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Hunger summit
passes toothless declaration The following article
by the Inter-Press Service (
Development:
Hunger summit passes toothless declaration The UN Food and
Agriculture Organisation (FAO) is holding the three-day summit after
the number of hungry people crossed the one-billion mark for the first
time this year, meaning that almost a sixth of the global population
does not have enough to eat. Despite this, almost
all of the planet's most powerful leaders, including United States President
Barack Obama, snubbed the event. The FAO failed in its bid to establish
a target of eradicating hunger by 2025 and to get rich countries to
commit to spending $44 billion a year in agricultural aid. "It's a bit
of a damp squib," Sarah Gillam of anti-poverty organisation ActionAid
told States reaffirmed
their commitment to the UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the
number of hungry people by 2015, and promised "to take action towards
sustainably eradicating hunger at the earliest possible date." They also pledged
to "substantially increase the share of ODA (official development
assistance) devoted to agriculture and food security," although
no target figure or time-frame was given. "Taking out
the date of 2025 for the total elimination of hunger and cancelling
the need to allocate $44 billion a year to support agriculture... render
this declaration a document devoid of any concrete instruments to make
the fight against hunger effective," said Sergio Marelli, chief
of the advisory panel for the parallel forum staged by NGOs from around
the world. FAO director-general
Jacques Diouf insisted that approval of the declaration was a success,
as the member nations have endorsed a new strategy to fight hunger by
pledging to end the long-running decline in agricultural investment,
one of the main culprits for the high levels of undernourishment, and
to focus on the plight of small-holder farmers. "The declaration
was approved this morning unanimously. This is a good sign for us,"
Diouf told a news conference. "I totally believe that it was a
significant step forward towards the total eradication of hunger in
a generation's time." However, he did
not hide his disappointment about the failure to obtain binding goals
and commitments. "I'm satisfied
with the fact that we arrived at a consensus on a declaration. I'm satisfied
also with the thrust of what is in the declaration," he said. "But I'm not
satisfied with the fact that some of the concrete proposals I made,
based on the fact that if we set a target we must quantify it in terms
of a date, (were not accepted). The negotiations were not able to fix
a date for the eradication of hunger... There was no consensus and I
regret it. It was the same (with agricultural aid)... But I was not
the one who negotiated the document." Diouf wanted $44
billion in aid for agriculture each year, primarily to enable small-holder
farmers in developing countries to feed themselves as well as helping
the world achieve the goal of increasing food production by 70 percent
to meet the needs of a population likely to reach 9.1 billion by 2050. The FAO argues that
much of this money could come from raising the share for agriculture
in ODA, which totalled $119.8 billion in 2008, to 18-19 percent from
the current level of around five percent. This money is needed
to increase farmers' access to irrigation systems, modern machinery,
seeds and fertilisers, as well as improving rural infrastructure and
roads so they can obtain the inputs they need and take their goods to
market. They also need help
to adapt their practices to climate change, with impacts in terms of
falling yields and extreme weather expected to hit developing countries
hardest, especially in sub-Saharan "This summit
announced a new strategy to tackle hunger by focusing on the poorest
farmers - but it is un-costed, unfunded and unaccountable," said
Oxfam's Gawain Kriple. "The sentiment is honourable but that alone
does not put food on a billion empty plates." Italian Prime Minister
Silvio Berlusconi said the meeting built on progress made at July's
G8 summit in "At the G8
summit, we defined the principles of a global partnership (for agriculture,
food security and nutrition) that unites all private and public forces
for food security to form a winning strategy, the success of which everyone
can and should contribute to," said Berlusconi, the only leader
of a G8 country to come. "This awareness
has already started... to translate into deeds. Now, there is the concrete
willingness of everyone to pursue with tenacity and the right tools
the goal of guaranteeing hundreds of millions of human beings dignity,
freedom and hope, as well as nutrition." Developing nations
were concerned that the eloquent talk would not be followed up by action
and that their food sovereignty could be threatened. "We are pleased
that this conference has centred on such an important problem,"
"We think this
is not enough because it may stay just a declaration. If we follow the
path of what has happened before, this (money) may come as food aid,
which is not what our countries need. "We need agricultural
aid to build the capacity to produce our own food; aid that is managed
by the countries themselves within their own policies. We don't want
to have programmes that are built and directed from foreign areas. This
is the important thing we feel is lacking." Some reports have
claimed that less than a quarter of the money the G8 promised will actually
be new, and ActionAid said the failure to set up a mechanism that monitors
whether such pledges are respected is another major let-down. "We need a
bit of transparency. No one knows how much money is given and how much
money is new," Gillam said. "So we need accountability for
people to have faith in the process." The nations' refusal
to commit to eradicating hunger by 2025 may in part be down to the fact
that this commitment might sound hollow given that the target of halving
hunger by 2015, first set at the 1996 Food Summit in Rome when around
825 million did not have enough to eat, is unlikely to be reached. Indeed, the world
has moved in the opposite direction, with some 100 million people joining
the ranks of the hungry this year alone because of the effects of the
financial crisis and of still high food costs after the 2007-08 spike
in the price of staples like wheat and rice. One of the most
hotly awaited speeches was that of Pope Benedict XVI, who criticised
speculation in food commodities that contributed to the soaring prices,
and said hunger can only be beaten by tackling poverty and social injustice. "There is a
continuing disparity in the level of development within and among nations
that leads to instability in many parts of the world, accentuating the
contrast between poverty and wealth," the Pontiff said. "If the aim
is to eliminate hunger, international action is needed not only to promote
balanced and sustainable economic growth and political stability, but
also to seek out new parameters - primarily ethical but also juridical
and economic ones - capable of inspiring the degree of cooperation required
to build a relationship of parity between countries at different stages
of development. "Hunger is the most cruel and concrete sign of poverty. Opulence and waste are no longer acceptable when the tragedy of hunger is assuming ever greater proportions." +
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