Eradicating extreme poverty and hunger by 2015 topped the eight Millennium Development Goals made by 169 countries in 2000.
But as we enter the last year of the decade, it seems this is still a distant and unrealistic dream.
The World Food Programme (WFP) estimates the number of people without enough food has reached 923 million - 17 per cent of the total world population, or one in six people.
Ten million people die every year because of lack of food and malnutrition.
The WFP, the world's largest food aid agency, delivers more than 40 million tonnes of food, feeding some 86 million people in 80 countries. Almost US$3 billion is spent on food aid every year. The idea of the WFP is to act as a safety net, with affluent countries contributing a fraction of their fortunes, in terms of food or cash, to feed people struggling to survive in developing countries, especially where natural disasters have struck or bloody conflicts break out.
The programme has been running for five decades, and there is no sign of relieving hunger. Instead all these figures only keep rising - it is 20 million more than 20 years ago. Last year because of the rise in food prices, a further 75 million people became undernourished.
Ethiopia is, sadly, a prime example. The country was famous for its famine in 1984, which affected 8 million people and killed 1 million. It caught global attention and led to a high-profile charity concert, Live Aid, featuring superstars like Madonna and Paul McCartney, in 1985. In the past 24 years the country has received more food aid than any other African nation. Yet today there are still 8.6 million people in Ethiopia who rely on relief food.
