The Olympic feat of ending global hunger

Aug 10th, 2012 5:18 PM UTC
By Roger Thurow

Guest blog post from Roger Thurow, a senior fellow at The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, and author of the  book, The Last Hunger Season: A Year in an African Farm Community on the Brink of Change.

The London Summer Olympics have been chock full of wondrous achievements and inspiring moments: Michael Phelps, Usain Bolt, Sarah Attar, Oscar Pistorius, an impressive roster of African athletes rising from deep poverty to the medal platform. Just imagine the journey from Somalia or Sudan to a stadium filled with 80,000 people, flashbulbs sparkling like stars. Amazing.

But the most inspiring, significant moment of all may still await us. On Sunday, as the sporting competition winds down and the athletes gather for the Closing Ceremony and the torch passes from London to Rio de Janeiro, another competition will be joined. It is a push to make a huge dent in hunger and childhood malnutrition before the next Opening Ceremony in Rio in 2016.

UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Brazil Vice President Michel Temer will host the Global Hunger Event and challenge the world’s leaders -– and all citizens, really -– to accelerate efforts to improve nutrition and reduce the rate of stunting among the planet’s poorest children in the next four years. The unofficial Olympic event -– with its Olympian ambitions -– aims to identify innovative ways to tackle malnutrition and create new champions to spur a global movement.

TAKE ACTION NOW: Sign our petition to join UK Prime Minister David Cameron in the race against hunger

Until the book “The Hunger Games”, those two words –- “hunger” and “games” — rarely appeared in the same sentence. Together, they form an oxymoron. Hunger, as we know, certainly isn’t a game. Now, on Sunday, we’ll have those words sharing a phrase again: The Hunger Summit of the Olympic Games.

It ought to be a natural combination, the Games and Hunger. I covered 10 Olympics -– five summer and five winter — for The Wall Street Journal, and I wrote many stories on how the noble ideals of supreme human endeavor and fair play were often soiled by a venal self-interest and tawdry commercialism surrounding the Games. Now, though I am far from the fields of play in London, it is good to be able to write the words “Olympics” and “ending hunger” in the same sentence. Well done to the prime minister for convening the summit, and to athletes such as soccer star David Beckham and Mo Farah, ONE supporter and Somalia-born British long-distance runner who won a gold medal in London, for participating. The International Olympic Committee and the organizing committees of each set of Games should take note and also join the movement to raise the clamor and end hunger.

For conquering malnutrition and stunting should be the very essence of the Olympic movement, giving every child the chance to fulfill his or her potential, physically and mentally. With some 200 million children stunted from insufficient nutrition during the early years of their lives, who knows how many Olympic moments have never materialized? The damage that malnutrition in the first 1,000 days does to a child’s brain and body can’t be undone in later years. It is fine for the Olympics to rattle on about “faster, higher, stronger,” but they are hollow words for far too many who can’t even get to the starting block. Where’s the fair play in that?

Hopefully, we’ll see some truly Olympian traits emerge from the Global Hunger Event. Traits like vision, dedication, ambition, urgency, momentum and focus. These should also apply to the quest for global food security; the Olympics have been unfolding against a backdrop of worsening global malnutrition, severe droughts in several parts of the world, dwindling food stockpiles and rising food prices.

Hopefully, the summit won’t be a one-off talk fest, a performance that appears every four years and then falls from view, like some of the sports that only capture our attention during the Olympics. Hopefully, the UK government can keep the focus on hunger and malnutrition through next year’s G8 meeting that it will host, and beyond. Hopefully, the Brazilians can keep hunger and malnutrition a top priority of the G20 nations. Focus, focus, focus -– the mantra of every world-class athlete.

Athletes are also all about momentum, and there has been plenty of momentum building in the fight against malnutrition. The Scaling Up Nutrition and the 1,000 Days movements, the G8’s recently launched New Alliance on Food Security and Nutrition, President Obama’s Feed the Future initiative, ONE’s THRIVE campaign and the expanding efforts of a number of humanitarian organizations to end hunger through agricultural development, the World Health Assembly’s new target to reduce the number of stunted children by 40 percent by 2025. Keep it going, don’t let up.

Finally, every Olympian -– and every Olympic Games -– desires to leave a shining legacy. One motto of London is: “Inspire a Generation.” That’s wonderful. But let’s not leave the inspiration solely in the athletic realm and the scope of individual growth and success. The Olympic Global Hunger Event can inspire a generation to achievements bigger than themselves.

Faster, higher, stronger not for one, but for all.

TAGS: Agriculture, Food, Food security, Thrive