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Press Release 97/33
HARRISON FORD JOINS OTHERS IN BACKING FAO APPEAL AGAINST HUNGER
ROME, September 16 - American film star Harrison Ford and other leading figures
of the movie world gathered in Venice for the 54th annual International Film Festival
have put their names to the Appeal Against Hunger launched by the UN Food and Agriculture
Organization (FAO).
“We appeal to our friends and colleagues in the world of cinema, television, theatre
and music to support the efforts of FAO to remove the scourge of hunger from the
face of the earth,” the Appeal says. “We firmly endorse FAO’s initiative to mobilize
allBg@ PBÃ of our planAÍ0y village, the non-governmental organizations,
the business community, the entertainment industry and society at large.”
In Venice, as well as Harrison Ford, new signatories to the Appeal included directors
Wolfgang Petersen, Vera Belmont and Giuseppe Tornatore and actors Patrick Timsit,
Lambert Wilson, Remo Girone and Simona Cavallari.
The Venice endorsement comes only a few weeks before FAO takes to the airwaves on
October 19 with TeleFood, the world’s first global fund-raising telecast in support
of Food for All. Timed to coincide with World Food Day, TeleFood aims to increase
public awareness of the urgent problems of hunger and malnutrition that afflict more
than 800 million people in the developing world and also to raise funds for practical
projects to help the poorest farmers in the poorest countries escape from the trap
of poverty and hunger.
FAO’s Appeal Against World Hunger initiative followed the World Food Summit at the
organization’s Rome headquarters last November, when 186 countries declared the present
level of hunger and malnutrition in the world intolerable and unacceptable and pledged
their political will and determination at least to halve the number of the hungry
by 2015.
The Appeal was launched at the Cannes Film festival in May and has now attracted
the support of more than 100 prominent figures in cinema, theatre, literature, music
and other fields from around the world. They include film directors Bernardo Bertolucci,
Tim Burton, Franco Zeffirelli, Mike Leigh, Michelangelo Antonioni and Wim Wenders,
and actresses Francoise Arnoult, Jeanne Moreau, Isabelle Adjani, Gina Lollobrigida
and Gong Li. Other prominent personalities are singer Tina Turner, writers John Le
Carre and David Lodge, opera star Placido Domingo, dancer Patrick Dupont, composer
Pierre Boulez and conductor Riccardo Muti.
The Appeal has also attracted the support of Costa Rican Nobel Peace Prizewinner
Oscar Arias Sanchez and scientist Arthur C. Clarke.
Text of the "Appeal against World Hunger”
“We, the actors, directors and other members of the entertainment industry, find
it unacceptable that over 800 million people in the world, including 200 million
children under the age of five, should continue to suffer from chronic hunger and
malnutrition.
These people lead a life of misery and are denied the most basic of human rights,
the right to food. This is all the more outrageous in a world of surplus and waste.
At the World Food Summit, convened in Rome last November, by the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations (FAO), 112 Heads of State and Government and other
representatives of 186 countries declared their political will and determination
to halve, as a minimum, the number of people without adequate access to food by the
year 2015.
However, the tragedy of widespread hunger cannot be resolved through government action
alone. Such a challenge calls the broad mobilization of both the public and the private
sectors, involving all of civil society and drawing upon collective and individual
resources. We therefore firmly endorse FAO's initiative to mobilize all the inhabitants
of our planetary village, the non-governmental organizations, the business community,
the entertainment industry and society at large. We call upon all persons with a
keen sense of justice to play a part in this noble enterprise, so that the chronically
hungry and malnourished in the least privileged parts of the world may finally break
out of the vicious circle.
We appeal to our friends and colleagues in the world of cinema, television, theatre
and music to support the efforts of FAO to remove the scourge of hunger from the
face of the earth, in particular its actions to inform the public and those designed
to provide the poor with alternative survival strategies to food aid.
We solemnly undertake to do all we can to end hunger, so that the dream of "Food
for All" may finally come true.”