UCC Professor to Chair GORTA Hunger Secretariat
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UCC Professor to Chair GORTA Hunger Secretariat
21.06.2010

Minister for Foreign Affairs, Micheal Martin, TD recently launched the newly established Gorta Hunger Secretariat in Dublin, accompanied by Mr. Salil Shetty, Director of the UN Millennium Campaign (New York) and Dr Kostas Stamoulis, Director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (Rome).

UCC Emeritus Professor Denis Lucey has been appointed Chairman of the  Gorta Hunger Secretariat which was established to maintain an unrelenting focus on world hunger for the next five years and to support the sustained delivery on international pledges and promises through  tangible and successful actions focused on the 1.02 billion people in the world who are now suffering from chronic hunger.  “The first Millennium Development Goal - halving Hunger by 2015 - now looks so far off target that massive sustained efforts, political recommitments and action on international promises are needed across the globe if we are to make a serious dent in this intolerable situation over the next five years”, said Minister Martin. “It is time that we work together” said Dr Stamoulis of the FAO “to remove the scourge of hunger from the Face of the Earth” “The world is watching and it is expecting results.” he said. “World Hunger is one of the greatest embarrassments of our time”, said Salil Shetty of the UN, “and we have been saying this for a long time but we have not being doing enough about it for the past few decades and I think that is coming home to roost now.”

 “What Gorta is doing here in launching this new Secretariat is very timely and I am really thrilled that Gorta has taken this initiative” said Salil Shetty.  “Gorta’s Hunger Secretariat is a welcome new development in advancing the recommendations of the Irish Hunger Task Force”, said Minister Martin, while Dr Stamoulis added  “I am happy to say that Gorta and FAO are expanding their collaboration on policy work at country level and I hope there will be more in the future.”  “The Gorta Hunger Secretariat is being established by the Board of Gorta”, said Prof Lucey “to spearhead our determination to galvanise our own activities over the next five years , as well as  those of anybody we can influence around the world, at home and abroad, to Make Hunger History.”

Video highlights of the launch of the Gorta Hunger Secretariat may be viewed at http://www.gorta.org/media-centre/307   

Pictured in Dublin at the launch of GORTA’s Hunger Secretariat (from left):  Dr Kostas Stamoulis,  Director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division, FAO (Rome); Mr Micheál Martin, TD, Minister for Foreign Affairs; Salil Shetty, Director of the UN Millennium Campaign (New York) and Professor Denis Lucey, Chairman of the GORTA Hunger Secretariat.

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