The starving cannot wait for 10 more years

Historic meeting hammers home message that more needs to be done to tackle malnutrition

When the International Conference on Nutrition took place in Rome recently, 22 years after the first, little was done to take stock of what have been the main advances and obstacles over those years. After the conference, civil society organizations and social movements called on countries to take seriously into account people's demands and put an end to hunger and malnutrition in all its forms. We cannot accept that another 10 years pass without effective action, much less 22.

Despite some advances in reducing acute and chronic infant and child malnutrition, more than 200 million children still suffer from undernutrition. At the same time, almost 2 billion women and children suffer from anemia and other forms of nutritional deficiencies. Many of them are dying as you read this article. Most of the children surviving chronic malnutrition will grow to be overweight and obese, and will develop related non-communicable diseases (diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, cancer, among others).

The director-general of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, Jose Graziano da Silva, said in his opening statement to the conference that the decisions taken there might not be as good as civil society wanted, because reaching consensus among all governments was difficult. However, it is unacceptable for humankind to continue to regard suffering and dying of malnutrition as normal.

Malnutrition does not happen by accident. It is the result of political decisions and national and international public policies, which do not have the full realization of the human right to adequate food and nutrition as the central priority. It is the result of political decisions and national and international public policies that serve the interests of those who continue to profit, while continuing to produce and reproduce hunger and malnutrition, contributing to an increasing and unacceptable gap between the rich and the poor.

States both at national and international levels have the obligation, under international human rights law to respect, protect and fulfill the human right to adequate food and nutrition for all. Therefore, this suffering imposed on our sisters and brothers represents violations of this right.

The almost 1 billion people still facing hunger today, and the food price volatility crisis of 2008-09, associated with the financial crisis, demonstrated the failure of the free market model of development to fulfill its promise to eradicate hunger through liberalizing international agricultural trade. In reality this model has caused more malnutrition. But despite that, these policies, based on the neoliberal model, continue to be implemented. Malnutrition in all its forms, even in Europe and the United States, has become worse.

At the same time, the present vertical hegemonic agriculture and food system continue to destroy the environment, livelihoods and the Earth, while leading to obesity and noncommunicable diseases.

Violence against women, which limits their control over their lives and bodies, such as discrimination, exclusion from access to education and jobs, child marriage and adolescent pregnancy, affects the nutrition of all. As our peasant sisters from Colombia say, the sovereignty of a woman over her body, her territory, is a cornerstone of food sovereignty and human dignity.

One of the responses of the powerful G8, led by the US, to the price volatility food crisis was the launch of the G8 New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition. Launched at the G8 summit at Camp David in May 2012, the alliance brings together the G8, the African Union, several African governments and the private sector, representing more than 150 companies. This initiative was supposed to raise 50 million people out of poverty by 2022 through "sustained and inclusive growth for Africa's agricultural sector", "accelerated flow of private capital", "major policy changes that open doors to more private sector trade and investment" and the revision of "policies in order to improve investment opportunities".

Since the alliance's inception it has been criticized by several African social movements and national and international NGOs on both the process and the skewed policy commitments that seem to enable private corporations to dictate agricultural policy to advance their own interests.

Small-scale farmers, pastoralists, fisher folk, indigenous people, women and other marginalized groups mostly affected by hunger and malnutrition, but at the same time responsible for almost 80 percent of the production of food consumed by human beings, were excluded from the elaboration of cooperation frameworks at international level, and had limited input at the national level. The drafting of the cooperation frameworks and participation focused strongly on the private sector.

The frameworks and the measures/policies to be implemented almost exclusively deal with the interests and "needs" of international and large national companies that are the key partners of the New Alliance.

The alliance does not mention state obligations or responsibilities of any third parties such as private corporations. Worse still, the states are understood as service providers whose tasks are to reduce "risks and insecurities" of investors.

The alliance is built on the assumption that more production and growth through corporate investment will solve the problem of hunger and malnutrition in Africa. However, if food production increases, there are no mechanisms to ensure that this will benefit the hungry and malnourished.

Furthermore, guaranteeing the protection and promotion of the nutritional dimension of the right to adequate food and nutrition requires measures beyond ensuring access to an adequate, diversified diet and to basic public services to guarantee the effective enjoyment of nutritional well-being. In the cooperation frameworks, marginal attention is paid to nutrition and related policies, nor are they dealt with in the required comprehensive way. Nutrition and food adequacy indicators are absent in the frameworks.

In short, the New Alliance ignores human rights and contradicts a development strategy and policy that contribute to the realization of the right to adequate food and nutrition. But things are changing. Civil society organizations have progressively organized around food and nutrition. The food sovereignty movement has grown since the 1980s, and its pressure has led to changes in the governance mechanisms in the FAO and the cooperation frameworks, toward more participatory mechanisms. And now the civil society organizations working on food and nutrition are working together with the food sovereignty movement.

The civil society meeting in preparation for the International Conference on Nutrition can be considered historic. It was the first time the whole spectrum of civil society organization constituencies working with the FAO, the WHO, and the Committee on World Food Security got together to talk about nutrition. This meant bringing together social movements gathering peasants, fisher folk, women, indigenous peoples, women, youth, pastoralists, landless, agricultural workers and the urban poor with NGOs, academics and nutritionists, among others.

Civil society organizations and social movements demand that governments meet their international human rights law obligations and respect, protect and fulfill the right to adequate food and nutrition and related human rights through policies that do not harm peoples' rights; respect peoples' sovereignty; protect people's rights against harmful initiatives by powerful actors such as multinational corporations; and promote the right to adequate food and nutrition .

The main message is this: Together we can build another world.

The author is secretary-general of FIAN International, an international human rights organization with main offices in German and Switzerland. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 11/28/2014 page1)