EuropaWorld 19/10/2001 World Food Day Coincides With Call to Postpone Hunger Summit

Fifty-six years ago, in the grim and hungry aftermath of the Second World War, a conference in Quebec decided to create what has today become one of the most vital of United Nations Agencies - the Food and Agriculture Organisation. The day was October 16th and in 1979 the UN decided to mark the anniversary by observing a World Food Day. It has done so every year since.

Unsurprisingly the event has grown in popularity and in importance. It has become an occasion to draw attention to the millions - the UN estimate approximately 800 millions - among the world's populations who go to bed each night without having eaten sufficient food to provide adequately for their physical sustenance. At best this leaves them prey to disease and without energy to provide for their families, at worst it leads to an early death.

Either way countries whose peoples go hungry are impoverished. The theme this year was therefore 'Fight Hunger to Reduce Poverty' and it was celebrated, if that is the right word, in more than 150 countries.

In the United States the programme included a week long series of concerts; elsewhere the extent of global hunger was detailed in a global teach-in. In Rome, where the FAO has its headquarters, Queen Fabiola of Belgium joined the German President, and the Italian Agriculture Minister at a news conference presided over by Dr Jacques Diouf, the Senegalese head of the agency. Fighting hunger was a moral obligation, he said.

It is often thought that people go hungry because the world cannot support the numbers now living in it. This is untrue. The world could support many more people than it does now. The basic reason for hunger is poverty. Where money is available more land is brought into cultivation, irrigation can be provided, as well as other systems of farm support. Farmers in poor countries can afford to grow food to sell locally rather than crops such as coffee, cotton, tobacco which are sold abroad.

In Dr Diouf's words "the fight against hunger may be difficult, but it is a battle that can and must be won. Increased investment for agriculture, in particular in basic infrastructures of water control, rural roads and storage facilities, but also a policy environment favourable to increased farm income including social safety nets for the poor, are essential conditions for success." In other words, what is needed is money.

Five years ago the member states of the United Nations agreed to halve the numbers of hungry people. They gave themselves a twenty year timescale. There has been some progress but on the whole the results are disappointing. The target was to remove about 20 million from hunger each year, but at present the numbers of the hungry are only declining at less than a third of that rate. So something needs to be done.

That something was to have been a new World Food Summit that was supposed to have galvanised the donor nations of the world to commit to new action. It was to have taken place in Rome in the early part of next month. But it is a Summit that seems destined to be jinxed. Following the riots at the G8 Genoa Summit, the Italian Government decided that it could not risk similar carnage and destruction in the streets of the Eternal City. Much to the chagrin of Jacques Diouf, the Summit was therefore shunted to the coastal backwater of Rimini, away from the spotlight of world attention.

Then came September 11th. The FAO had counted on maximum publicity for the Summit, of using public opinion to put pressure on governments to ensure that hunger targets were met. They wanted publicity and they wanted governments to commit cash.

This now seems almost a forlorn hope. With the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan growing ever more threatening, UN agencies are battling to maintain even a normal flow of funds for operations outside that theatre. The chance of major new long term commitments to alleviate hunger elsewhere seems remote. Publicity seems equally unlikely.

It was therefore unsurprising that Jacques Diouf used the conference on World Food Day to announce that he was now seeking to postpone the Summit until happier times prevailed. "Unfortunately the present international circumstances and the loss of so many innocent lives and the crisis that followed have led us to seek postponement of such an event," he said. It may have been inevitable but it is yet another example of the widespread after effects of the evil perpetrated on that day of sorrow.