Introduction Abject poverty breeds a many faceted dilemma. It plunges deep into the backwaters of ignorance and inability, sinking its sinister claws into that impenetrable and self-reinforcing triumvirate of endemic hunger, illiteracy and ill-health. The future begins to die away as a wounded nation clings to the crevices of judicial recourse in a desperate attempt to enforce the indefeasible and irrefragable substantive rights of every human person. Poverty forms a vicious circle, weaving together the soon inextricably intertwined elemental fibres of gender based discrimination and underdevelopment. Hunger, the greatest and most devastating phenomenon of them all, is the concomitant consequence of poverty,1 but hunger amongst children is more particularly detrimental to the existence of any society, for it stunts the mental and physical development of the future, thus perpetuating the vicious circle of poverty. State spo ....