Countries with plenty of food and resources aren’t doing enough to alleviate the chronic hunger that plagues close to 800 million people in the developing world, says a United Nations agency.
Jacques Diouf, director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, has launched a high profile international campaign to promote a stronger commitment to fighting widespread, persistent hunger in dozens of poor countries.
He called it a “stain” on the world and a political problem.
Diouf used a speech at the World Agricultural Forum in St. Louis, Missouri, on May 20 to announce another World Food Summit in Rome to turn up pressure on FAO donor countries.
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Then he flew to Cairo to tell a meeting of African leaders on May 21 that eradicating hunger is a goal “within our reach.”
World leaders or their food ministers will be invited to Rome Nov. 5-9 to explain why their 1996 commitment to cut world hunger in half within 20 years is so far behind schedule.
While the 1996 commitment would require moving 20 million people per year off the list of chronically undernourished, just eight million per year are falling off the list, he said. Diouf called the effort since 1996 “largely insufficient.”
He said there is a need to force governments to account for their failure, and a need for “strengthening the political will.”
The food summit would come the week before trade ministers meet in Qatar for the next World Trade Organization ministerial meeting on Nov. 9-13. One of its themes will be reducing agricultural subsidies.
Diouf noted that while the developed world spent $7.4 billion (US) in 1998 for official agricultural development assistance, it spent more than $360 billion in agricultural subsidies.
“This support is in accord with the WTO agreements, but there is little doubt that it gives the industrialized countries a competitive edge which poorer countries cannot match,” he said.
The FAO leader also warned that hunger creates political turmoil and danger.
“Hunger is often not just a result, but also a cause or a fueling component of conflict and civil strife and has direct influence on uncontrolled immigration and urbanization.”
In Cairo, he told African leaders that they should make food security a higher priority in their domestic policies.
“No state can be truly sovereign and earn respect if it has to ask other countries to give it food to feed its people.”
Texts of Diouf’s speeches were issued by FAO headquarters in Rome.
