The United Nation’s Food and Agricultural Organization hosted an international summit with the participation of 182 countries and European Union countries in Rome last month. The conference discussed ways to step up the political, financial and administrative measures to contain the chronic shortage of food by ensuring a steady supply of food to the millions under the grip of hunger and famine. The summit’s objective was to frame strategies to end the hunger with both short-term and long-term policies.
Participants declared their determination to halve the number of hungry people, currently estimated at 815 million, by 2015.
According to the FAO reports, 777 million in the Third World suffer from hunger and malnutrition while their number is put at 27 million in developing countries and 11 million in industrially advanced countries. The statistics also showed that 25,000 people die of hunger or malnutrition every day.
The final statement of the summit, which was somewhat a repetition of the 1996 declaration, appealed to the governments, the private sector and other organizations to work as an international alliance against hunger.
The final statement also emphasized the need for policies to implement “the right to food” strategy gradually .
The final statement, which was devoid of any serious attempt to guarantee an end to the scourge of hunger and malnutrition, has come under fire from the non-governmental organizations, which met in Rome simultaneously.
The chairman of the Italian NGOs accused Premier Silvio Berlusconi of not being aware of the fact that more than 815 million are hungry in the world. He described the summit as an unproductive and wasted exercise. The participants in the NGO conference said the policy makers of the advanced countries do not realize that the root cause of the hunger and famines is the flooding of agricultural products in the poor countries and the privatization of natural resources such as water, animal, forest, and fishing sources. The social movements resisting the new world order are subjected to brutal suppression, the NGO’s pointed out. The summit was also described as a summit of hypocrisy, show-off and pretensions.
The Malaysian representative suggested that the FAO become more independent and powerful with the full authority to monitor the trade in agricultural and food products instead of the World Trade Organization, which only widen the gulf between the rich and the poor.
It is notable that the final statement demanded the formation of an international alliance against hunger. This alliance, obviously, is more significant than the US-led alliance against terror because hunger is more difficult to solve than terrorism.
The summit, apparently, did not come up with new effective strategies to fight the shortage of food. The eloquent words and profuse promises to elevate the economic level of the poor countries without supportive actions will not end poverty and malnutrition but only increase the malady year after year.
