HIV/AIDS, Poverty and Hunger
Speech by Jacques Diouf
Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations (FAO) delivered to the Special Session of the United Nations
General Assembly
on HIV/AIDS
New York, 25 June 2001
Your Excellency, Mr. Harri Holkeri, the President of the General
Assembly and Chairman of the Special Session of the UN General Assembly
on HIV/AIDS,
Your Excellency, Mr Kofi Annan, Secretary General of the United Nations,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
I wish to thank you, Mr. Chairman, for allowing me the privilege of being among you today to address the Special Session of the United Nations General Assembly on HIV/AIDS.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Every child, woman and man in this world should have the food they need to be well-nourished and healthy, enabling them to develop their full potential and their unique contribution to humankind. Today, HIV/AIDS is jeopardizing this basic human right for millions of people in the developing world.
Twenty years ago, when it was first detected, HIV was seen as a worrying health issue. Today it is a major development problem, touching upon every area of human existence in the most affected countries. In particular, it poses a serious threat to the food security of the millions who are infected and their families, both in terms of their capacity to produce and to purchase their food.
Impact of HIV/AIDS on food security
HIV/AIDS diminishes the household’s ability to produce food because it takes its death toll mostly among productive adults. In fact, the impact on the agricultural human resources, which make up most of the labour force of the affected countries, has been enormous. FAO estimates that HIV/AIDS has already killed around 7 million agricultural workers since 1985 in the 25 hardest-hit countries in Africa and that 16 million more may die before 2020. Some countries could lose up to one-quarter of their agricultural labour force by that year.
HIV/AIDS also affects food security by impoverishing affected families and hence reducing their ability to buy food. A study in one African country showed that the cost of caring for a patient and meeting the subsequent funeral expenses, exceeded the average annual farm income. As a result, poor rural households sell their productive assets, including their livestock, to care for the sick or pay the funeral expenses, and with those assets go their only savings, compromising their future livelihoods.
Traditional safety nets, which contribute to food security in times of need, are breaking down in the worst affected communities, where families and neighbours become too overburdened to help each other with food, loans, a hand in the fields or care of orphans.
Furthermore, HIV/AIDS is affecting food security at the national level, by reducing the ability of countries to import food when needed. It has been estimated that it is currently reducing annual GDP growth per capita by 0.8% in Africa. Many of the worst affected countries are low-income food-deficit countries (LIFDC), and many are also highly indebted poor countries (HIPC). Their difficulties to import food are thus being exacerbated.
HIV/AIDS poses a threat to rural development
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
HIV/AIDS is rapidly spreading to rural areas, where more than two-thirds of the population of the 25 most affected African countries live. And rural communities bear a higher share of the cost of the pandemic, as many urban dwellers and migrant labourers naturally return to their home villages when they become sick. So, at the same time as remittances from these former migrant members of the household dry up, expenditure to meet medical bills and funeral expenses rises. As the number of productive family members declines, the number of dependants grows.
Poverty, widespread in rural areas, leads to poor nutrition and poor health, which make people more vulnerable to HIV infection. Poor nutrition can also shorten the incubation period of the virus, causing symptoms to appear sooner. This situation is especially severe for the rural poor, who have the least access to medical care.
Armed conflict, typically fought in rural areas, also increases vulnerability to HIV/AIDS because of sexual violence, displacement of people and destitution.
HIV/AIDS and gender
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
Gender inequality is one of the driving forces behind the spread of HIV. Access to productive resources including land, credit, knowledge, training and technology, is strongly determined along gender lines, with men frequently having more access to all of these than women. With the death of her husband, a wife may be left without the access she had gained through him or his clan, and her livelihood, and that of her children, is immediately threatened. Gender imbalances are thus worsening through this process.
Biological and social factors make women more vulnerable to HIV, especially in youth and adolescence. In many places the infection rates are three to five times higher among young women than young men. Effective interventions to mitigate the spread of the epidemic must therefore target both men and women, based on a gender perspective that seeks to understand the complex set of socially ascribed roles and relations between them.
AIDS orphans
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
By 1999 there were 13.2 million AIDS orphans, 95 % of them in sub-Saharan Africa. The resulting dramatic increase in child-headed households also contributes to food insecurity. Many children are losing their parents before learning basic agricultural skills and nutrition or health knowledge. A study in Kenya showed that only 7 percent of agricultural households headed by orphans had adequate knowledge for the most basic agricultural tasks. Not surprisingly, severe food insecurity among orphans is already reported in the worst affected areas.
FAO's activities and commitment
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
FAO signed a Cooperation Framework with UNAIDS back in June 1999 and has been fruitfully collaborating with them as well as with several of our UN partners to alleviate the impact on food insecurity.
A growing awareness of the dramatic effects of the pandemic on rural development and agriculture has led our member countries to ask us to integrate HIV/AIDS concerns in every relevant area of our normative and operational programme of work. We are actively working to that effect, creating a house-wide inter-disciplinary programme.
Links with WFS:fyl
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
In 1996, 186 heads of state and government gathered in Rome for the World Food Summit and pledged to reduce the number of the world’s hungry by half by the year 2015. To achieve this target, a reduction in the number of undernourished of 20 million per year was required; but the current rate of reduction is less than 8 million per year. The fact is that the AIDS epidemic is contributing to an increase in the number of people who go to bed hungry every night. Unless national governments, international bodies and organizations of civil society step up their efforts, the vicious circle of poverty, hunger and HIV/AIDS will not be broken. Indeed, it will intensify.
With the aim of strengthening the political will expressed in 1996 and defining and making available the necessary resources needed to accelerate progress towards the Summit goal, we have invited world leaders to return to Rome for the "World Food Summit: five years later" from November 5 to 9 this year. We strongly believe that this meeting has the capacity to contribute to breaking this vicious circle.
Thank you.
