The United Nations organized the 50th Geneva Graduate Study Program for post-graduate students at the Palais des Nations in Geneva from 2nd to 13th July 2012. The theme for the program was “Opportunities and Challenges in a world of 7 billion”. 65 young graduate students with different academic backgrounds were selected from all around the world. The main objective of the program was to discuss the role of the United Nations in multilateral solutions to global issues. United Nations senior officials and experts delivered lectures and panel discussions in various topics relating to the main theme of the school.
Several UN agencies discussed the issues of food and hunger in the 7-billion-people scenario. Ms Lauren R. Landis, who is the Director the World Food Program (WFP), elaborated her lecture with up-to-date fact and figure of famine and food scarcity around the world. War and natural disasters are major causes of malnourishment in many parts of the world. According to FAO statistics, 925 million people do not have adequate food, and 98 percent of them live in developing countries. In 2006, UNICEF revealed that in developing countries, there were five million children under five years old dying each year due to under-nutrition or malnutrition. According to 4th edition of UN-WWDR in 2012, most alarming are the situations in the Region in Africa, in Least Developed Countries (LDC) and within the whole developing regions, while in total, there is a reduction of undernourished people worldwide (see the Table 1 below).

Source: Indicators WWDR (2012)