Bill H. R. 2817 is a mea­sure being con­sid­ered in Con­gress to give more money and sup­port to the World Food Pro­gramme. Recently the WFP has had to make some cut­backs in the emer­gency feed­ing pro­grams and school feed­ing pro­grams for chil­dren in the under-developed world.

The WFP has been ask­ing for mory money from gov­ern­ments around the world, but sup­port has been slow due to the global reces­sion. The WFP hopes that the pas­sage of H.R. 2817 will bring in more from the US.

We found this inter­view with Alan Jury of the WFP in the Amer­i­can Chron­i­cle that asks him about the bill and why the WFP needs more from the US.

U.S. lead­er­ship is needed to rally the world in the strug­gle to defeat hunger. There is leg­is­la­tion in Con­gress titled the Roadmap to End Global Hunger (H.R. 2817) that would craft the U.S. response to the cri­sis. Allan Jury, direc­tor of WFP US rela­tions, recently dis­cussed the Roadmap to End Global Hunger legislation.

More than 1 bil­lion peo­ple now suf­fer from chronic hunger world­wide. How impor­tant is it for the U.S. Con­gress to act on the Roadmap to End Global Hunger legislation?

The world has made great strides against hunger and poverty in recent decades: start­ing in the 1960s, the per­cent­age of chron­i­cally hun­gry peo­ple declined from 37 per­cent of the world’s pop­u­la­tion to about 13 per­cent today. Trag­i­cally, the twin cat­a­stro­phes of the global food and finan­cial crises are start­ing to reverse these hard-won gains, pro­duc­ing an unprece­dented rise in absolute num­bers of the hungry.

Much of the progress the world has made is due in no small part to US for­eign assis­tance and the gen­eros­ity of Amer­i­can cit­i­zens. The Roadmap builds on this legacy of US lead­er­ship in help­ing the world’s hun­gry poor to con­struct a broad frame­work of leg­isla­tive actions that encom­passes the spec­trum of anti-hunger efforts — from food and inter­ven­tions to agri­cul­tural pro­grams that help small-scale farm­ers. The Roadmap leg­is­la­tion has bipar­ti­san spon­sor­ship from two of the lead­ing Con­gres­sional voices in the fight against hunger — Rep. James McGov­ern and Rep. Jo Ann Emer­son. The leg­is­la­tion is based on a report authored by six of the lead­ing U.S. inter­na­tional human­i­tar­ian orga­ni­za­tions which has been endorsed by more than 30 aid agencies.

We believe that this vision of invig­o­rated US global lead­er­ship on hunger is vital not only for moral and human­i­tar­ian rea­sons, but for social, eco­nomic and polit­i­cal secu­rity in the longer term.

How would the Roadmap leg­is­la­tion change the way the inter­na­tional com­mu­nity works with the United States Gov­ern­ment on fight­ing global hunger?

The leg­is­la­tion would require a com­pre­hen­sive US strat­egy to fight­ing hunger that would increase invest­ments in four areas — emer­gency food assis­tance, food safety nets, nutri­tion and agri­cul­tural development.

Increased invest­ments in all four of these areas is essen­tial to mak­ing a sig­nif­i­cant impact in reduc­ing hunger. The roadmap high­lights the need to broaden the range of activ­i­ties sup­ported by the US Gov­ern­ment to sup­port hunger reduc­tion to com­ple­ment essen­tial exist­ing food aid and agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment pro­grams. More use of cash for emer­gency responses such as local and regional pur­chase and food vouch­ers; expan­sion of national food safety nets; focused inter­ven­tions on pre­na­tal and chil­dren under 2 nutri­tional needs, and inno­v­a­tive tech­ni­cal assis­tance pro­grams to increase agri­cul­tural devel­op­ment are sup­ported by the roadmap.

The Roadmap would also estab­lish a US gov­ern­ment coor­di­na­tion struc­ture that would sup­port effec­tive imple­men­ta­tion of a com­pre­hen­sive US strat­egy on inter­na­tional hunger reduc­tion. This would pro­vide the pol­icy, insti­tu­tional, and pro­gram frame­work to secure the US role as the global leader in build­ing an inter­na­tional coali­tion to fight hunger.

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