Walkers across the world march against hunger

DAKAR - From Moscow to Monrovia, from New Zealand to New York, people turned out in hundreds of thousands yesterday to march in support of the global fight against hunger, that silent killer which claims a child every 5 seconds.

From Vatican City, Pope Benedict gave his personal blessing to the "Fight Hunger - Walk the World" initiative organised by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), which mobilised walkers of all ages in more than 100 countries across 24 time zones.

"Walk the World ... aims to raise the awareness of governments and public opinion about the necessity of concrete and swift action in order to guarantee everyone, in particular children, freedom from hunger," the Pope told pilgrims in St. Peter's Square.

"I am close in my prayers to this demonstration," the leader of the world's Roman Catholics said.

In West Africa, one of the world's worst hunger zones, tens of thousands of schoolchildren wearing white T-shirts bearing the "Fight Hunger - Walk the World" slogan joined anti-hunger marches in several capitals.

"Every five seconds there is a child dying of hunger in the world, which has the resources to stop it," WFP representative in Senegal Omar Bula Escobar told Reuters as the march there streamed out of the capital Dakar's Independence Square.

"We need people out on the streets to shout out that this is unacceptable, that hunger must go," Escobar added.

Similar marches were also held in Kenya, Uganda, Ghana and other countries of the world's poorest continent.

Elsewhere, anti-hunger marchers turned out in Auckland, Bangkok, Moscow and many other major centres and were also due to walk in cities across the Americas.

In Liberia, President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, Africa's first elected female head of state, led a march of thousands of people, mostly schoolchildren, through the capital Monrovia.

"I'm very happy to be part of this walk. Finding food is very difficult for us in Liberia," said 17-year-old student Teddy Woods.

"Hunger is not good. Each time I think of hunger, I think of peace immediately because if there is peace, there will be no war and no hunger," he said. Once-prosperous Liberia is struggling to recover from a brutal civil war ended in 2003.

Humanitarian agencies say wealthy governments are not putting up sufficient money to fight hunger, which affects millions across the planet and kills more people than Aids, tuberculosis and malaria put together.

Every day, 24,000 people die from hunger, 18,000 of them children, according to the WFP.

The United Nations said this month it had received under a fifth of the US$92 million ($148.34 million) it needs to help save some 300,000 children threatened with starvation in Africa's parched Sahel belt incorporating Niger, Mali, Burkina Faso and Mauritania.

International charity Oxfam this month chided the United States, several European countries and Japan for not doing enough to help fight a humanitarian crisis in Democratic Republic of Congo, where more than 1000 people die daily from violence, hunger and disease.

Even in Senegal, which has enjoyed more development and stability than most West African countries, hunger remains a reality.

"We might have some nice buildings, but that's just a facade. Behind it, people go hungry and have problems finding what they need every day," said Mamadou Sellou Diallo, rector of a Dakar school whose pupils took part in the march.

- REUTERS