[All Africa]
Washington — The number of hungry people in the world is down slightly, but not enough to meet development goals, according to a new United Nations report.
The report, written by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said one in eight people worldwide, or 842 million, suffers from chronic hunger. That figure is a decrease from last year’s estimate of 868 million, and down 17 percent from the early 1990s, but it is not low enough to reach the goal world leaders set of reducing the proportion of hungry people in developing nations by half by 2015.
“This goal is close and has been reached in many countries,” said FAO statistician and study author Piero Conforti.