WORLD HUNGER CAN BE VANQUISHED IF COMMITMENTS ARE MET, HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS SAYS IN ROME

10 June 2002



The goal to free humanity from the scourge of hunger is within reach, but insufficient national and international actions have meant the right to food is far from being realized for all, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson said today.

Speaking as the World Food Summit opened in Rome, Mrs. Robinson referred to the fact that notwithstanding the commitments made by the first Summit in 1996 to reduce the number of hungry people to 400 million by 2015, the number of undernourished people is falling at a slowing pace. Should this trend persist, she continued, the World Food Summit target would not be reached until 2030.

“This is morally and legally unacceptable in a world which has sufficient resources to feed its entire population”, she said.

In a report to the Summit (“World Food Summit: Five Years later”, http://www.unhchr.ch/html/menu2/WFS.doc), Mrs Robinson points to some of the obstacles poorer countries face in realizing the right to food “Developing countries still have difficulty in obtaining access for their products to the markets of member countries of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)”, she writes “At the same time, the liberalization of agricultural trade in developing countries, especially net food-importing developing countries, has increased the vulnerability of local markets to international price fluctuations and has failed to take sufficient account of the food security of the poor and vulnerable such as poor farmers and farm workers”

The High Commissioner adds that the World Trade Organization’s Agreement on Agriculture, “a first step to more openness in developed country markets”, still does not sufficiently take into account the concerns of the poor and vulnerable or of net food-importing developing countries.

“A right-to-food approach to the Agreement would stress the human rights principle of non-discrimination and consequently encourage affirmative action for the poor, allowing certain special trade rules for the protection of vulnerable people”, she argues.

The High Commissioner also highlights the role of action at the country level, saying national strategies based on human rights principles to ensure food and nutritional security for all remain the exception rather than the rule. She urges countries to review their agriculture, nutrition, social development, environment, trade and international development policies in order to define a coherent framework to eliminate hunger.




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