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Bangladesh gets UN FAO award for fighting hunger

Bangladesh received a UN award yesterday for its outstanding progress in fighting hunger.
The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) gave the special “Diploma Award” to Bangladesh in recognition of the country’s reaching a key millennium development goal (MDG-1) well ahead of the target year 2015.
MDG-1 sets targets for countries to halve the incidence of hunger and the number of ultra-poor in the target year 2015 from that in the base year 1990.
Bangladesh along with 19 other countries received the FAO award at the UN body’s 38th conference held at its headquarters in Rome with participants from 194 countries.
Food Minister Mohammad Abdur Razzaque received the award from FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva, said an official release issued in Dhaka yesterday.
During the period from 1990 to 2012, Bangladesh’s population below the poverty line dropped to 29 percent from over 58 percent and the percentage of ultra-poor dropped to a little over 16 from 37.
The number of ultra-poor in Bangladesh was 3.72 crore in 1990 and it dropped to 2.53 crore in 2012, the release added.
Earlier, in a press release issued from Rome on June 12, FAO declared that 38 countries have met internationally-established targets in the fight against hunger, achieving successes ahead of the deadline 2015.
Bangladesh is among the 20 countries which have reached MDG-1, it said.
Eighteen other countries were congratulated for reaching both MDG-1 and the 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) goal, having reduced by half the absolute number of undernourished people between 1990-92 and 2010-2012.