April 26, 2002
Government representatives from 31 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean are working to build a global coalition to fight hunger, while non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from the region are focusing on making access to healthy food a constitutional right.
An international appeal for coordinated action against hunger is one of the proposals coming out of the 27th Regional Conference of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) for Latin America and the Caribbean, a three-day gathering of government representatives in Havana that ended today.
In parallel, delegates representing 42 food advocacy groups met in the Cuban capital for the second Regional Consultation of Non- governmental Organizations, drawing up their own proposals for constitutional guarantees for food security and promoting international solidarity in favor of food sovereignty.
The FAO conference's final report states that, to ensure that a global coalition against hunger performs effectively, industrialized countries must make specific commitment of financial resources calculated as a percentage of their gross domestic product (GDP). The document says the volume of funds should correspond to the magnitude of the hunger problem and should be channelled through the U.N. in order to avoid politically based stipulations
The FAO regional conference's final declaration reiterates the call made by many U.N. agencies for industrialized countries to comply with their pledge to earmark 0.7 percent of GDP for official assistance for international development.
The Havana meeting served as a preparatory session for the World Food Summit: Five Years Later, to be held in Rome Jun. 10-13 with the participation of heads of state.
In their own final declaration, the NGOs state that governments and the international community have failed to comply with one of their fundamental obligations to protect human rights because they do not guarantee the right to healthy food for all.
The civil society groups stress that the human right to food, food sovereignty and development should serve as the basis of policies aimed at fomenting food security.
FAO director-general Jacques Diouf warned here on Apr. 24 that halving the number of people in the world who suffer hunger -- currently some 815 million -- is not likely to be achieved by 2015, the deadline set at the 1996 summit.
In Latin America and the Caribbean, said Diouf, the number of hungry people -- estimated at 54 million -- has not been reduced at the rate needed to meet the 2015 target.
"At the current rate, there will still be 45 million chronically malnourished people in the region by that year, instead of 29 million," said the FAO chief.
According to the U.N. agency, the population suffering hunger has been reduced at a pace of six million people a year, but to achieve the goal set for 2015, the rate must accelerate to 22 million a year.
The notion of a global coalition against hunger has been discussed at several of the preparatory regional conferences for the Rome summit, and the focus now is how to move from theory to an effective and positive practice, said Diouf.
The lack of political will and the shrinking resources dedicated to the farming sector are the main obstacles standing in the way of achieving the goals set by the international community for curbing hunger and malnutrition, says the FAO director-general.
Official development assistance provided by industrialized countries dropped 43 percent in real terms in the 1990-1999 period, while the portion of aid from the World Bank and regional financial institutions fell 40 percent, according to Diouf.
The FAO Technical Committee, which met in Havana Apr. 22-23, concluded that the main barriers to food security in Latin America and the Caribbean are poverty and lack of development. These barriers translate into a lack of purchasing power for the poorest sectors of the population, impeding their physical and economic access to food, says the committee's report.
Furthermore, says the document, the use of natural resources for production depends on the potential for access to markets, and therefore also requires removing the current barriers and distortions existing in the industrialized world's agricultural markets that hurt developing countries' farm exports.
The Technical Committee states that farm subsidies in the industrialized North are the main cause of market distortion because they bring down prices, undermine the competitiveness of developing countries, and reduce their productive capacity and sources of employment.
In agreement with that analysis, the regional conference called on the entire FAO to conduct qualitative studies of food commodity prices to establish for each case whether the price decline is a result of government subsidies or to economic efficiency.
According to the NGOs gathered here this week, the reasons behind hunger and malnutrition involve various factors beyond those mentioned by the government delegates to the FAO conference.
Alberto Ercilio Broch, of Brazil's National Confederation of Farm Workers, said in an interview with IPS that the causes lie in the inequitable distribution of productive resources and of income, not to the lack of food production.
Broch said that governments programs providing technical assistance have all but disappeared, which, along with the lack of sound agricultural policies, deepens poverty among residents of rural areas.
"The vast majority of the hungry live in the countryside," said the Brazilian activist.
According to the FAO, 64 percent of the rural population in Latin America and the Caribbean is poor and 38 percent are indigent.
The NGOs' final declaration states that "food sovereignty is a fundamental condition for eradicating hunger and malnutrition, and for guaranteeing lasting and sustainable food security."
The regional FAO declaration included an appeal for support in training experts from Latin America and the Caribbean to take part in multilateral trade negotiations, in order to reduce the disadvantages that developing countries face when engaging in such talks with the industrialized nations.
Among the proposals coming out of the official three-day meet are an initiative to support development programs coordinated by rural women or youth and to continue promoting South-South cooperation.
The regional conference also agreed to present a proposal at the World Food Summit for the creation of an inter-governmental working group to draw up a voluntary code of conduct on the right to food, to be completed within two years.
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