Berlin (epd). Federal President Frank-Walter Steinmeier has called for donations for Welthungerhilfe. “Hunger is always cruel, but it has very different faces. Hundreds of millions of people around the world suffer from ‘silent hunger’,” said Steinmeier on Sunday on the occasion of Welthungerhilfe Week. “Although they do not have an empty stomach, they lack vital nutrients because their meals consist almost exclusively of corn, cassava or rice.” As patron of Welthungerhilfe, he called on the population to do so in 1962 on the initiative of the then Federal President Heinrich Lübke ( CDU) to support the aid organization founded.
Women are particularly often affected, said the Federal President. The situation is particularly dramatic in South Asia and in African countries south of the Sahara.
“Millions of girls and women work there on farms, in family businesses, without being paid. And they have no chance of attending school, buying a piece of land or taking out a loan. They are not allowed to have a say in what is grown. And they often only eat what the men leave for them.” These women also suffered the most from the climate crisis. “When drought destroys crops, when journeys to fetch water become longer, when men migrate in search of work, then women and girls are hit particularly hard.”
