U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon marked World Food Day on Tuesday with a call for a renewed commitment to end chronic hunger and make the right to food a reality for everyone in a world where nearly 855 million people still do not have enough to eat. Noting that the right to food is a human right, Ban said it is simply unacceptable that in a world of plenty, so many hundreds of millions people suffer from chronic hunger. “The world has the resources, the knowledge, and the tools to make the right to food a reality for all,” he said, marking the theme of this year's World Food Day-the right to food. “We must make the voices of these 854 million people heard. We must work to uphold their fundamental human right. We must recognize the role of human rights in eradicating hunger and poverty, and the connection between development, human rights, and security,” the secretary-general said. Despite the fact that the right to food was included in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted in 1948, progress towards eradicating hunger has been slow, Ban said, urging that much more be done to ensure the most basic of human rights. World Food Day is celebrated each year on October 16, the day the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) was founded in 1945. More than 150 countries around the world will observe the day this year.
