World leaders and officials gathered in Rome Monday for a three-day summit on food security, aiming to relieve over 1 billion people in the world from hunger.

"The silent hunger crisis, affecting one sixth of all of humanity, poses a serious risk for world peace and security. We urgently need to forge a broad consensus on the total and rapid eradication of hunger in the world," Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), said on the eve of the summit.

The Rome-based FAO, which organized the event, warned the global food insecurity situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat for humanity.

With food prices remaining stubbornly high in developing countries, the number of people suffering from hunger has been growing relentlessly in recent years, while the global economic crisis is aggravating the situation by affecting jobs and deepening poverty.

It was estimated by the FAO that there were 1.02 billion people in the world suffering from hunger and malnutrition this year, more than at any other time, and a child dies of malnutrition every six seconds.

"This is our tragic achievement in these modern days when our technology allows us to travel to the moon and to space stations," Diouf said in an opening statement.

He called on rich countries to commit 44 billion U.S. dollars every year to help developing countries promote their agricultural production.

"The root cause of hunger and malnutrition is underinvestment in agriculture in developing countries," Diouf said. "... eliminating hunger from the face of Earth requires 44 billion U.S. dollars of official development assistance to be invested in infrastructures, technology and modern inputs."

Figures showed the part of total official development assistance going to agriculture dropped from 19 percent in 1980 to about 5 percent at present.

In a bid to show solidarity with the world's 1 billion hungry people, Diouf launched a 24-hour hunger strike on Friday, who was joined by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon on Sunday.

But a final draft declaration seen by Xinhua failed to contain any concrete figures of financial commitments. It only reiterated the goal of halving the number of hungry by 2015.

"We will reinforce all our efforts to meet by 2015 the targets," the draft said.

Aid groups also criticized that the declaration made no mention of a longer goal of eliminating hunger by 2025.

Around 60 world leaders were expected to join the summit, including Ban.

Chinese Vice Premier Hui Liangyu is going to attend the meeting.