Launching the "Zero Hunger" program in Vietnam

On January 14, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung attended the Launching Ceremony and Workshop to launch the National Action Program “Zero Hunger”, an important initiative to eliminate hunger in Vietnam.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung speaks at the Workshop to launch the National Action Program "Zero Hunger"

The “Zero Hunger” initiative was first introduced by the United Nations Secretary-General at the Rio+20 Sustainable Development Conference in Brazil in June 2012, calling on all countries to join hands to end hunger and achieve sustainable development.

To achieve this goal in Viet Nam, the UN agencies in Viet Nam will work together to develop a national action plan to implement the National Action Plan on “Zero Hunger” in Viet Nam for the period 2016-2025. The action plan will support the Socio-Economic Development Plan for the next period, especially for the national target programs on sustainable poverty reduction and new rural development.

Speaking at the ceremony, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung stated that the right to access food is one of the basic human rights that was first stated in 1948 in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and affirmed in 1966 in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. In 2004, the FAO Council adopted the Voluntary Guidelines to support the continued implementation of the Right to Adequate Food in the context of national food security.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said that over the past decades, thanks to the efforts of each country and the active support of international organizations, led by FAO, food production in the world has achieved great achievements, food security has been improved, and many countries have become self-sufficient in food. However, ensuring food security, nutritional security and reducing poverty are still facing many difficulties and challenges, especially in developing countries in the Asia-Pacific region, where food production accounts for only 50% while the population accounts for over 60% of the world.

Currently, there are still 805 million hungry people in the world, more than 160 million children under 5 years old are malnourished, falling into a state of slow development. The state of "hidden hunger", due to the lack of essential nutrients such as vitamin A, iron and zinc is recorded in about 2 billion people...

In that context, the Vietnamese Government welcomes and highly appreciates the “Zero Hunger” initiative proposed by the United Nations Secretary-General to ensure a better life for all people in the world with the following pillars: everyone has enough food, no more malnourished children under 2 years old, sustainable food production systems, increased productivity and income for small-scale agricultural households and no more food loss or waste.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung said that thanks to the implementation of the Doi Moi policy, from a poor, underdeveloped country with food shortages, Vietnam has risen to become a middle-income developing country. In 2014, Vietnam exported more than 6.5 million tons of rice and many types of agricultural, forestry and fishery products with a total turnover of nearly 31 billion USD; the poverty rate was 7.6% and it had basically completed the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) launched by the United Nations.

To cope with the above challenges, the Vietnamese Government is implementing two major programs on new rural development and agricultural restructuring. Accordingly, Vietnam is synchronously implementing many solutions, in which the key solutions are promoting the application of science and technology and reorganizing production, linking production with the market towards strengthening linkages along the value chain; attracting investment resources for agriculture, while making efforts to implement measures to mitigate natural disasters and adapt to climate change.

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung emphasized that as one of the eight countries actively implementing the “One UN” initiative, Vietnam pledges to continue supporting and accompanying the United Nations in the process of implementing sustainable development goals. Vietnam’s participation in the “Zero Hunger” initiative not only demonstrates Vietnam’s responsibility to actively respond to the activities of the United Nations but also meets Vietnam’s practical requirements.

Participating in the “Zero Hunger” initiative will help Vietnam do better in poverty reduction, ensuring food security and nutrition security in rural areas, especially remote areas, ethnic minority areas and vulnerable groups in the Northwest and Central Highlands.

According to Infonet