Ending world hunger: Starting with East-Africa
As stipulated in our mandate, the FAO wishes to achieve food security. This means people ought to have regular access to enough high-quality food to lead active, healthy lives. The factors to attain this goal are to raise the levels of nutrition, improve agricultural productivity, better the lives of rural populations and contribute to the growth of the world economy.
We, at the FAO, are concerned with the famine in East-Africa. We draw attention to this issue for it is crucial if we are to achieve our mandate. We proclaim that ridding the world of starvation is a condicio sine qua non if we are to achieve any other goals worth achieving. If we are to entertain any political, technological or humanitarian ideals; it is difficult to see how we could not start with feeding ourselves. Food is something everybody needs. And one billion people are in dire need of it. In identifying to most appropriate scale of intervention, we find East-Africa to be a priority. Having examined the most appropriate form of food distribution, we conclude this is to be done in schools. We emphasize this equalizes the gender inequality; allowing girls to go to school instead of working on the field. Women, especially in East-Africa, do most of the sustenance farming. Without education, a population cannot reach higher agricultural productivity, nor can it contribute to the growth of the economy; both of which remain our mandate.
Keeping in mind, our planet is inhabited by another billion people who suffer from being overweight, one third of which are obese. We conclude these problems are not technological. We, the FAO, therefore direct our appeal first and foremost to those countries where there is a problem of want, not of need. Fully aware, there are no countries where nobody is the population is neither hungry, nor overweight; we do not single out any one country, nor absolve any country of responsibility to feed their own [national] population. However, we reaffirm, our population is a global one and humanity deserves to be fed. The focus of mankind is too narrow. As stated before, women are the key and education in turn, is the key to women’s emancipation. We believe we must enable people to help themselves.
This is not merely the right thing to do. It is the smart thing. We need education if we are to survive as a human species and this is the way to do it. The labor market requires people whom are able to work. Health costs will always be around and people will never be a completely healthy. But food is medicine. And the cheapest medicine is preventive medicine. As the World Food Programme, our sister organisation, points out: “Hunger kills more people than HIV/Aids, tuberculosis and malaria combined”. These are not easy diseases to prevent and even harder to combat. We do not claim to have solved all the worlds problems if we start here. But it is the only logical place to start. This basic need will never go away. We note, that at this moment, we have the means to address it in a human way. No child needs to go hungry, yet so many do.
It is true, without education, this cycle will happen again and again. Without guidance, without responsibility, without -in short- education, nothing will ever change. But without food, nobody will go to school. Nobody will be able to change. We, who are able to gather and debate these issues, must begin by feeding those who do not know, not what, but whether they will eat today.
We do not wish to minimize other problems. Repression is a horrible thing. But no doubt food prices played an important role in the uprising in the Arab World. Inflation caused many Egyptians to not be able to feed themselves. When food was located in the same region, it remained too expensive. GMO’s are a controversial issue and although the green revolution has fed many, more and more questions regarding regulation of hazardous and untested products are abundant. We do not need these new technologies, for we can feed the world today if only we have the leadership to change the distribution. However, we at the FAO are not blind to the surge in human population and future developments require increased productivity. We have stated in this paper how we are to achieve this goal, as well as many others. Nowhere in the world is this problem more urgent than in East-Africa. Where people aren’t merely hungry, they are starving. Fiscal problems – and energy concerns too – are no trivial matters, but we will never have enough money – or energy – to solve all of the worlds problems. Nonetheless, we express our hope that we can solve this one.
We therefore call on all nation states and organizations attending, to make this a priority and to implement food security concerns in to every relevant aspect of policy-making. Noting with satisfaction this is already the case to a large degree, we urge all parties to follow our strategic priorities in attaining this goal.
