Happy
Easter
. We celebrate the mystery of life, the blessing of rebirth and the victory of light over darkness, on the Sunday after the first full moon of spring. It is a big holiday for many communities and families, where work exists and it is possible to abstain from it, a couple of days at least. And it is an opportunity to recall a basic premise of life, access to healthy and nutritious food for everyone on the planet. The first of the rights, which is accompanied by the right to dispose of drinking water. The sign of a civilization from which we are still structurally distant, as shown by the recent reports of FAO, WFP, OMS, ONU, UNESCO.
FAO, WFP, WHO reports. 1 billion crosses
Emergency 113. 113 million human beings in 53 countries experience acute food insecurity, that is, starvation, and another 143 million human beings in 42 other nations are close to it. Acute food insecurity ‘occurs when a person’s inability to consume enough food puts himself and his livelihood in immediate danger.’ Wars, conflicts and political instability remain the leading cause of acute hunger in 21 countries across Africa, the Middle East and West Asia, Southeast Asia and Eastern Europe. Climate and natural disasters ranked second, with prevalence in 2018 in Africa.
In practice, 3.7 percent of the world’s population in 49 percent of UN member states now suffer from ‘acute hunger that urgently requires food and nutrition assistance.’ This is according to the ‘Global Report on Food Crisis‘ presented in April 2019 by FAO(Food and Agriculture Organization), WFP(World Food Program) and the European Union. (1) The ‘Global Network Against Food Crises’ in which these bodies participate is clearly unable to ‘combat’ any food crisis. It merely accommodates data, using a ‘scale for measuring misfortune’ (a.k.a. ‘Integrated Food Security Phase Classification’) that ranks the acute food crisis third out of five, after emergency and famine.
‘
An end to conflict, the empowerment
of women, nutrition and education of children, improving rural infrastructure and strengthening social safety nets are essential for a resilient, stable and hunger-free world‘ (FAO, ‘Global Report on Food Crisis,’ 2019).
1 billion crosses.
Added to the 256 million individuals in or near nutritional emergency are the 821 million afflicted by chronic undernutrition
. Understood not as a psychological disorder but as a physical unavailability of the food necessary to lead life. Which results in, among other things, delays and deficits in the development of apparatuses and functions of the human body. According to other FAO report ‘
Food Security & Nutrition
around the World
‘, last updated to September 2018. (2)
Empire of Darkness
At least 15.4 percent of the world’s population-according to the figures above, which, however, do not consider some victims of U.S.-dictated embargoes (e.g., Venezuela, People’s Republic of Korea)-are thus currently exposed to hunger and malnutrition. Two-thirds of the starving in 2018, moreover, are found in only eight countries, where the Western industries of war and colonialism are active. Syria and Yemen, Afghanistan, Sudan and Darfur, Democratic Republic of Congo
, Ethiopia
, Nigeria.
‘
Conflict and insecurity
, climate shocks and economic turmoil-the main drivers of food insecurity-have continued to erode livelihoods and destroy lives’
, repeats the FAO study. 2019 or 1999 is the same, nothing changes on the western quadrant from which everything moves. Arms production and sales, political and military support for warring factions, untold damage, and so loans for reconstructions. First the bombs and then the ‘aid,’ all the evil that global finance needs to burn fictitious capital and re-finance itself. (3)
Stable forecast. Conflict and political instability in 2019 will remain the primary driver of food (and humanitarian) crises. The number of internally and externally displaced people will increase, and the food insecurity of refugees and their host communities will worsen. Climate shocks and extreme weather events will severely impact agricultural and livestock production in various regions of the world, including those already facing a food crisis. And economic instability will hold its own, in terms of rising prices for food, fuel, medicine and other essential goods. Clean water and sanitation infrastructure in turn is lacking for 29% of the global population, 1 in 4 health facilities, according to latest UNESCO data. (4)
‘Zero Hunger’
, UN Agenda 2030 and WFP
‘
‘Zero Hunger’
is the second of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (
Sustainable Development Goals
, SDGs) adopted by the United Nations Assembly in 2015. The 193 UN member states have pledged to improve the lives of everyone on the planet, by 2030. And Goal 2, ‘
Zero Hunger
‘, è ‘
a commitment to ending hunger, achieving food security, improving nutrition and promoting sustainable agriculture-this is the priority of the World Food Programme
.’ (5)
WFP Executive Director David Muldrow Beasley calls for accountability of policymakers. ‘To truly defeat hunger, we must address its root causes: conflict, instability, the impact of climate shocks. To achieve the Zero Hunger goal, boys and girls need to be well fed and well educated, women need to be truly empowered, rural infrastructure strengthened. Programs that make communities resilient and more stable will reduce the numbers of hungry people. And we need the world’s leaders to do one more thing: take responsibility and help resolve these conflicts now’.
It sounds like a broken record, Mr. Beasley’s lecture to his colleagues spinning the wheels of the world. It is worth recalling his cv, a former Democratic candidate and then Republican governor of South Carolina, before he embarked on the path of billionaire yet ineffective cooperation. (6) About the WFP(World Food Program), suffice it to recall that it is an institution funded by 60 governments as well as a plethora of NGOs.
Resources may not be lacking, but it is doubtful that the interests of WFP’s private funders coincide with the public good understood in terms of the human solidarity that should animate international cooperation. Without going into the merits of high finance, Rockefeller foundations and ‘
Bill & Melinda Gates
‘ (of the latter of which GMO experiments and abandoned livestock cathedrals in African deserts are recalled), mention is made of the giants that hold the global monopoly
On seeds and pesticides. In addition to the palmocrats, exploiters of child labor in cocoa production And some of the ’10 big sisters’ of food. (7)
‘Zero Hunger’
, FAO and UN
José Graziano da Silva is an agronomist who has always been dedicated to ‘food security‘ issues. Before he was elected director-general of FAO (from 1.1.12, with renewal in 2015 of the term due to expire on 31.7.19), he had succeeded in emancipating 28 million Brazilian citizens from food insecurity. In just two years, 2003-2004, as Minister Extraordinary for Food Security in the government of Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, he successfully implemented the ‘Fome Zero‘ program. The heart of the ‘Bolsa Familia‘ program for the redistribution of economic resources to the most disadvantaged groups. Innovative and effective public policies to combat extreme poverty. But from the Lula government to the UN agency, Graziano da Silva’s providential hands have been tied. And so he shifted from the role of actor in the Good revolution to that of observer.
‘It is clear from the Global Report
That despite a slight decrease from 2017 values, the number of people affected by acute food insecurity – the most extreme form of hunger – is still too
. We must act on a large scale along the humanitarian intervention-policy development-peacebuilding nexus to build the resilience of affected and vulnerable populations. To save lives, we must also save livelihoods’ (Graziano da Silva, FAO, director general).
FAO still remains a UN agency, and it is at the ‘mother house’ that action must be taken to resolve an intolerable and criminal crisis. As early as 2000, the United Nations Assembly set the goal of ‘Eradicate Extreme Poverty and Hunger‘. Ranked first among the 8 ‘Millennium Development Goals‘ (MDGs), to be achieved by 2015. (8) But the deadline was missed by all UN member states outside the People’s Republic of China. And no one objected, no one imposed remedies, except to agree on a ‘remedial examination’ with a 15-year postponed deadline, from 2015 to 2030. At the cost of billions of lives that UN agencies and member states have blatantly neglected to consider.
The UN charter states as the primary objective of the international organization the maintenance of international peace and security. Next, the settlement of international disputes, the development of friendly relations among nations on the basis of respect for the principle of equality among states and the self-determination of peoples. Economic and social cooperation, respect for human rights for the benefit of all individuals. Instead, the hunger emergency that is renewed every day in half of its member countries finds its primary cause in the wars that some of the founding states continue to foment, finance or otherwise tolerate. Syria, Yemen, enough!
The systematic and continuous reduction of resources made available for humanitarian aid is tolerated. Instead of prescribing, as a minimum measure, the introduction of a ‘humanitarian’ contribution proportionate to the value of each member state’s military expenditures. Where a ‘1×1000’ would be enough to solve at least this scourge of our civilization.
Hunger is not a misfortune, it is the crime of the complicit and indifferent.
#Égalité!
Dario Dongo
Notes
(1) FAO, WFP, (2019). ‘
Global Report on Food Crisis
‘,
(2) FAO, ‘The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World,’ 2005-2017 data and forecast to 2030. See also the FAO-WHO report (2019), ‘The future of food safety‘,
(3) Cf. Gianfranco Bellini, ‘The dollar bubble, or the days that will shock the world‘ (ed. Odradek, Rome, 2013)
(4) UNESCO, ‘
World Water Development Report 2019 – Leaving No One Behind.
‘.
Moreover, the report does not consider the ongoing water crisis in Venezuela. Nor are ongoing emergencies such as that in Mozambique, where more than 6,000 infants will face risks of cholera and malaria in the coming months as a result of Cyclone Idai
(5) V. https://it1.wfp.org/fame-zero
(6) Cf. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Beasley
(7) V.
https://www1.wfp.org/private-sector
. In first place among participants in the ‘Annual Partnership Consultation‘ of WFP, also in 2018, you will find ACDI/VOCA, funded among others by Syngenta (one of the Big 4, the four global seed and pesticide monopolists), OLAM International (at the center of numerous allegations of land grabbing, land robbery), World Cocoa Foundation and some of its key players (e.g., Nestlé, Mars), Kellogg’s
(8) Cf. https://www.undp.org/content/undp/en/home/sdgoverview/mdg_goals.html
(9) Cf. UN Charter, Articles 1 and 2
Dario Dongo, lawyer and journalist, PhD in international food law, founder of WIISE (FARE - GIFT - Food Times) and Égalité.
