The idea of holding the Scientific Symposium on Measurement and Assessment of Food Deprivation and Undernutrition had its origins after the World Food Summit of 1996. It was felt that bringing together those who deal scientifically with methods and applications of those methods for the measurement of hunger would greatly enhance FAO's mandate to measure and monitor progress towards the goal of halving the number of hungry by the year 2015. We are grateful for the support of the Government of The Netherlands through the FAO-Netherlands Partnership Programme that made possible the gathering of experts from many parts of the world to discuss with us this extremely important issue.
