Stopping the Food Crisis - GCAP Call to Action
In a day and age when there is more than enough food for every person on this planet, we are facing a global crisis that leaves hundreds of millions of people unable to afford even basic foods like rice, maize and corn; and they are going hungry.
In a recent interview, The Elders' Jimmy Carter said that "[when] a person or a community whose life is threatened because of starvation or because of an illness that can easily be prevented - those are deprivations of human rights".
Even before food prices spiked, an estimated 850 million people were going hungry and 30,000 children were dying from hunger related diseases every day. Now, because of a number of factors, food prices are on the rise, hunger riots have taken place in at least 40 countries, and the world food crisis continues to grow at unprecedented rates.
According to GCAP:
- 1. rising oil prices
- 2. depreciation of the US dollar
- 3. a push towards biofuel production
- 4. the neglect of the small-holder food producers over many years in favor of transnational food producers and their dumping practices
- 5. changing and growing food demand from emerging economies
- 6. the failure to develop a just global trade system failure of Doha trade round
- 7. failure of rich countries to fulfill their 0.7% commitment of GNI in aid which would have lifted more people out of poverty and left them less vulnerable to fluctuating food prices
- 8. failure of many governments to legalize land and succession rights for women.
- 9. insufficient literacy, agricultural and micro-finance input to lift (mainly women’s) subsistence farming and local trade to a sustainable level.
- 10. failure of governments in some poor countries to monitor prices in a transparent way and support food production and storage before the crisis reached this level
- 10. speculative investment which has exacerbated the crisis.
- 1. Millions of already poor people, women in particular, cannot afford basic foods like rice, maize and corn and are going hungry.
- 2. Women cannot feed their families- they already spent three quarters of their income on food have now the stark choice of eating less food or switching to less nutritious cheaper food.
- 3. As hunger rises so too does civil unrest - in many countries protests have already been quashed and dozens of people have lost their lives in clashes with police. Hunger riots have taken place in at least 40 countries
- 4. Efforts to meet the MDGs are being seriously undermined as maternal health and child mortality rates increase due to lack of food, families fail to send their children to school due to hunger and the increased need for child labour, government investment
in essential services is redirected to emergency areas and so on. - 5. Incomes are decreasing and many workers are losing their jobs as the chain effect
of the food crisis hits employers. - 6. Movement of displaced people in search of food is set to intensify and in some countries preparations are even being made for evacuations
The current food crisis has been caused by a combination of factors including:
However, there is sufficient food in the world to feed everyone
The effect on people
Recognizing that our world can never be just without meeting the most fundamental human needs, Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that “everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food”.
Indeed, the politics of food are complex, but 60 years since governments around the world signed the Universal Declaration and with more than enough food to feed every person on earth, today’s situation is at best shameful. According to Mary Robinson, “If we would have upheld the Universal Declaration, maybe that’s the way to put it, what a different world we would live in; because there would be no family that would wake up hungry. We have enough food in the world. It’s a matter of whether we care enough.”
The solutions to ending extreme poverty and the scourge of hunger are within reach, but these solutions require ‘caring enough’ to wrestle with the complex and interwoven factors at play in the crisis, and living up to our personal pledges to uphold human rights by joining in action. According the The Elders' Kofi Annan, "We can not leave it to governments alone, we can not leave it to businesses alone, or to civil society alone. We need to work together."
On June 3-5, the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) will host the High Level Conference on World Food Security: the Challenges of Climate Change and Bioenergy in Rome. The heads of governments from around the world and large international institutions like the IMF and World Bank will be discussing ways to address the current food crisis.
According to a recent GCAP press release, a series of unprecedented civil society actions will coincide with next week’s FAO meetings. Under the slogan 'Act Now to End Poverty and Inequality and Stop the Food Crisis’, thousands of people from countries around the world will mobilize to send a message that the crisis is already costing lives and to show there are solutions that governments, working with civil society, can take if they show courage and leadership. Check out GCAP's website to learn more.
