PHM-Exch> "The Governance of Hunger": three proposals to mobilize the world towards ending hunger in 2025 (open paper)

[Claudio Schuftan]

From:  José Luis Vivero <hom-ca at acf-e.org>
and: Andrew MacMillan <andrew.macmillan at alice.it>


 Almost exactly one year has passed since the High-Level Meeting on Food
Security for All was held in Madrid in January 2009, when we first put pen
to paper on the issues of commitment and accountability. Since then, food
security matters have remained high on the international agenda and have
been the focus of more meetings, culminating in the Summit on World Food
Security in Rome last November. Some progress has been made during 2009 on
reforming the CFS, the G-8 (in L´Aquila) has pledged resources to help
countries to halve hunger by 2015, and countries have started to ratify the
Optional Protocol of the ICESCR (30 countries have already signed the
Protocol).

 The Summit, however, provided no evidence of any heightened commitment on
the part of most governments to truly get to grips with the problems of
hunger and malnutrition. The world continues to turn a blind eye to the fact
that millions of people – including up to 3.1 million children - are
needlessly dying each year because of chronic hunger and malnutrition. The
notion that the moment had arrived to set a time-bound goal to eradicate
hunger, put forward by FAO, was shelved before the doors of the Summit
opened to Heads of State. The Declaration merely reaffirmed the global
commitments for halving hunger by 2015 that governments had already made at
the 1996 and 2002 Summits. Sadly, once again, goals were not brought down to
country level and so no government can be held accountable for delivery of
its “share” of the global commitment to which it had subscribed. Our
Globalized World has lost the ambition to set ideal and fair goals for the
whole humanity, as it happened in different periods of the XX century.

 We believe that, even if the new institutional arrangements are to be put
in place for the governance of food security, there will be little real
progress towards eradicating hunger and malnutrition unless instruments are
created that will raise levels of commitments by governments and their
accountability for delivery against these commitments. This belief led us to
draft and put into informal circulation a series of papers during 2009. The
aim of these papers, written at a time of emerging public cynicism about the
growing gap between the promises that governments make in global events and
what they actually do, was to explore innovative ways of addressing issues
of commitment and accountability in relation to hunger eradication and to
stimulate debate on the subject.

 Our first proposal was to set in motion a process aimed at creating a
legally binding International Convention for the Eradication of Hunger and
Malnutrition. Our readers told us that this was too ambitious and that it
could even prove counterproductive, as it would take many years to negotiate
during which there was a danger that action would be put on hold. This
prompted us to propose the creation of an International Public Register of
Commitment for the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition by 2025, into
which governments could unilaterally deposit their Declarations of
Commitment and the Action Plans through which they would achieve their
eradication goal. This mechanism has the advantage that it can be put in
place without extended negotiation but that it will place strong morally
binding obligations on participating countries, including their agreement to
accept international monitoring.

 Thanks to the engagement of several NGOs and CSOs, the proposal for an
International Public Register has received attention in the ongoing CFS
reform process and will hopefully be looked at in more detail this year as
the revamped body examines how it will address the issue of accountability.

 The underlying reason for the failure of governments to respond seriously
to the “wake up call” of the 2008-09 food price crisis and to the horrific
increase in the number of people suffering from hunger that it has induced,
is, we believe, an extraordinary lack of popular consciousness about the
problems of hunger and malnutrition, their impact, the solutions and the
huge potential benefits for humanity that would come from a world free from
hunger. This observation has led us to propose a Global Campaign aimed at
developing a strong, well-informed and vocal constituency of support for
eradicating hunger and malnutrition that will embolden governments to raise
their levels of commitment and help to hold them accountable for delivery.
How to operationalise this campaign is the subject of ongoing discussions
with NGOs and CSOs.

 An opportunity has arisen to publish this material, and so we have
revisited the papers that we wrote in 2009 and drafted a summary version
available from us as per addresses above. Its main purpose is to put on
record our proposals in the hope that they will stimulate further thinking
on how to address issues that are still far from being resolved.

 We thank all those who have contributed so far to the process set out in
the draft paper, and we invite further comments and suggestions as well as
expressions of interest in carrying forward and refining the proposals.

 Hopefully 2010 will be a year in which a record number of people will begin
to enjoy the freedom of a life without hunger and malnutrition – a year of
less talk and more action.
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