"World leaders have reacted forcefully to the financial and economic crisis and succeeded in mobilizing billions of dollars in a short time period. The same strong action is needed now to combat hunger and poverty,"
- FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf.
The latest report from the United Nations' Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) says that this year, there are 1.02 billion hungry people in the world.
Jacques Diouf also said,
"The rising number of hungry people is intolerable. We have the economic and technical means to make hunger disappear, what is missing is a stronger political will to eradicate hunger forever. Investing in agriculture in developing countries is key as a healthy agricultural sector is essential not only to overcome hunger and poverty but also to ensure overall economic growth and peace and stability in the world."
"We applaud the new commitment to tackle food security, but we must act quickly. It is unacceptable in the 21st century that almost one in six of the world's population is now going hungry," added Josette Sheeran, Executive Director of WFP.
Poor households have been cutting back on education and other basic needs but it is still too overwhelming for them. In Somalia alone, the cost of food has risen 85% over the last two years.
We had no problem bailing the fat cats of Wall Street and the financial centres of the world. Maybe all that some of them lost were a few penthouses and Lear jets, and maybe the mistresses. But what can be done to mitigate the global food crisis?
Soka Gakkai International (SGI) President Daisaku Ikeda wrote in his 2009 Peace Proposal to the United Nations (UN):
"To ensure secure access to food for all the world's people, we need to design a mechanism to keep a certain amount of grain in reserve at all times as a global public good. These reserves could be distributed as emergency relief during a food crisis or released onto the market to stabilize prices."
He further added:
"I also would like to call for the expanded use of innovative financing mechanisms such as international solidarity levies to raise funds toward overcoming poverty and improving health
care and sanitation in line with the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The effort to develop innovative funding mechanisms can be thought of as a type of humanitarian competition, as various states constructively vie with one another to develop the most effective ideas and proposals."
If economists and financiers can come up with innovative ways to trade derivatives on the global market, surely we can do something about investment and fund-raising vehicles to ensure no one goes hungry.
He further says, "The bottom billion" -the poorest of the poor in fifty-eight countries, who have long been left behind by global economic growth--were one focus of debate at the UN last year. The stark
disparity in the value of human life and dignity, virtually predetermined by where one is born, is an unconscionable injustice in global society that must be corrected. If we are to lay any claim to human dignity--to manifest the feelings of compassion that Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) assures us were at the heart of even the earliest human communities--we must take steps to remedy this situation."
Nobel laureate in economics Amartya Sen astutely pointed out that "Poverty must be seen as the deprivation of basic capabilities rather than merely as lowness of incomes." Poor people are just as human as we are.
The latest FAO report can be accessed at http://www.fao.org/docrep/012/i0876e/i0876e00.htm
SGI President Ikeda's peace proposals can be accessed at http://www.sgi.org/proposals.html
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