PHM-Exch> FIAN Rejects G8 Hunger Initiatives as False Solutions

[Claudio Schuftan]

From: Flavio Valente <Valente at fian.org>



*FIAN Rejects G8 Hunger Initiatives as False Solutions*




17 June 2013, Heidelberg – FIAN International strongly criticizes
initiatives on food security and nutrition promoted in connection with this
year’s G8 summit hosted by Great Britain. The initiative on transparency,
which promotes an increase in the transparency of land transactions, among
others, as well as the further expansion of the “New Alliance for Food
Security and Nutrition,” adopted at last year’s G8 summit, are rejected by
FIAN as false and inadequate solutions to fight poverty and eradicate world
hunger.

“These G8 initiatives lack democratic legitimacy and ignore States’ human
rights obligations. They promote an agro-industrial model of production
that results in the separation of peoples from their culturally-traditional
eating patterns through land grabs, eviction, low wages, and food
contamination, among others,” said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of
FIAN International. “They further discriminate against the majority of
small scale food producers, destroy their livelihoods, and will serve to
perpetuate the structural causes of hunger and malnutrition rather than
eradicating world hunger.”

The New Alliance, an initiative adopted at the US-hosted G8 summit in 2012
to accelerate “responsible investment in African agriculture and lift 50
million people out of poverty by 2022,” is a new example of market driven
governance, which was put in place without any consultation with those
affected and which will instead benefit a long list of participating
transnational companies.

The transparency initiative aims to promote transparency with regard to
land acquisitions in order to support and increase “productive investments
in land” through the voluntary disclosure of some vague information about
land deals. “This may make land grabbing more transparent, but not less
detrimental,” said Philip Seufert, FIAN’s program coordinator for Access to
Natural Resources.

Recently, FIAN and over 40 organizations and social movements issued a
statement calling upon G8 member states to abandon all plans to establish
the proposed transparency initiative; and instead implement the Guidelines
on the Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests,  the first
international instrument on the governance of natural resources anchored in
human rightsadopted in 2012 by the UN Committee on World Food Security, the
foremost legitimate and democratic multilateral governing body on food
security and nutrition.

“Instead of investing time and money into new initiatives that lack any
legitimate approach, the G8 member states should renew their previously
made commitments and invest resources into regulating investors from their
countries to ensure that they do not abuse human rights; and to implement
effective and immediate action towards a holistic, sustainable and
rights-based approach to the fight against world hunger and malnutrition,”
said Flavio Valente, Secretary General of FIAN International.

**********

View the full press release and related news  *
here.<http://www.fian.org/news/article/detail/fian-rejects-g8-hunger-initiatives-as-false-solutions/>
*
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