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Rome Summit and the role of Bangladesh prime minister

Masum Biliah
FAO convened the November 16-18 summit in a bid to marshal political will behind increased investment in agriculture and a reinvigorated international effort to combat hunger. Three important events in October prepared the ground for the summit. A high level experts forum on How to Feed the World in 2050 examined policy options that governments should consider adopting to ensure that the world population can be fed when it nears 9.2 billion people in the middle of this century.
Hours before the opening of the summit, Jacques Diouf and Ban Ki-moon joined the hunger strike on Sunday in solidarity with the 1 billion humans around the world who go hungry every day. This was for raising awareness of those who spend billions of dollars on war and luxuries.
The summit unanimously adopted a declaration committing all the nations of the world to eradicate hungry at the earliest date. It pledged to substantially increase aid to agriculture in developing countries so that the world's 1 billion hungry can become more self-sufficient. The declaration confirmed the current target for reducing hunger by half by 2015.
Countries agreed to work to reverse the decline in domestic and international
funding for agriculture, and promote new investment in the sector to improve governance of global food issues in partnership with relevant stakeholders from the public and private sectors and face the challenge of climate change to food security. FAO Director General Jacques Diouf told a pre-summit private sector forum that the importance of the private sector had increased due to privatisation, globalisation and the transformation of the food chain.
FAO says that the global food security situation has worsened and continues to represent a serious threat. There are one billion chronically hungry people in the world and recent reports say this number could grow by 100 million in 2009. Food prices remain stubbornly high in developing countries, while the global economic crisis is aggravating the situation by affecting jobs and deepening poverty. Economic and social polices conducive to the creation of a favourable environment for agricultural production should be adopted to ensure that all farmers, in particular rural women and young people, enjoy access to know-how and means of production, including land and credit.
In 1996, a meeting was organised by the Inter-Parliamentary Union on the occasion of the World Food Summit at the invitation of the Italian Parliament. They expressed their concern about a situation
where close to 800 million people throughout the world, in particular in the developing countries, suffered from chronic malnutrition. Almost 200 million children under five suffered from protein and energy deficiencies, which threatened their future, most often irremediably. Now after thirteen years, the situation has definitely worsened. Unless strong measure are taken urgently, hunger and food insecurity will persist and may even worsen dramatically in some regions.
Our families, regions and nations alike are interdependent physically, geographically. politically, economically and socially. This affects economic development and has an impact on the income of individuals and entire nations alike, although the agricultural sector is of particular concern. In tracing the root causes of food insecurity, we place particular emphasis on poverty, which must be eradicated if the proclaimed goal of "food for all" is to be attained.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina played a commendable role in the summit. She tried to draw the attention of the leaders of rich countries to the worsening situation that the developing countries face and will face. She asked world leaders gathered in Rome that if trillions of dollars could be spent to save collapsed financial markets, why the same could not be done to feed the world's hungry?
Hasina called on the leaders to adopt sustainable food polices and mobile global funds, and stressed the need for an equitable food governance system to fight world hunger. She also argued for preferential treatment for LDCs in transfer of technology and fair trade rules. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva told the summit that hunger was "the most devastating weapon of mass destruction on our planet." How right he was! Actually the poor realise the pain of the poor. With the number of hungry people in the world topping I billion for the first time, the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation called the summit in the hope that leaders would commit to raising the share of official aid spent on agriculture to 17 percent of the total from 5 percent. But the declaration adopted included only a general promise to pour more money into agricultural aid, with no target or timeframe for action. A pledge to eliminate malnutrition by 2025, one of the early aims of the summit, was also missing from the declaration, which merely stated that world leaders commit to eradicate hunger "at the earliest possible date."
Anti-poverty campaigners wrote the summit off as a missed opportunity, with most G-8 leaders skipping the event. The sense of scepticism had already taken hold ahead of the gathering as US
President Barack Obama and other leaders suggested the delaying of a legally binding climate pact until 2010 or even later. Meanwhile, the United Nations opened the two-day conference by saying that a climate change deal in Copenhagen next month was crucial to fighting global hunger as rising temperatures threaten farm output in poor countries.
Africa, Asia and Latin America could see a decline of between 20 and 40 percent in potential agricultural productivity if temperatures rose more than 2 degrees Celsius. Sub-Saharan Africa is expected to be the hardest hit from global warming as its agriculture is almost entirely rain-fed. Both climate and food security are immense issues for Bangladesh as well. The threat to food security seems now to be more than ever before, in the backdrop of sudden scarcity of food and its price spiral in 2007-2008, the recent worldwide financial meltdown and the looming impacts of climate change.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina tried to raise these crucial points in her address. She said: "The picture we sec now Is a cruel one for world, where one-sixth of its population or over a billion are faced with the spectre of hunger." She said that the vast majority of these people resided in Least Developed Countries, facing food shortage, negation of development gains and erosion of Millennium Development Goals. Only production of food cannot guarantee food security. Available food must be accessible, particularly to the marginal and the vulnerable, for which a fair and equitable food governance system is required at both the national and the international levels.
Mentioning the summit declaration adopted earlier in the day, she said that it provided scope to strengthen global governance on food security, including an enhanced role of the Committee on Food Security. She addressed provisions for sustainable agricultural polices, transfer of technology, and equitable and fair trade rules for food and agricultural products with special preferential treatment of LDCs.
She welcomed a recent G-8 decision to mobilise $20 billion over three years for small farmers in food deficit developing countries, but she said the amount was insufficient. She said that additional funds would be available if only the developed countries fulfilled their ODA commitment of .7% of the Gross National Income to developing countries and .2% to the LDCs by 2010, as affirmed in the Brussels Program of Action. The world leaders must be at one with her comments and invitation to create a really hunger-free globe. Md. Masum Biliah is Senior Manager BRAC Education Program, PACE. Email mmbillah2000@yahoo.com