ROADS NOT TAKEN

LDC Access vs. Protected Rich Markets
Heavy and sustained investment and assistance to poor farmers at the grassroots level has long been advocated. But the lion’s share of credit, technical assistance and available machinery goes to rich farmers. Land reform, once considered a basic necessity, is hardly mentioned anymore.

Poor nations have no higher aspiration than access to U.S. and European markets—and with good reason. Industrialized nations subsidize their farmers to the tune of roughly $289 billion annually, or more than triple the $80 million they offer in financial aid. The World Bank estimates that LDCs could earn $100 billion in sales in open European and U.S markets.

At the time of this writing, it didn’t seem likely that substantial change was in the offing, despite pressure from the developing world and sympathetic words from President Bush.

Human Rights
At its founding, observes FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf, "the United Nations envisaged that human rights would go through a process whereby states would set norms for adequate diets and enact laws in their individual legal systems so that freedom from hunger and malnutrition would be guaranteed to each citizen."

Except in a couple of small and wealthy states, no government has even approached a hard and fast guarantee of food security for its population. The U.S. is inalterably opposed to such a treaty commitment, arguing that lawsuits from individuals claiming hunger would swamp the legal system.

How does a state establish obligatory levels of nourishment and monitor such an arrangement? How could poor nations honor such a pledge?

Many food rights activists, recognizing official reluctance to promise food for all, have tried to frame an international treaty that would oblige governments to do what they can to provide an environment for food security. One framework is pegged to four words: respect, protect, facilitate and fulfill. Governments would be expected to:

• Respect - the right of citizens to a proper diet;
• Protect - the people’s right to food against encroachment;
• Facilitate - opportunities for the right to food to enjoyed;
• Fulfill - the right to food through safety nets for people who cannot help themselves.

Despite 60 years of tinkering with food-security proposals, the existence of enough food in the world to feed everyone and globalization that makes food within reach of all, the fact remains that an explicit and enforceable right to food has not been established.

GOALS NOT MET

"No amount of legal analysis of the relevant international human rights provisions, no amount of posturing by statesmen and bureaucrats and no amount of academic debate and dissection of the ‘technical’ issues can conceal the fact that the eradication of hunger and malnutrition has not, in practice, been a priority concern of the vast majority of governments." Phillip Alston and Katarina Tomasevski, editors of The Right to Food, 1984.

At various meetings over the past 60 years facile international promises were made to eradicate hunger in the foreseeable future. These goals were lightly set and often merely rhetorical. Perhaps more important, the major donor nations have never fulfilled their promises of development aid for issues like land reform and water rights. Gender equality is a good example of a major step forward that has been fully identified but never taken.

Gender Equality
The international women’s movement has made across-the-board progress at world meetings, among industrialized governments and corporate offices, but gender equality simply hasn’t taken root in the vast majority of LDCs.

Common sense would suggest that women must have equal opportunities and a crucial part to play in fight against hunger. The World Bank and virtually all-international agencies now fully recognize this point, supporting it with study after study.

Women play a role at the household level, tending the family garden, maintaining storage facilities, and handling seed selection, animal husbandry and the like. Yet many women are not educated because their fathers did not permit it, feeling that they were more valuable as household servants and farmers.

The increasing migration of LDC men to the urban areas to seek work or just to get away from it all puts many women in near impossible situations. FAO reported in 1998: "Tribal tradition leaves them the responsibility, but not the resources, for managing the farming and proper child rearing."

1. Access to Land: Women own not even 2 percent of land.
2. Access to Credit: What data are available show that only 10 percent of credit allowances is extended to women.
3. Access to Agricultural Inputs: "Women’s access to technological inputs such as improved seeds, fertilizer and pesticides is limited. An estimated 5 percent of extension services have been to rural women."
4. Access to Education: Two-thirds of the one billion illiterate people in the world are women and girls.
5. Access to Decision-Making: Given the traditionally limited role of women in making decisions at the household, village and national levels in most cultures, "their needs, interests and constraints are often not reflected in policymaking processes and laws which are important for poverty reduction, food security and environmental sustainability."