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ROME, 5 June 2002 -- Commenting on
the contribution of non-governmental organisations and
organisations of civil society to the preparations for the World
Food Summit: five years later, which will
convene in Rome from 10 to 13 June, the Director-General Jacques
Diouf of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said
that "FAO is delighted to be able to count on the
cooperation of the NGOs/CSOs* during the Summit and subsequently
to combat hunger and place agriculture at the service of
humanity".
Dr Diouf has
emphasised that FAO will give careful consideration to any new
proposals which the NGOs/CSOs might offer against the background
of "increasingly more concrete and fruitful
collaboration" with FAO, adding that, "the
Summit: five years later will come to nothing without the
follow-up, which cannot be implemented if we do not know each
other."
Parallel to the FAO
Summit, the NGOs/CSOs will hold a Forum addressing food
sovereignty and the right to food. In this connection, Dr. Diouf
said that the declaration that the Forum will submit to the
Summit will enable all the stakeholders' points of view to
be understood "in their rich variety, diversity and
determined commitment to combating hunger".
The FAO Director-General emphasized the vital need for
everyone to participate and marshal their efforts, and noted the
"broad convergence" that existed between the
concerns of the NGOs/CSOs and the main thrusts of the FAO
Strategic Framework for Action between now and 2015. He said
that since the 1996 World Food Summit, FAO had been involved in
pursuing a series of initiatives to entrench the right to
adequate food, particularly in the representations it has made
to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Dr Diouf said that FAO had been very
closely monitoring work on the Code of Conduct on the Right to
Adequate Food which had been adopted by eight hundred NGOs. Two
years ago FAO had set up a group of distinguished experts on
Ethics in Food and Agriculture, and had embarked on a series of
publications dealing with ethical issues relating to food and
agriculture.
Describing the NGOs as the
"conscience of humanity," Dr Diouf paid a
stirring tribute to their contribution and support during the
negotiations leading up to the adoption of the International
Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture in
November 2001. The Director-General stressed the importance of
this treaty as an international instrument committing the
concerned states to recognizing farmers' rights.
"It is essential for the idea to become
firmly established that hunger - this extreme dimension of
poverty - must be attacked immediately, for it is the negation
of a fundamental human right, in that it hampers all progress
towards improving the plight of those who are suffering from it,
and because it is absurd in a world that now has the means of
doing away with it," he concluded.
*Non-governmental Organizations/Civil Society
Organizations
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