| |
Contributions from
the Column
Studies and reports
Afghanistan: international aid under fire
Paradigm change in fight against hunger
Poverty reduction and higher education
07/2005 |
|
[ Right to food ]
Paradigm change in the fight against hunger
The fight against hunger remains one of the main challenges for international development policy. Marc Cohen of the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington says that, if China is excluded, the number of hungry people has actually increased in the last decade. This is the case despite the fact that the right to food is enshrined in Article 25 of the General Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and in the International Pact on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. Aliro Omara, from the Uganda Human Rights Commission, comments that, although Uganda is one of the 151 states which have ratified the Pact (among those which have not are Indonesia, South Africa and the USA), the government did not recognise a right to food until 2002. It is the lack of political will rather than a lack of resources which is responsible for the fact that many countries have no interest in the right to food. A further detrimental fact, according to Omara, is forced liberalisation by the World Bank and the IMF. This leads to the disintegration of social protection, which is in any case fragile.
The council of the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) adopted the Voluntary Guidelines to support the Progressive Realisation of the Right to Adequate Food in November 2004 (see D+C 2004:11, p. 400). The Voluntary Guidelines represent a paradigm shift in the fight against hunger. People suffering from hunger are often still regarded as little more than paupers. In contrast, the FAO Guidelines see them as individual holders of the right to fair and reasonable conditions necessary to allow them to feed themselves, e.g. by having access to adequate loans and production conditions. A right to transfer payments is not included, otherwise consensus on the guidelines would not have been reached by the UN members states. At an international workshop on implementing the Guidelines in Berlin in mid-June, Anton Kohler, head of the Swiss FAO-Secretariat, emphasised that governments need not be concerned about the Guidelines, if they are taking active steps in poverty reduction. They can even anticipate what is required by the population.
Hans-Joachim Preuß, General Secretary of German Agro Action/Deutsche Welthungerhilfe, believes that it is obvious what the Guidelines require of development policy. The significance of natural resources for the survival of the world’s poorest has to date been underestimated. Poor farmers depend on a healthy environment. According to Preuß, development aid should thus focus on ecologically difficult areas, such as the Sahel region, Ethiopia and Rwanda. Half of the world’s 850 million hungry people are small-scale farmers who do not have access to irrigation or loans. Only 20 per cent live in cities. Michael Windfuhr, from the Human Rights Organisation FIAN, points out that women make up 70 to 80 per cent of people suffering from hunger. He says that hunger must in future be outlawed in the same way that torture is. In addition, the Workshop in Berlin demanded that anyone who uses hunger as a weapon in violent conflict be charged as a war criminal.
Lynn Brown from the World Food Programme warns against false expectations of rights. She says that in economics results are more important than rights, and that economic growth and greater scope for distribution can only be attained through political compromise with the various power groups in a country. There can be no legal guarantee that negotiations required for this will be successful. This depends instead, in Brown’s view, on whether politicians manage to align the expectations of the various population groups.
Sabine Grund
More information:
http://www.policies-against-hunger.de
|
