A coalition of over 100 charities including many of the UK's most influential aid organisations is to launch what is being billed as the largest joint humanitarian campaign in the UK since Make Poverty History.
Enough Food For Everyone If, (IF), launching this evening in London, will put pressure on UK governments to prevent what the campaign estimates will be almost one billion young people trapped in poverty because of hunger and malnutrition by 2025.
Christian Aid, World Vision, Tearfund, Cafod, Oxfam, Unicef and One are among the charities lending their voices to the campaign which will insist on action in four main areas affecting food poverty: providing enough aid to help the world's poorest feed themselves; stopping tax avoidance by companies working in poorer countries; preventing farmers being forced off their land and encouraging governments to be transparent about their role in the food system. The launch at Somerset House tonight will directly call on the Prime Minister to tackle these 'Ifs'.
Northern Ireland is to play a key role in the campaign as attention will be focused on the country when it hosts the G8 Summit in County Fermanagh in June. This, together with the Hunger Summit, which will coincide with the G8 Summit, and the 2013 Budget will be targeted in the campaign.
The offensive will also be fought on the social battlefield with participants asked to spread the campaign via Twitter, Facebook and other networks. The launch event will feature a 12-minute Twitter-powered 3D animation during which time, campaigners advise, 52 children around the world will die from malnutrition, £2.3m in tax will be dodged by multinational companies operating in the world’s poorest countries, and the UK will have burnt enough food crops in our cars as biofuels to feed almost 90,000 people for a day.
At time of publication, on the first day of the campaign, the movement has been Tweeted over 5,500 times and shared on Facebook over 450 times.
Desmond Tutu is a supporter of IF: “Hunger is not an incurable disease or an unavoidable tragedy. We can make sure no child goes to bed hungry. We can stop mothers from starving themselves to feed their families. We can save lives. We can do all of this, IF we are prepared to do something about it," he said.
"If we challenge our leaders to take action. If they listen to us. It’s time the world’s decision-makers came to the right decision on hunger. It’s time to end the unnecessary suffering caused by the failure of the current food system. We can make hunger a thing of the past if we act now.”
IF is being compared to Make Poverty History, which launched in 2005 and became the biggest ever anti-poverty movement in the UK. The campaign encouraged millions of people to wear white bands, 444,000 people to email the Prime Minister about poverty and 225,000 to take to the streets of Edinburgh for the Make Poverty History march and rally.
