represent some of the most urgent development challenges of our time. It underscores the importance of managing freshwater sustainably so that there is enough for everyone to drink and be healthy, so that agricultural producers can provide plentiful harvests and industry can meet its requirements. It is not only a question of meeting our current needs, but with the challenges posed by climate change we will have to adapt and be prepared for increasing numbers and severity of water-related disasters.

According to Braga: “the issue of water and disasters has never received any attention from the UN system in developing the MDGs. The same for building resilience against climate change. We all know that the main impacts of climate change are going to be felt in the water sector.”

As Cyprus finalises a controversial bailout agreement due to start tomorrow (March 19), its debt-ridden Mediterranean neighbour Greece continues to be crippled by protests. Could a radical solution that was applied to poor countries in the past now work for Greece?

In the Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (HIPC) initiative in 1996, international lenders agreed to slash the debts for some nations if they implemented key reforms aimed at stabilising public finances.

For years, the IMF and governments tried to help developing countries with short-term rescue loans but most only started to recover only when their debts were substantially reduced.

The IMF and World Bank have now approved HIPC deals with 36 countries such as Afghanistan, Bolivia, Haiti, Honduras and Nicaragua - and provided US$76 billion in debt-service relief.

The IMF claims the original aim of the HIPC was “to ensure that no poor country faces a debt burden it cannot manage”. Though Greece is not poor by international standards, the IMF's forecasts suggest the country’s debt will exceed a massive 200% of GDP by 2016.

And the European Commission estimated in October that, despite the multi-billion euro bail-out funds, government revenue will only reach 43.5% of GDP by next year.

On Friday (March 15), the UN Commission on the Status of Women ratified a declaration entitled ‘End Violence Against Women’, matching the theme of International Women’s Day, which was marked earlier in the month. VisionFund’s Dianne Lowther writes about the place of women in the fight against poverty.

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day was “A promise is a promise: Time for action to end violence against women.” It was another reminder of women’s central role in society and the hardships that too many women face. The World Bank states that violence can be both a result and a cause of poverty and women and children are among those worse affected.

According to the United Nations, women bear a disproportionate burden of the world’s poverty as they are more likely to be poor and at risk of hunger due to discrimination they face in education, health care, employment and control of assets.

Some estimates suggest that women make up 70% of the World’s Poor and headlines, even in developed countries, indicate that many women face wage gaps compared with their male counterparts. Not only are they often paid less but they can also be relegated to unsafe and low salaried work. In sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, approximately 8 out of 10 women workers are considered to be in vulnerable employment.

However when these women are given a chance at engaging in economic development, it can have a hugely positive impact on helping families to climb out of poverty. Aid organisations the world over have marvelled at women’s fortitude and determination to strive for their families and build a better future.

Boxes of dusty books from a Kabul bookstall led author and historian William Dalrymple to realise NATO forces in Afghanistan are on a path first taken by the British Army in 1839.

Dalrymple’s latest book  “Return of a King” uses sources never before translated into English to draw startling parallels between the First Anglo-Afghan War and today’s conflict.

Speaking before an event at Dublin’s Royal Irish Academy, Dalrymple talks of watching American soldiers under attack in Kandahar while holding a diary written 170 years before by a British officer describing attacks at the same bridge.

“There was a sensation in 2006 that history was in a general sense repeating itself but what usually happens is the closer you get to the detail, the parallels dissolve in the face of detailed evidence. What was so weird this time is the details lead to greater parallels,” he says.

In a familiar echo, an Afghan ruler at the time slyly asked a British spy: “You have brought an army into the country but how do you propose to take it out again?”

Spending promises on overseas aid are among the easiest to make and the easiest to break. The world's wealthiest countries promised to spend 0.7% of gross national income on overseas aid back in 1970. It is difficult to keep track of how many times that promise has been repeated by European governments, which, with few exceptions, have never yet met the target. (The United States and Japan are less known for repeating their 1970 commitment as they are even further from the target than the European average.)

Nevertheless, there had been hope that EU members would finally meet the 0.7% target in 2015. The latest budget agreement suggest that development aid is still seen as a soft target in European capitals.

According to Dóchas – the Irish Association of Development NGOs – the budget agreed today included the following cuts from the budget proposed by the European Commission:

• €11.3 billion or 16% to the ‘Global Europe’ budget line;
• €3.3 billion or 11% to the European Development Fund.

Many Irish families have a missionary relative, a visitor who shivers by the fire once a year or less. Ruán Magan spoke to some of these extraordinary ‘Lifers’ for RTÉ last night. However, they are not alone in having sacrificied a family life and put their own lives at risk to bring hope to others.

Travelling in Uganda last year I met an elderly Sudanese missionary who dreams of sniffing the air in newly independent South Sudan. And wishes he could leave his memories of warlord Joseph Kony behind.

Now 83, Fr Peter Okello spends his days on his veranda at the missionary-run Lacor Hospital in Gulu. Still tall and broad-shouldered, he walks slowly but with so many visitors, he hardly needs to move. As we talk mechanics, nurses and other priests drop by to talk or just sit nearby.

In 2008 Fr Peter was one of three missionaries at Duru Mission in the Congo. The Lord’s Resistance Army under Kony was fading then*, but still strong in pockets along the borderlands.

‘The last mission I left, we were forced to leave. We escaped death, we were at their mercy. They took everything away, the rebels, the people of Kony,’ he says.

“The people around the mission did not run away, so according to our rules, if even one person does not run away, then we have to stay, to die. We remain there, we knew they are coming.”