Global hunger still on the rise, says UN rights expert Kanaga Raja

Global levels of hunger continue to rise, with the number of people suffering from hunger increasing to 854 million people and has been rising every year since 1996, says Jean Ziegler, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food.
   In a report (A/62/289) presented in the third week of October to the sixty-second session of the UN General Assembly in New York, the rights expert said that virtually no progress has been made on reducing hunger, despite the commitments made by governments in 1996 at the first World Food Summit and again at the Millennium Summit in 2000.
   More than 6 million children still die every year from hunger and hunger-related causes before their fifth birthday, he said, pointing out that "this is unacceptable."
   "All human beings have the right to live in dignity, free from hunger. The right to food is a human right," he stressed.
   In an address at a media briefing in advance of World Food Day on 16 October, Ziegler regretted that after seven years of his tenure as UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, he was unable to report a reduction in the number of persons suffering from violations of the right to food.
   On the contrary, he said, despite real advances in different countries, such as China, India, South Africa, and several Latin American and Caribbean countries, there has been little overall progress in reducing the number of victims of hunger and malnutrition around the world.
   Yet, hunger and famine are not inevitable, the rights expert said, adding that according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the world already produces enough food to feed every child, woman and man, and could feed 12 billion people, double the current world population.
   "Our world is richer than ever before, so how can we accept that 6 million children under five are killed every year by malnutrition and related diseases," he asked.
   In his report, the Special Rapporteur called the attention of the General Assembly to situations of special concern relating to the right to food, as well as to positive initiatives of governments to combat hunger.
   He also called the attention of the General Assembly to two emerging issues: first, the issue of the potentially grave negative impact of biofuels (or agrofuels) on the right to food; the second, the urgent need to improve protection for people who are fleeing from hunger, famine and starvation in their countries of origin and face numerous human rights violations if they try to cross borders into developed countries.
   In his conclusions and recommendations, the rights expert said that all States should take immediate action to realise the human right to food of all their people. All States should also ensure that their international political and economic policies, including international trade agreements, do not have a negative impact on the right to food in other countries.
   In this context, said Ziegler, European Union (EU) governments must ensure that economic partnership agreements with African, Caribbean and Pacific countries do not negatively affect the progressive realisation of the right to food in those countries and include safeguard mechanisms to allow appropriate responses to any resulting food insecurity and hunger.
   He welcomed the initiative of six African governments and the United Nations to establish a road map to tackle the root causes of rising hunger across the Horn of Africa. The multiple causes of food insecurity in the region will be addressed through initiatives to improve food security and increase protection of the right to food of the populations there.
   During his official mission to Bolivia from 29 April to 6 May 2007, the Special Rapporteur observed important positive developments with respect to the realisation of the right to food. The government is taking action to address malnutrition. One quarter of all Bolivian children, mostly indigenous children, are gravely undernourished.
   He said that the government's Zero Malnutrition programme could serve as an example to the rest of the world. Resources gained from increasing taxes on the exploitation of Bolivia's oil and gas reserves will go directly towards the Zero Malnutrition programme.
   Ziegler also welcomed the dynamism of the Latin American and Caribbean region in general, and particularly the adoption of the regional initiative to eradicate hunger and guarantee food security under the "Iniciativa America Latinay Caribe sin Hambre". This initiative makes the realization of the right to adequate food for all and at all levels a key priority in the region.
   On the other hand, the rights expert expressed deep concerns over the food crises that currently threaten the lives of millions of people across southern Africa. In Lesotho, over 400,000 of the country's population of 1.9 million people face food shortages and are struggling to meet their basic food needs owing to the country's most severe drought in 30 years.
   In Swaziland, one third of the population is without food after the worst annual maize harvest on record, due to an extended dry spell and high temperatures. This has led to surges in maize prices and reductions in the availability of food, which have affected people's access to food, particularly among the poorest of the poor who live on less than $1 per day.
   The Special Rapporteur was also very concerned about the terms of new agreements being negotiated by the European Union under new economic partnership agreements with the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries. He drew the urgent attention of all States, particularly members of the EU, to the implications that this may have on the right to food of poor farmers in the developing world.
   He was particularly concerned about the potential negative impact of greater trade liberalisation on peasant farmers in the ACP countries, especially given unfair competition with highly subsidised EU production.
   Ziegler cited the World Bank, which estimates that in sub-Saharan Africa, tariff revenues average between 7 per cent and 10 per cent of government revenue.
   Eliminating tariffs on EU imports would lower tariff revenues considerably, forcing these countries to cut fiscal expenditure and therefore putting social programmes at risk and affecting governments' ability to meet their obligations towards economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to food.
   In his present report, Ziegler said that rushing to turn food crops - maize, wheat, sugar, palm oil - into fuel for cars, without first examining the impact on global hunger is a recipe for disaster. It is estimated that to fill one car tank with biofuel (about 50 litres) would require about 200 kg of maize - enough to feed one person for one year.
   He noted that increasingly unconvinced of the positive net impact of the production of agrofuels on carbon dioxide emissions, non-governmental organizations have started to call for a global moratorium on the expansion of agrofuels until the potential social, environmental and human rights impacts can be fully examined and appropriate regulatory structures put in place to prevent or mitigate any negative impacts.
   The report said that global consumption of agrofuels (the two main types of agrofuel are bioethanol and biodiesel) is low, but will rise rapidly under targets set in the EU, the United States and Latin America. The EU has set targets requiring that agrofuels provide up to 10 per cent of transport fuels by 2020. The United States has also set targets to increase the use of agrofuel.
   But the target objectives cannot be met by agricultural production in the industrialised countries. Therefore, the industrialised countries of the North are very interested in the production of the countries of the southern hemisphere to meet these needs.
   While increasing the production of biofuels could bring positive benefits for climate change and for farmers in developing countries, including by improving food security, if the benefits trickle down, the rights expert said that it is also important to examine the potential of biofuels to threaten the realisation of the right to food.
   "The greatest risk is that dependence on the agro-industrial model of production will fail to benefit poor peasant farmers and will generate violations of the right to food."
   It is estimated that there could be a rise of 20 per cent in the international price of maize between now and 2010, and 41 per cent by 2020. The prices of vegetable oil crops, especially soya and sunflower seeds could increase by 26 per cent by 2010 and 76 per cent by 2020, and wheat prices could increase by 11 per cent and then by 30 per cent.
   Although increasing food prices should theoretically benefit millions of people working as peasant farmers in developing countries, this is not always the case. Many farming families are net buyers of staple foods, as they do not have enough land to be self-sufficient, and will therefore be affected by rising consumer prices, said Ziegler.
   The Special Rapporteur called for a five-year moratorium on biofuel production using current methods, to allow time for technologies to be devised and regulatory structures to be put in place to protect against negative environmental, social and human rights impacts.
   Many measures can be put in place during such a moratorium to ensure that biofuel production can have positive impacts and respect the right to adequate food.
   These measures include promoting the need to reduce overall energy consumption and maintaining focus on all other methods of improving energy efficiency; moving immediately to "second generation" technologies for producing biofuels, which would reduce the competition between food and fuel - agricultural wastes and crop residues could be used; adopting technologies that use non-food crops, particularly crops that can be grown in semi-arid and arid regions; and ensuring that biofuel production is based on family agriculture, rather than industrial models of agriculture, in order to ensure more employment and rural development that provides opportunities, rather than competition, to poor peasant farmers.
   - Third World Network Features

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