PRESS BRIEFING BY SPECIAL RAPPORTEUR ON RIGHT TO FOOD

In a world overflowing with riches, it is an absurdity that 100,000 people die every day from hunger-related diseases and that 815 million people were undernourished last year, Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, told correspondents at a Headquarters press briefing this morning.

Mr. Ziegler, who presented his report on progress made in implementation of the right to food to the Third Committee (Social, Humanitarian and Cultural) yesterday, said the situation was dramatic.  He told correspondents that the World Food report of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) indicated that present levels of agriculture in the world could nourish 12 billion people without a problem.  That meant that every individual could receive

2,700 calories every day.

But with a population of only 6.2 billion –- or just over half of 12 billion -- a sixth of the world’s population was being destroyed by hunger, he said.  Calling the situation a “silent massacre”, Mr. Ziegler said that the 100,000 people who died daily from malnourishment consumed fewer than

1,800 calories per day.

The Special Rapporteur attributed that situation to human factors, some of them analysed in his report, including lack of equal access to land and inadequate revenue.  He reiterated his view, expressed yesterday before the Third Committee, that any child who died from malnutrition had been murdered.

It was even more disturbing that the catastrophe was repeating itself every year, as hundreds of millions of undernourished women in Africa, Asia and Latin America gave birth to children who had no chance at birth, born as they were to mothers who were gravely undernourished, who could not produce milk and who were unable to develop a viable fetus.  Such children, he said, became invalids and could not lead normal lives.

He pointed out, however, that such figures could serve to direct the attention of the world to the psychological reality -- namely the anguish of the men, women, children who woke up in the morning and wondered how to find enough food to survive the day.  The Secretary-General had been right when he said in his Millennium Report that the first piority in today’s world was to fight hunger and realize a new human right -- the right to food.

He said his report had two parts, with one focused on implementing and enshrining the right to food in national laws, international conventions and practice, and the other part focused on agrarian reforms.

Regarding the first of those two aims, he recalled that there had been two World Food Summits, one in 1996 and the other last year.  The 1996 summit decided that the number of hungry in the world should be halved by 2015, and outlined a series of measures governments needed to take to realize that goal. 

The 2001 summit was a follow-up to measure the progress made in the intervening five years.

However, he said, the 2001 Summit was a disappointment, with reports from States reflecting failure to meet the goals of the 1996 summit:  the measures put in place would not halve the number of the world’s hungry until 2052.  Besides, while presidents from developing countries attended summits and gave impressive speeches, their counterparts from the wealthy nations had hardly participated in the 2001 summit, excepting Italy (which hosted the Summit) and Spain.  That, he said, precluded the kind of dialogue so sorely needed.  Despite that, he said, the notion of the right of food remained intact, and he would be collaborating with the working group set up at the 2001 Summit on ways to make that right a reality.

On the second aim -- agrarian reform -- he said those most affected by hunger were among the 1.2 billion poorest people in the world:  people earning less than one dollar a day, 75 per cent of them living in rural areas, where they produced food for the rest of humankind.  They included migrant workers, peasants, and several categories of rural populations, many without access to land and unable to feed themselves and their families.

Land reform was thus a crucial step in the strategy to implement the right to food.  He added that everywhere land reform had taken place, food security and availability had increased.  He cited Cuba, Thailand, China and Japan among countries where successful land reform had made the difference in the food situation.  Indeed, wherever land reform took place, the food question was virtually solved and food security was realized.

Attainment of the right to food could not be left to market forces, liberalization policies or privatization, he said.  There must be a human rights approach to stop what he called the “tragedy of hunger”.  The United Nations, he told correspondents, had the will to realize that aim.

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