0 The Message -- for Catholics of Southwestern Indiana
Thanksgiving reminder: Millions remain without adequate
By LYNNE WElL
Catholic News Service
ROME (CNS) -- The delega-
tions have dispersed and the
phones in the press room are
silent, but the work of the U.N.
World Food Summit, which
ended Nov. 17, is meant to go on.
Malnutrition still contributes
to the deaths of 11,000 children
per day -- one every eight sec-
onds.
More than 800 million people
in the world, one-fourth of them
under age 5, remain without
adequate food.
To help reduce that number by
half within 20 years, the sum-
mit's final document set goals for
the 186 governments that took
part: Find ways to ensure a
social and economic environ-
ment that allows for land
reform; implement policies to
eradicate poverty and inequali-
. ty; pursue, sustainable agricul-
tural &)elopment; foster a fair
and market-oriented world trade
system; and encourage public
and private investment so that
food security can be guaranteed.
But these commitments are
nonbinding, and participants
agreed that if action is not
taken, their promises may mean
no more than the pledge taken
at the World Food Conference of
1974 to "eradicate hunger, food
insecurity and malnutrition
within a decade."
European delegations to the
food summit were among the
first to take steps to honor their
commitments. Before leaving
Rome, Dutch Development Min-
i,, ill i, ,,i [ i • i I ii , , , t
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ister Jan Pronk arranged a Feb-
ruary 1997 meeting with his
European Union counterparts
as a follow-up conference onthe
summit.
i
But despite participants'
statements of good intentions,
some critics said the food sum-
mit was flawed or worse.
Protesters from a group
known as the Hunger Project
called the gathering "an empty
gesture" because it excluded par-
ticipation by farmers, favored
the riews of larger industrialized
nations and was financed -- and
therefore influenced -- by multi-
natioral companies that trade in
agriculture.
Participants in a forum for
1,000 nongovernmental organi-
zations, which ran parallel to
the summit, said in a statement
that the gathering failed to cre-
ate methods to make govern-
ments accountable for food secu-
rity. The statement said the
world has to make a choice: prof-
it for a few or food for all.
Caritas Internationalis, the
• Vatican's umbrella aid organi-
zation, was one of the partici-
pants in the NGO forum. In a
statement, Caritas said food
security cannot be guaranteed
without redistribution of land
ownership and tighter control
on market forces -- neither of
which were among the goals set
by the summit.
The United States led the call
among industrialized nations
taking part in the summit tbr
more open markets, not tighter
control. As the World's largest
agriculture export< the United
States places value on liberaliz-
ing trade.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary
Dan Glickman argued that open
markets benefit farmers in the
long run and promol/e invest-
ment in the developing world.
This view was backed by
World Bank President James
Wolfensohn, who said, "If you
allow farmers to compete and
have cash crops, in fact the food
production has gone up -- not
down, but up."
But there was disagreement
from representatives of some
developing countries, who said
their farmers could not compete
on equal terms with larger pro-
ducers. This was also the argu-
ment of independent farmers
from around the world who met
in Rome as the summit con-
vened.
"We cannot support every
principle presented in the final
• summit declaration because we
do believe that some of them will
have an adverse effect on inde-
pendent farmers," said Leland
Swenson, president of the U.S.
National Farmers' Union. "But
on the other hand, that is no
reason to give up on the goal of
food security as a whole. There's
no reason to throw the baby out
with the bath water."
For its own part, the Vatican
tried to place these questions in
a wider perspective. The Vatican
secretary of state, Cardinal Ange-
lo Sodano, said in his address to
the summit that "to give food
security to all the people on every
continent is not only an econom-
ic and technical challenge, but in
the first [
itual one."
Cardil
the principles of
respect
pel the
mote peace,
poverty and
world.
Jacques
U.N. Food and
Organization the
soring the '
final news confer
event that
and the
responsibility for
the religious.
"We all are
world," Diouf said.
in a planetary vilh
fore we have an
idarity, and
wealthy have an
help those who
nate."
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