Statement by the
Director-General
on the occasion of the World Food Day and
TeleFood
2000
New York, USA, 18 October
2000
Your Excellency, Mr. Harri Holkeri,
the President of the General Assembly,
Your Excellency, Mr. Kofi Annan, Secretary General,
Your Excellency, Mr. Makarim Wibisono, President of
ECOSOC,
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
On the occasion of the first
World
Food Day celebration of the
new millennium, I would like to invoke both a vision and
a challenge to the world community. The vision is a world
in which every man, woman and child can be assured of
having the food they need to be well-nourished and
healthy, enabling them to develop to their fullest
potential. The challenge I invoke is to make that vision
a reality .
The world as a community must ensure
equitable access to the most basic of life's requirements
- food - which directly affects the welfare of
individuals and the overall development of nations. The
strength of a nation depends upon the strength of its
people. When people are well-nourished, healthy and
strong, they have the energy, creativity and security to
work and learn, to solve problems, and to live their
daily lives with dignity and joy, ultimately advancing
mankind to new heights.
Not everyone has access to adequate
food at all times.. While significant progress has been
made in the fight against hunger, the number of people in
the world who are chronically undernourished and are
unable to meet their basic daily energy requirements to
lead an active and healthy life, is still unacceptably
high. At the beginning of the third millennium, freedom
from hunger remains an elusive goal for 820 million
people and continues to undermine the socio-economic
development of many nations.
Moreover, millions suffer world-wide
from malnutrition due to the lack of essential vitamins
and minerals, and millions more are at risk of problems
caused by contaminated food and water. Access to
sufficient supplies of a variety of good-quality, safe
food persists as a serious problem in many countries,
even where food supplies are adequate at the national
level. In every country, some form of hunger and
malnutrition continues to exist.
Many accept hunger as a grim but
inevitable fact of life. This need not be the case;
hunger and malnutrition are not inevitable in a world of
plenty. Nor are they tolerable. We have the knowledge,
technology and resources to make rapid progress in the
global fight against hunger. It is primarily the lack of
collective will that is preventing us from eliminating
hunger. We must be firmly committed to reject the
unacceptable and the intolerable.
Recent experience indicates that
chronic hunger can be dispelled within this century. In
the last few decades, significant achievements have been
made in the areas of food supplies, nutrition, health and
access to basic social services. As a result, the world's
population is better fed, healthier, and lives longer
than that of 30 years ago. The number of undernourished
people in the world has declined from approximately 920
million in 1970 to the present level of 820 million.
Global food supplies have outpaced dramatic population
growth, with per caput food availability growing by 32
percent while the population increased by 2 billion
people.
Hunger and malnutrition are the
primary indicators of poverty which is being reduced
through access to jobs, education, health facilities,
sanitation, clean water and safe housing. All these
elements in turn affect food security and the nutritional
status of individuals.
The improvement of the life of
millions of people is very encouraging. This fact is
positive proof that we have the tools and the ability to
address and overcome the major causes of hunger and
malnutrition. Of course the positive trends are expected
to continue. But will they continue at a rate sufficient
to improve further the conditions of today's population
and adequately provide for the next generations to come?
Will additional improvements occur rapidly enough to
alleviate the immense suffering of the millions of men,
women and children afflicted by chronic hunger and
malnutrition?
It is my ardent wish to reply "Yes" to
these questions. However, we know that the current rate
of progress in reducing the number of undernourished is
not sufficient even to meet the World
Food Summit goal of reducing
by at least half the number of undernourished people by
the year 2015 , let alone surpass that goal. Clearly, we
have much more to do and no time to waste if we are to
make the vision of a world free from hunger become a
reality.
How can this be done? There are no
simple answers, but there are common approaches that have
proven to be effective in accelerating progress. As a
fundamental first step, the elimination of hunger and
malnutrition must be adopted as a primary goal of
national, social and economic development.
At the World Food Summit, governments
and international organizations arrived at a consensus on
key strategies for improving food security and
nutritional status. They identified the major factors in
world food security - poverty, constraints on food
production, population growth, urbanization rates,
changing dietary patterns, under-investment in
agricultural research and rural infrastructure, conflict
and instability, lack of priority to agriculture and
rural areas in government policy and agreed to make
concerted efforts in each and all of these critical
areas.
It is time to begin aggressively
pursuing the objectives set by the World Food Summit.
Noble words and promises were transcribed into a
framework of seven commitments, which now must be carried
out. This will require the determination of governments,
working alongside intergovernmental institutions, the
private sector, NGOs and civil society, to create
policies that will help achieve these goals. The
processes governing such action must be focused on
empowering today's food-insecure populations - the poor,
and predominantly the rural poor. Governments must take
action to correct the biased distribution of such
fundamental services and assets as education,
information, health care, employment, technological
advances, credit, and land and water
resources.
Investment in agriculture, the engine
of economic growth in most developing countries, is
fundamental for improving the plight of developing
countries. Poverty alleviation programmes, targeted to
the rural poor, are needed to bring the most destitute
into the mainstream economy. Increasing access to land,
technology, inputs and credit for rural women - who
constitute 60 percent of the world's farmers - is a
key to improving family nutrition, food production and
income. Investment in people overall is needed, in the
form of education, clean water and sanitation, health and
social services, and when required, direct food and
nutrition support.
I recall Commitment One of the World
Food Summit Plan of Action, which states: "We will ensure
an enabling political, social and economic environment
designed to create the best conditions for the
eradication of poverty and for durable peace, based on
full and equal participation of women and men, which is
most conducive to achieving sustainable food security for
all." It is against this internationally agreed
commitment that we should measure national and
international efforts to combat the multiple causes of
food insecurity and restore the basic human right to be
free from hunger.
This year's World Food Day is a call
for collective action to meet and surpass as quickly as
possible the goal of the World Food Summit. On this World
Food Day, I appeal to governments and all sectors of
society to join with solidarity in the efforts to meet
this goal. Together, let us insist upon eliminating
hunger and malnutrition. Let us insist upon it as the
first and most important potential achievement on our
agenda. It is a challenge and an obligation for each and
every one of us to contribute to creating and sustaining
throughout the new millennium a world free from
hunger.
