World Hunger Summit
2004
By
Carl Bloice
ZNet
Sept. 25, 2004
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Did you know:
- Over 60 Heads of
State attended a World Hunger Summit at the United Nations in New York on
September 20, 2004?
- That the idea of
the summit arose from Latin America and was initiated by Brazilian
President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva?
- That Da Silva and
French President Jacques Chirac led the effort to successfully convince
the 113 assembled world leaders and representatives to issue a new
declaration to fight hunger and poverty and to increase funds for
development?
- The United States
was not among them?
Chances are good that
you were unaware of most, if not all of this. Why? Because the major media
simply did not report it.
Every year a number
of media-watch organizations list the top so-many stories that went
unreported or under- reported by the mass media over preceding months. So
far, for 2004 this one has to take the cake.
It's true that the
activity that resulted in the Poverty Declaration coincided with the UN
General Assembly session and attention was focused on the war in Iraq. And
that the President of the United States was going to appear with his hand
puppet from Baghdad. But still, it's not like there weren't other things
going on in the world that did receive attention: the stupid fine over the
Jackson-Timberlake wardrobe malfunction, Scott Peterson's murder trial and
the controversy over President George W. Bush's still- missing accounting
for his days in or out of the National Guard.
It's a shame the Lula
story was mostly passed over - even by the media outlets that claim to
carry all that's fit to print. This should have been a big story. It is
inextricably linked to the "war on terrorism."Although the
neo-conservatives that led the nation into the illegal and disastrous war
in Iraq have worked overtime to convince the public that there is no
connection between terrorism and the appeal of religious fundamentalists
on the one hand and the growing poverty and inequality in the world on the
other, every rank- and-file anti-globalization and peace demonstrator in
the world knows better. President da Silva spelled it out clearly at the
UN.
'Peace will never
rise from poverty and hunger,' Da Silva told the UN General Assembly.
President Jacques
Chirac flew to the U.S. solely to attend the poverty and development
summit. Although he traveled to New
York for the General Assembly
session President George W. Bush skipped the poverty meeting, sending
instead U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman.
"How many more times
will it be necessary to repeat that the most destructive weapon of mass
destruction in the world is poverty?" Lula asked. "Fair globalization must
begin with the right of everyone to a job," he said, adding that
"dignified work, like the fight against hunger, cannot wait."
Terrorism, the Latin
American leader said, cannot be fought exclusively by military means. "We
have to develop strategies combining solidarity and firmness that are
rigidly within the rule of law," adding that Brazil is opposed to
"interfering in the affairs of other nations, but at the same time could
not remain indifferent to problems that affect other nations."
The French and
Brazilian leaders, along with the others attending the summit, agreed that
the problem of peace and security in today's world cannot be divorced from
the reality of hundreds of millions of peoples' daily existence. For
instance, that 800 million human beings in the world are undernourished,
that some 334 million live in extreme poverty-a number which is expected
to increase to 471 million over the next five years- and that 40 percent
of the world population lack elementary conditions for health and most
have no access to clean water.
"In 1820, the per
capita income of the richest nation in the world was five times greater
than that of the poorest,"said the Brazilian leader. "Today this disparity
has reached 80 to 1. The perverse logic of draining the needy to irrigate
the bountiful still stands. A powerful and all-encompassing invisible cog
wheel runs the system from afar. It often revokes democratic decisions,
shrivels the sovereignty of states and imposes itself to elected
governments."
Da Silva called for
'an important shift in the financial flows from international multilateral
organisms' to foster ``just and sustainable development.' `
The summit was
convened under UN sponsorship to "exchange and intensify ideas and
cooperation for development and against hunger and poverty" within the
framework of the 59th General Assembly session. It was hosted by UN
Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who applauded the Brazilian initiative and
criticized major industrialized countries for standing in the way of
tariff reductions that would help underdeveloped countries to grow and
enter new markets.
At the summit, Latin
American leaders joined in calling attention to globalization's failure to
narrow the gap between the rich and the poor, and urged global lenders
like the International Monetary Fund to allow them to spend more on social
projects and infrastructure.
The summit also heard
an appeal from Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Angelo Sodano, who gave
support to Lula's proposal to "increase the availability of resources to
address those challenges," to "examine alternative sources to finance
development"and to come up with "innovative ways" to fund the struggle for
development.
At the UN meetings,
the leaders of France, Spain, Brazil, and Chile, appealed for new thinking
on global financing. Tanzanian President Benjamin Mkapa, who co- chairs
the International Labor Organization's World Commission on the Social
Dimension of Globalization, and Finland's President Tarja Halonen, called
current disparities between the world's rich and poor countries
politically unsustainable. "For me and for the people of Africa, the
status quo is not an option," he said. Mkapa and Halonen hosted a
separate, special event on "A Fair Globalization: Implementing the
Millennium Declaration."
The Summit was held
in advance of a special General Assembly summit next year called to assess
progress toward meeting the goals of the 2000 Millennium Summit. Those
goals included halving the number of people living in dire poverty by
2015, and guaranteeing that all children in the world have an elementary
school education, that all families have clean water and that the AIDS
epidemic is arrested. "Progress in eradicating extreme poverty has been
uneven," Secretary-General Annan said. "With creativity and political
will, we could do much better."
Gabonese Foreign
Minister Jean Ping, current President of the UN General Assembly, said he
could envision the Assembly becoming "the crucible where we forge a
universal consensus in favor of a more equitable globalization and the
realization of the ideal of a world of peace, progress and justice.""It
is, therefore, with particular interest that the General Assembly will
examine the World Commission's report, which offers an innovative and
direct vision of the fears and aspirations of the majority of the peoples
of the world," he said.
The Poverty
Declaration committed governments to take "resolute and urgent actions" to
ensure the 2015 goals are met, especially in sub-Saharan Africa, where the
need is greatest. "The greatest scandal is not that hunger exists, but
that it persists even when we have the means to eliminate it," the
declaration says. "It is time to take action. Hunger cannot wait."
The U.S. delegation
refused to support the declaration.
Also missing from the
poverty summit deliberation was U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, the
person supposedly responsible for our country's relations with the rest of
the world. One big problem for Powell at this point is his legacy, which
was surely tarnished by the Bush Administration's performance at the
poverty summit. 'The White House criticizes Lula's proposal against
hunger,' read a banner front page headline in
Brazil's
influential O'Estado de Sao Paulo September 21. The headline on the Sydney
Morning Herald read: 'Missing signature mars launch of war on hunger." The
decision of most of the major U.S.
media to not relay to the public the thinking and action of most of the
rest of the world and the stance taken at the summit by the Administration
doesn't do much for its reputation either.
(Carl Bloice is a freelance writer in San Francisco, California.)
Bulatlat
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