Food Summit Opens Amid Charges It’s a ‘Waste of Time’
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World leaders started a United Nations summit on food security in Rome today that international aid agencies say may be a “waste of time” because it won’t commit donors to provide more money to end world hunger.
A draft of the final declaration for the Nov. 16 to Nov. 18 “World Summit on Food Security,” which was obtained by Bloomberg News, promises no new financial commitments. Governments will “reinforce all our efforts” to halve the number of hungry by 2015, it says, and rich nations should reverse the decline of aid dedicated to agriculture, which fell from 19 percent in 1980 to 3.8 percent in 2006.
Jacques Diouf, who is hosting the meeting as director general of the Food and Agriculture Organization, has urged governments to invest $44 billion a year to end chronic hunger suffered by 1.02 billion people and achieve “food security.” World hunger has continued to rise even with food prices falling from their peaks of last year, which coincided with FAO’s previous summit where donors pledged $11 billion in aid.
“Because the underlying problems persist, we will continue to experience such prices, again and again -- unless we act,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon said today in a speech. “Our job is not just to feed the hungry, but to empower the hungry to feed themselves.”
The lack of new funding requests in draft declaration prompted two aid agencies, Oxfam and ActionAid, to say on Nov. 12 the summit may be a “waste of time and money,” and that “governments are at risk of throwing away a great chance” to reduce the number of hungry. Francisco Sarmento, ActionAid’s food rights coordinator, called the declaration “just a rehash of old platitudes.”