The World Food Programme (WFP) is to seek the advice of Bono, Nelson Mandela and former American president Jimmy Carter on how to deal with donor fatigue as the number of hungry people across the globe rises while food aid falls.
They have been invited by the WFP to join 80 senior executives and field officers in Dublin in June to discuss strategies for attracting aid for the cause.
Dublin was chosen for the WFP's five-yearly meeting because of Ireland's historic empathy with famine, and because Irish donations to the WFP had increased in the past five years.
The WFP's communications director, Mr Neil Gallagher, told The Irish Times yesterday that the problem was that people didn't see hunger "close-up".
"It's not a disease, it's not contagious, yet it claims more lives than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined," Mr Gallagher said.
"We have a hard sell. Most people don't realise that the numbers are going up. As natural disasters and political emergencies have risen in the past decade, there has been less money available for school feeding and programmes aimed at mothers and children because there always seems to be a finite amount to go around."
Mr Gallagher said that while WFP "has never had to sing for its supper", it was voluntarily funded and was caught between a combination of political and humanitarian crises, as in southern Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq.
At the same time there were a lot of natural disasters, so demand was outstripping the WFP's capacity to raise money.
While Ireland's aid contribution had increased, other countries had cut back on food donations because they had realigned priorities.
"We had 15 million tonnes [of food aid] in 1999, but 9.6 million tonnes last year," Mr Gallagher said.
The WFP hoped that Bono would attend and that his presence would provide much-needed inspiration.
It is awaiting confirmation that he will come. "Here is someone who went from the entertainment industry to come up with the right strategy to interest politicians and the media in Third World debt.
"We are looking for people with backgrounds in dealing with these huge issues."
In 2002, the agency fed 72 million people in 80 countries.
The emergency programme in North Korea is the agency's biggest but has seen the WFP criticised for pouring billions of dollars in aid into a country that does not allow monitoring to ensure grain is not syphoned off for the military and government.
Mr Gallagher said more than 6.5 million North Koreans, mostly pregnant women and young children, relied on WFP aid, which was rapidly falling short of need because of interrupted supply coupled with failed harvests. The agency is due to make a renewed appeal for North Korea on Monday.
New emergencies in southern Africa, including Sudan, Chad, Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, had taken the number of Africans in need of food aid to 40 million, he said.