Concern CEO Tom Arnold to Attend Downing Street Olympics Global Hunger Event
Press release
Concern CEO Tom Arnold to attend Downing Street Olympics Global Hunger Event
“Hugely significant” that British Prime Minister David Cameron to chair high-level international event at No. 10 on final day of London 2012 Olympic Games.
Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s leading humanitarian organisation, is pleased to announce that its CEO, Tom Arnold, has accepted an invitation to attend a high-level international Global Hunger Event at No. 10 Downing St on 12th August.
British Prime Minister David Cameron will chair the event.
Timed to coincide with the closing ceremony of London 2012 later that day, the meeting is intended to leave a lasting legacy from the Olympics by galvanising political momentum to strengthen global efforts to reduce hunger and undernutrition, which affect 171 million children in the developing world.
The event will bring together heads of state, members of the private sector and international non-governmental organisations.
“Ireland is widely recognised as a world leader not only in combating hunger and undernutrition in the world’s poorest countries but in working behind the scenes to keep it very much on the international political and diplomatic agenda at the highest levels. It is hugely significant that this is happening on the final day of the Olympics,” said Mr Arnold.
“I am delighted to accept this invitation and to put the focus very much on Concern and Irish Aid’s expertise in, and prioritisation of, the issue of child undernutrition,” he added. “Millions of children in the developing world are both physically and mentally stunted due to undernutrition in the first 1,000 days of life, from which they cannot recover.
“If we can bring further international political momentum behind this issue at this meeting, it will be a very positive outcome for all concerned.”
ENDS
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Notes to Editors:
About Underrnutrition and Stunting.
Undernutrition during the first 1,000 days of a child’s life is particularly critical and can cause death or development problems such as stunted growth or cognitive impairment, the effects of which are irreversible. Analysts say that undernutrition causes around a third of deaths in children before the age of five. These growth and cognitive problems cause a decline in productivity in the individual, and this could result in declines of GDP of 2-3 per cent a year. An individual can also miss out on more than 10% of their potential life time earnings.
Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) Movement
SUN was initiated in 2010 to enable sustained and demonstrable reductions in the number of people, especially children, affected by poor nutrition. It is recognised as the most promising global mechanism for delivering technical support and coordinating global stakeholder action to tackle undernutrition.
28 countries have committed to follow the principles of the SUN Movement, focusing particularly on improving nutrition during the vulnerable period of 1,000 days between pregnancy and a child’s second birthday.
About Tom Arnold
In April 2012, Mr Arnold was appointed by the Secretary General of the United Nations, Mr Ban Ki-moon, to the Lead Group of the SUN (Scaling Up Nutrition) Movement, a high-level, multi-stakeholder international working group charged with providing leadership to the global project aimed at tackling child hunger in the world’s poorest countries. The Lead Group also includes former President Mary Robinson, the prime ministers of Bangladesh, Nepal and Namibia, and the presidents of Mozambique and Tanzania. It is chaired by Mr Tony Lake, Executive Director of UNICEF.
Tom Arnold was appointed Chief Executive of Concern Worldwide, Ireland’s largest humanitarian organisation, in 2001.
In 2003, he was appointed to the UN Millennium Project Hunger Task Force which worked to devise a strategy to halve world hunger by 2015. He was a member of the UN’s Central Emergency Response Fund’s (CERF) Advisory Group (2006-09) and was Chairman of the European Food Security Group (EFSG) from (2005-10).
As well as being a member of the SUN Movement Lead Group, he is currently a member of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s (IFPRI) 2020 Advisory Council.
He was elected in 2010 to the nine member Board of the Consultative Group for International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) charged with leading the reform of the international agriculture research system.
He is a graduate in Agricultural Economics from University College Dublin and has Masters Degrees from the Catholic University of Louvain and Trinity College Dublin.