From: <b class="gmail_sendername">Flavio Valente</b> <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Valente@fian.org" target="_blank">Valente@fian.org</a>></span><br><br><div class="gmail_quote"><br><br><div link="blue" vlink="purple" lang="DE">
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<b><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#555555">FIAN Rejects G8 Hunger Initiatives as False Solutions</span></b><span style="font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#555555"> </span><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><br><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#464646">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.<br>
<br>“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.”<br>
<br>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. <br>
<br>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.<br>
<br>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. <br>
<br>“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. <br>
<br>**********<br><br>View the full press release and related news </span><b><span style="font-size:9.0pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#406625"><img src="cid:1371465930.51bee8caef7a8@swift.generated" border="0" height="8" width="5"> <a href="http://www.fian.org/news/article/detail/fian-rejects-g8-hunger-initiatives-as-false-solutions/" target="_blank"><span style="font-size:10.5pt;color:#406625;text-decoration:none">here.</span></a></span></b><span style="font-size:10.5pt;font-family:"Arial","sans-serif";color:#464646"></span><br>
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