The right to adequate food is an essential human right, yet hundreds of millions of persons remain food insecure. Poverty and growing inequality is one of the underlying causes of food insecurity. Poverty erodes or nullifies the rights to adequate food, housing, health, safe water, education and others.
Not everyone has this privilege though. Globally, many people struggle to find reliable food due to their country’s economy, or their financial status. This poverty leads to the inaccessibility of food in nutritional amounts, which causes food insecurity. Food insecurity is a factor in world hunger and causes kids to develop health problems at young ages.
Poverty has declined worldwide, but progress has been uneven. Extreme poverty is mainly concentrated in rural areas. Rural development and agricultural productivity growth are crucial for poverty reduction. Deteriorating ecosystems, unsustainable natural resource management and climate change are disproportionally affecting the poor. Unless these trends are halted and reversed, the goal of eradicating poverty will remain elusive. Poverty cannot be eradicated without addressing the pervasive inequalities in incomes and economic opportunities between and within countries, between rural and urban areas, and between men and women. Reducing such inequalities will need to start with improving access for the poor to productive resources, basic services and social protection.