In the 1996 World Food Summit and later in 2000 in the Millennium Declaration,
countries committed themselves to decreasing by half the number and the proportion
of people suffering from hunger by 2015. Hungry people are defined as not having
physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food for
meeting their dietary energy needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
FAO was given the mandate to monitor hunger reduction efforts by providing
estimates on people with food deprivation (hunger) in terms of proportion and
numbers. The bench-mark period for both World Food Summit and Development
Goals targets is 1990-92. The State of Food Insecurity in the World published by
FAO in 2006, indicates that more than 820 million people in the developing world
were undernourished in 2001-03.