International Conference on "Policies against Hunger"
Aigner: "We must pool our resources in the fight against hunger"
The right to food is the most frequently violated human right in the world. There are still approximately one billion people suffering from hunger. "To gain ground in the fight against hunger, we need to effectively coordinate and concentrate international, national, regional and local initiatives," said Ilse Aigner, Federal Minister of Agriculture, at the international conference on "Policies against Hunger" in Berlin. She continued by emphasising that global food policy strategies must be aligned to the right to food.
Source: BMELV
"Now that the FAO's Committee on Global Food Security (CFS) has been reformed, we have a kind of enlarged Security Council for the global food situation, which inspires us with high hopes", said Aigner. It is no longer just governments and the United Nations sitting at the conference table; we have been joined by civil society, science and business. Representatives of the groups affected by the situation, for example small-scale farms, will now also be able to negotiate as equal partners. "We want to take on our joint responsibility", said Aigner. In the run-up to the first session of the new CFS in October 2010, over 250 international participants met in Berlin to draw up recommendations for food security.
The subjects they addressed included improving legal security regarding access to land. Secure rights of access to land and other productive resources are of existential importance to the majority of people suffering from hunger in rural areas, and a key factor in implementing the human right to food. "The Federal Government will focus more strongly on these issues in the forthcoming governmental negotiations with the partnership countries. I am in total agreement with the Federal Minister for Economic Cooperation and Development on this point", said the Federal Minister of Agriculture. She went on to say that it was extremely problematic if large investors from other countries bought or leased large areas of land in order to produce food or raw materials for bioenergy, and the local population did not participate in the value added and might also be driven from their land. The Federal Government supports plans by the FAO to stop this development. Ms. Aigner said that what was needed were rules on large-scale purchases or leases of land by investors in threshold and developing countries.
She continued by saying that there also needed to be an increase in responsible investment by the business community. She stated that this also required rules – on the one hand to give workers in the respective local agricultural sector more rights, and on the other to prevent corruption.
She went on to say that global food security strategies needed to incorporate health and care aspects to a greater degree. It is not enough to just provide an adequate supply of food. Greater importance must be given to knowledge about quality, safety and hygiene, particularly for pregnant women and mothers.
There are a number of international meetings taking place in the next few weeks and months, including the G8 Summit in Canada. "We will continue to commit ourselves to aligning global food policy strategies to the 'human right to food'", said Aigner. This human right does not regard individuals as recipients, but instead as stakeholders who can contribute to shaping the development of their countries.
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