Sierra Leone made history last Saturday when it became the first country in the world to launch the “hunger free campaign”. This campaign, against hunger, is an international campaign which is contributing to a global campaign to target all leaders including the Sierra Leone government.
Tennyson Williams, the ActionAid director, said during the launching at the Miatta conference hall in Freetown, that “in Sierra Leone about 70% of the population are poor and about 26% are food poor, meaning about 1.5 million persons cannot afford as basic a necessity as food”.
The ActionAid director, giving the international outlook of the campaign, pointed out that to fight the scourge of hunger the root causes should be addressed and not just alleviate their symptoms.
He noted that, “the answer does not lie in importation of food, nor against a backdrop of surplus food dumping by rich nations but unfair trade rules and food dumping undermine local agriculture and food security.”
Mr Williams maintained that the root causes of hunger lies in the denial of rights and unequal access to and control over natural resources.
“It is against this background that ActionAid Sierra Leone will be launching a three-year campaign on the right to food with the theme ‘Hunger FREE’.
“The goal of the campaign is to halve hunger by 2015,” the ActionAid director declared.
He announced that the campaign would draw energies of the youth, women’s groups and other civic groups including farmers’ associations, and would work with networks and alliances to advocate for the eradication of hunger in Sierra Leone.
The campaign, he continued, would also seek to influence policy and practice locally, nationally and internationally in favour of poor and excluded people.
Statements were made by several civil society movements which also included the ministry of agriculture that pledged to fight the scourge of hunger.
Jeanette Eno, the director of ENCISS, officially launched the three-year campaign.
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