About 800 million people are suffering from hunger worldwide. And nearly 2 billion people are suffering from malnutrition and “hidden hunger”, a deficiency of vitamin and minerals in dietary requirements. What are the main causes for this plight in a world of abundance? Carolin Anthes shows in HSFK-Standpunkt 3/2015 “Der Kampf für eine Welt ohne Hunger. Wie normativer Wandel in die politische Praxis Eingang finden muss” the structural and historical underlying reasons: among others marginalization of certain groups of people, land dispossessions of rural people and distributional injustices.
In the last few years, particularly civil society stakeholders have stimulated a global discourse on the right to food, food sovereignty and food security resulting in an increased societal pressure on political actors, agricultural industry and investors. Raising awareness of the need for a hunger-free world and the call for policy changes and action at national and international levels can no longer be ignored.
Following a causal analysis Carolin Anthes argues that there already exists a normative change and that political actors are challenged to transform it into practical political action. Against this backdrop she derives recommendations for action to the German Federal Government.
The HSFK-Standpunkt is available as a free PDF download (German only).