Shameful Trend Continues

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World Food Summit "Five Years Later":
Shameful Trend Continues
UN FAO Head on Rome Food Summit
The Right to Food

More than Nine Million Cuban People Take to the Streets

Five years ago the international community set the goal of lowering the numbers of the hungry by 20 million a year, with the aim of arriving at the year 2015 with 400 million people less going to bed hungry. At the 1996 World Food Summit held in Rome, 185 nations signed a commitment to cut the number of hungry people in half by 2015. There, Cuban President Fidel Castro made waves – echoing the feelings of many – when he called that goal "shameful" for its abandonment of any notion of eliminating hunger.

Subsequent trends have been more shameful still.

Why do more than 800 million people still go hungry in a world marked by incredible affluence? 180 nations gathered in Rome once again from June 10 to 13 to address that question at the "World Food Summit: Five Years Later" meeting. The current Summit was called to examine why hunger persists despite the 1996 Plan of Action. Progress has lagged by at least 60 percent behind the goals for the first five years, and today, conditions are worsening in much of the world. Continuing with the same policy orientation, it will be impossible to meet even the 2015 goal, let alone eliminate hunger.

Global hunger is reported to be decreasing at a rate of 6 million people a year, because of growth in China and Southeast Asia. But it needs to decline by 22 million people a year to meet the 1996 goal of halving the number of the hungry by 2015.

Humanity understands that this huge mass of people are starving not because of a lack of food. Should not the global system of production, distribution and exchange be considered? What underlies the deficiencies in production and most of all the inequalities in distribution?

The point of departure at the World Food Summit under the auspices of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was the recognition of the total failure to take the step of addressing the causes of hunger and admitting that far for reducing the number of hungry people, each year more human beings are going hungry. Even if the number of hungry people failed to grow each year, at the current rate it would take 60 years to eliminate hunger, which kills 24 thousand people each day, most of whom are women and children. There is one death every four seconds for lack of food in a world that produces in abundance.

Hunger and poverty today cause more deaths than armed conflicts. The people who appear to be concerned are the victims themselves and not those who are in large part responsible for this human tragedy. At the UN World Food Summit, of the 29 most developed countries, just two heads of government were present and one of them was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was obliged to attend since the event was taking place in Rome. The other, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, attended as rotating president of the European Union.

Britain’s International Development Secretary, Clare Short, said that the summit was a waste of time and sent a junior official, so that uniquely among the contributions to the Conference, the statement of the Department for International Development was issued anonymously. Clare Short declared: "I’m not sending a minister because I don’t expect it to be an effective summit. It’s an old-fashioned UN organisation and it needs improvement."

Silvio Berlusconi said at the final press conference on Thursday that fatigued perhaps by a series of mega-summits, world leaders had to govern and could not spend days in summits.

But earlier, South African President Thabo Mbeki told Reuters news agency he thought it a shame that more political leaders had not arrived. "I suppose that's because they don't think the problem of 800 million people going hungry in the world is important. I think that shows insufficient concern about human life."

That it was a low-profile conference, attended by the leaders of just two industrialised countries, was in UN terms in effect a kiss of death because it meant that new commitments or major announcements of innovative projects or aid injections were unlikely to flow.

The 182 governments at the four-day summit pledged no new aid commitments for hunger, reiterating instead the still-unmet goal of halving the number of the hungry that was set at the first food summit six years ago.

They also showed little evidence of dealing with controversial issues such as the agricultural subsidies that developing-country leaders in Rome said kept them poor and their people hungry, and reflected the double standards of industrialised countries who otherwise call for freer trade.

The FAO authorities estimate the amount needed to achieve the goal of reducing the numbers of hungry by half by the year 2015 at 24 billion dollars. That is too much to pay for the African countries, which account for 25 per cent of the world's hungry. Nor can the nations of Asia and Latin America afford it, but it is a minuscule amount for the great powers that spend ten times as much on defence projects in space or developing sophisticated weapons of mass destruction.

Non-governmental organisations (NGOs) holding parallel meetings decried as a disgrace the triumph of the biotechnology industry in pushing its agenda at the conference.

In a key departure from the 1996 declaration, which was silent on the issue, this summit declaration states openly: "We are committed to study, share and facilitate the responsible use of biotechnology in addressing development needs."

It also asks for advancement of "research into new technologies, including biotechnology". It added: "The introduction of tried and tested new technologies including biotechnology should be accomplished in a safe manner and adapted to local conditions to help improve agricultural productivity in developing countries."

"We will fight to stop genetic engineering and the patenting of life and demand an immediate ban of terminator and similar genetic use restriction technologies," said Sarojeni Rengam of the Malaysia-based Pesticide Action Network (PAN).

Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) also came to dominate the conference, though FAO director general Jacques Diouf said they were not an immediate solution to ending endemic hunger. The NGO Forum, representing 700 organisations, demanded a moratorium on the use of GMOs, rejecting the compromise model proposed by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan at the start of the summit.

"GMOs are not the way to solve the problem of world hunger. There are too many health risks, they make small farmers dependent on large multinational corporations, and they will mean the end of biodiversity," said Sergio Marelli, president of the NGO Forum.

Brazilian activist Flavio Luz Schieck Valente added: "The agreement to increase research on biotechnology shows the pressure the United States put on the summit. In this way, the summit serves the industry, not the people."

"Rural women continue to be grossly under-represented in decision-making processes and are often 'missed targets' in the design, implementation, monitoring of agricultural and rural development policies and programs," said gender activists in a statement released to the World Food Summit.

The Rome meeting was a case in point. The plenary – symbolically the epicentre of the conference – was a sea of male suits. Women led fewer than 10 national delegations. It is essential, argued the activists and politicians at the side meeting, for women to have equal access to resources such as water and land. It is also vital for them to be in decision-making positions.

"Without land as collateral, women are also cut off from access to credit. And without credit, they often cannot buy essential inputs – such as seeds, tools and fertiliser – or invest in irrigation and land improvements," the FAO says.

"The role of women in agriculture is crucial," the Swedish Minister for Agriculture, Margareta Winburg, said. She added that she would like to see rural women take up a prominent role in the sustainable development debates getting into gear as the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August draws closer.

NGOs castigated the conference outcome, arguing that it was in fact a step backward. "This new Plan of Action continues the error of more of the same failed medicine with destructive prescriptions that will make the situation even worse," Sarojeni Rengam argued.

"Far from analysing and correcting the problems that have made it impossible to make progress over the past five years toward eliminating hunger, this new plan of action compounds the error of 'more of the same failed medicine'," said a parallel declaration by NGOs on Thursday.

The World Food Summit had a predetermined agenda: by Tuesday, the second day, all countries at the conference had agreed on a declaration that only recommitted them to meeting the target to halve hunger by 2015.

The declaration did not advance any of the old commitments or enshrine a right to food, an issue that many had been looking forward to under the concept of "food sovereignty". It called on all stakeholders in society "to make voluntary contributions to the FAO Trust Fund for food security and other voluntary instruments".

The original declaration proposed an international code of conduct on food rights, but this was watered down amid concerns by countries like the United States about the legal implications such language about the right to food.

In the end, the declaration called for "voluntary guidelines" to achieve the right to adequate food, to be done by FAO and its stakeholders two years from this summit.

Likewise, a proposal, called simply the "anti-hunger plan" and jointly penned by Harvard University economist Jeffrey Sachs and the FAO, got short shrift, although it tried to put a realistic price tag on ending hunger. Sachs has calculated that it would take US$24 billion to deal with hunger – and proposes joint funding by national governments and donors.

Now it is likely that the plan will be taken to the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in August, where its authors hope there will be a greater understanding of food security as a primary social development indicator.

While the official documents prepared for the "Five Years Later" meeting decry a "lack of will" and call for "more resources" to be directed at reducing hunger, the fact is that more fundamental changes are needed.

Research carried out by the Institute for Food and Development Policy reveals that since 1996 governments have presided over a set of policies that have conspired to undercut peasant, small and family farmers, and farm co-operatives in nations both North and South. These policies have included:

– runaway trade liberalisation;

– pitting family farmers in the Third World against the subsidised corporate farms in the North (witness the recent US Farm Bill);

– forcing Third World countries to eliminate price supports and subsidies for food producers;

– the privatisation of credit;

– the excessive promotion of exports to the detriment of food crops;

– the patenting of crop genetic resources by corporations who charge farmers for their use;

– and a bias toward expensive and questionable technologies like genetic engineering while virtually ignoring pro-poor alternatives like organic farming and agroecology.

Increasingly, poor farmers find that credit is inadequate or too expensive to cover their rising production costs, buyers of their crops are more scarce and monopolistic than ever, and prices are too low to cover credit and production costs. The net result has been a significant and continued deterioration in poor farmers' access to land, as they are forced to sell land they own, cannot afford land rentals, or lose land by defaulting on loans.

The worst hunger in the world is found in rural areas, where the landless are the poorest of the poor. Yet governments have dragged their feet in implementing already existing land reform and land re-distribution policies, and have resisted efforts – sometimes using force – by people's organisations and landless movements to push the implementation of these policies, the Institute charges.

These same governments have stood by as land has increasingly been turned into a commercial asset out of reach for the poor, and watched passively as business interests – both agricultural (i.e. plantations) and non-agricultural (i.e. petroleum exploration) – have encroached on communal and public lands, and on the territories of indigenous peoples.

Furthermore, governments have done nothing while agricultural commodity chains become increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few transnational corporations who, by virtue of their near-monopoly status, are increasingly setting costs and prices unfavourable to farmers, putting all, especially the poorest, in an untenable cost-price squeeze, thus encouraging the massive abandonment of agriculture and migration to urban slums.

In contrast, hundreds of farmers' movements and nongovernmental organisations came to Rome from around the world to hold their own Forum – the "World Forum on Food Sovereignty" – in parallel with the official Summit.

They demanded that governments take agriculture out of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which forces countries to open their borders to the cheap, dumped food imports that drive their own farmers out of business, off the land, and into hunger. They called for true land reform, to put good quality land in the hands of those who would sow it, rather than those who can afford to buy it.

They demanded that the fundamental right to food – recognised in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – be made a reality by the enforcement of "food sovereignty". This refers to the rights of peasants and family farmers to grow food for their own nations, and rights of poor consumers to enough to eat.

The events in Rome underlined that in a world where food has become a political instrument and a force at the service of the powerful to bring people to their knees, the fight against hunger is connected with the struggle of the world’s people for their national and social emancipation. The suffering from hunger which has continued for centuries and which the productive capacity of humanity is capable of solving cannot be laid at the feet of simply the "lack of political will" of the rich countries, nor at just a simple lack of food of the poor.

As the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) concluded a review conference on June 13 on progress towards achieving global anti-hunger goals set in 1996, a senior UN official said the event had advanced the cause of food security.

"These past four days have been for us an important step towards our common objective: to eradicate hunger from a world where it should have disappeared long ago," said Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO.

Jacques Diouf praised participants for adopting, on the first day of the meeting, a Declaration which reconfirms their commitment to halving the number of the world's hungry people – currently estimated at 800 million – by the year 2015.

The FAO chief stressed that the elimination of hunger was not only a moral imperative but would benefit today's interdependent world.

He also announced that during the conference 53 countries, plus the European Community, had signed the International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture. He appealed for speedy ratification of the pact, which had been negotiated through FAO last year.

Addressing conference on food security, "World Food Summit: Five Years Later", prominent economist Jeffrey Sachs on June 12 had urged greater investments in agriculture as a means of saving millions of people from starvation and death.

"The world has the means and the know-how to end hunger and poverty but it has lacked the ability to move from words to action," he said. "There is absolutely no excuse for a further lack of progress in the fight against hunger and poverty," added Mr. Sachs, who was recently named Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City. He also serves as a Special Adviser to UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on the Millennium Development Goals.

Arguing that small contributions could add up to large gains, he said, "We in the rich countries need to put aside 5 cents out of every $100. This investment could serve to save millions of people from starvation and death."

He blamed the current lack of progress on the absence of political will. "If the rich countries provide important investment to agriculture and rural areas in poor countries, the poor will live, they will grow out of poverty and have a better future," he said. "So far, the rich countries have not really made the commitment to resolve the world hunger problem."

Mr. Sachs stressed the need to finance efforts to reach the UN Millennium Development Goals, which include halving the number of hungry people in the world – from 800 million to 400 million – by the year 2015. "Without added assistance from the rich countries, we will not make any progress," he said, adding, "We also require leadership from poor and rich countries, from industry, non-governmental organisations and scientists."

In addition, he hailed as "realistic" an anti-hunger drive being championed by the FAO. That effort calls for a twin-track approach to fighting hunger, combining agricultural and rural development with targeted programmes to help more of the world's neediest people to gain adequate access to food.

Following is the intervention of Mary Robinson, High Commissioner for Human Rights (United Nations High Commission for Human Rights – UNHCR), at the "World Food Summit: Five Years Later".

Madame Chair, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen, those of you who have sat and listened so patiently are about to be rewarded. You are about to receive a rich diet of human rights, as the real cure for world hunger.

The 1996 Rome Summit in its Plan of Action invited my office to undertake, in collaboration with others, a better definition of the rights related to food in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. That task has been completed successfully. The process involved a wide range of consultations with individual experts, treaty bodies, specialised agencies and programmes, with the Special Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the right to food, Professor Ziegler, as well as with non-governmental organisations.

The scope of the definition, and the obligations it places on States, are best captured in the General Comment, being the jurisprudence adopted by the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. General Comment No. 12 gives an authoritative interpretation of the right to adequate food. The Special Rapporteur has made an important contribution in constructing a better understanding of the right to food linked to safe drinking water and you will hear from him later.

The 1996 Summit also asked my Office to propose ways to realise the rights related to food as a means to achieve the commitments and objectives of the World Food Summit. From a human rights perspective, this concerns the implementation of the right by the primary duty holder, the state. We can report some progress on this task as well. Some 20 countries have adopted constitutions which, in more or less explicit terms, refer to rights concerning food or a related norm. A smaller number have developed legislative means to ensure enjoyment of the right to food in a comprehensive way. My detailed Report to the Summit illustrates this with the good example of Norway. There have been welcome examples also of judicial consideration an enforcement of the right in different countries and an important decision of the Indian Supreme Court showing the justifiability of the right to food, is referred to in the Report. But much more effort is needed on implementation of the right at national level.

The shocking reality is that although there are sufficient food resources in the world, we have all here acknowledged today that we are not progressing at the necessary pace to reach the target set in 1996 reiterated by the Millennium Declaration in 2000, of halving the number of hungry by 2015. This is morally and legally unacceptable. As we gather here it is estimated that nearly 13 million people in Southern Africa will face famine in the coming months. In addition, certain groups, such as HIV/AIDS affected persons and women in rural areas, in particular, can have great difficulties in coping as a result of discrimination or lack of accountability on the part of States. As we begin to discuss how to shape a more ethical globalisation it is clear that food security must be an overall priority.

Therefore, we must move beyond rhetoric and put the realisation of the right to adequate food at the centre of the new agenda. I was very glad to see the right to adequate food expressly referred to in paragraph 10 of the Declaration adopted this morning. The focus now has to be on implementation. I believe it would be helpful to work further on agreeing on practical guidelines that may help States to identify measures to implement this right. The WFS-five years later should give a fresh impetus to international action on the implementation of the right to food. It should adopt a multi-track strategy in which States, the United Nations, the private sector, NGOs, and civil society generally join efforts to make the commitments of the World Food Summit, as reinforced by the Millennium Declaration, a reality.

Cubans filled the streets on June 12, from one end of the island to the other, to say "yes" to the constitutional reform proposed by representatives of civil society declaring the socialist system untouchable. They pronounced a loud "no" to the fascist methods outlined by George W Bush under the cloak of the anti-terrorist crusade, in a speech made at West Point. Eight hundred marches and 2,230 rallies took place throughout Cuba.

Cuban President Fidel Castro set off with more than one million residents from Havana and other cities, the packed throng taking four hours to pass in front of the US Interest Section. It was an impressive display of unity, in a world where representative democracies have become demo-injustice, demo-poverty, demo-malnutrition.

Throughout the rest of the country, in all municipalities, provincial capitals and rural settlements, the march was irrepressible. It is calculated that more than nine million people took part.

The march’s size would be without precedent in the world, fruit of a high level of culture, patriotism, awareness and knowledge, the Cuban president affirmed in a TV appearance on June 11, as preparations for the march were being completed.