Food security: Group points way forward
31/10/2008
Feed Nigeria Initiative (FENI), a non-governmental organisation has urged the Federal Government to invest more in agriculture to ensure food security.
The group spoke in Lagos during the World Food Day.
It said the country lacks co-ordinated actions and the political will to adhere to international standard on food security, to enable it cope with her food insecurity problems. The problems stemmed from institutionalised corruption and inconsistent agricultural programmes and policies.
Speaking with reporters, the Project Executive, Mr Adeola Soetan, said the World Food Day marked the sixth decade of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and that the Right to Food was specifically recorgnised in the charter.
He regretted that the neglect of agriculture in the last 30 years has caused serious inflation.
He said: " The World Food Day (WFD) is celebrated every year across the globe to commemorate the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations in 1945.
The World Food Day aims at heightening public awareness to the plight of the hungry and malnourished and to encourage people and governments worldwide to take action against hunger. It was first observed in 1981.
"It is instructive to note that the 2008 commemoration of World Food Day also marks the six decades of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, adopted by the United Nations in 1948. The right to food was formally recognised in the Declaration.
"Article 25 of the Declaration specifically pledges the right to food: Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and family including food," he said.
Soeta said: "This inalienable right was further entrenched by various agenda of actions and international resolutions among others. For instance, the right to food is included in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which was adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1966 and came into force in 1976.
A total of 156 countries including Nigeria have ratified the declaration to date. Article 11 of the Covenant "recognises the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living … including adequate food" and fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger..." The right was elaborated in 1999 with General Comment 12 by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights which oversees implementation of the Covenant. It states that the rights to adequate food is realized "when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate or means for its procurement," he noted.
The right to food, he said, "was further reaffirmed by the 13 November, 1996 Rome Declaration on World Food Security. A commitment was made at the World Food Summit in 1966 to reduce by half, the number of undernourished people by 2015, and Millennium Development Goal One, to reduce by half the proportion of people afflicted by extreme poverty and hunger by 2015.
He said since then: "The global attention has been generated to free the world from hunger, particularly from international pro-food development agencies. Advocacy programmes were drawn to put persistence pressure on governments to be responsible and responsive to the plight of the world hungry people put at 1.2 billion. To be food-secure means food must always be available and accessible to all for active and healthy life. And it falls within the constitutional and social responsibility of government to guarantee this through good policy formulation and programme implementation.
"While individuals must to realise their rights to food, governments that have ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights have three levels of obligations. They must :respect the right: meaning they cannot take any action that would prevent people from realising their right to food, protect the right, meaning they have to ensure that no one deprives anyone else
Fulfill the right in two ways; governments must facilitate actions that will strengthen people’s access to and use of resources; and when people are unable to realise the right to food for reasons beyond their control, governments must provide the means to do so.
"As humane and people serving these various global concerns to free the world from hunger seem, the antithesis to the right to food is the entrenchment of pro-business class global capitalism and anti- poor neo-liberal economic policies adopted by governments of most countries which in the least takes food and its access away from the people.
The growing regime of world poor and hunger vulnerable people is as a result of governments abdicating their responsibilities for profit- motivated business class to own the state in the name of privatization, trade liberalization, devaluation, retrenchment of workers and shift from real sector investment to service and portfolio investment/ speculative financial investment. The attendant negative social effects are impoverishment of the working class, job loss, dwindling national and house hold income.
"While the advanced capitalist countries have social safety nets to alleviate suffering of their vulnerable population to ensure their fair right to food, the dogmatic "follow-follow" leaders of developing countries always consume the IMF/World Bank bitter economic pills, hook, line and sinker, and expose agriculture and other real productive sectors to the unfavourable market forces without intervention and protection.
"Take for instance, while developed nations encourage developing countries through WTO treaties to cut subsidies on agriculture, they on their own do subsidize agriculture in their countries to the tune of 1billion Euro per day to protect their farmers and stabilize prices of agricultural products against market fluctuations.
"Nigeria lacks the co-ordinated actions and the political will to adhere to international standard in order to grapple with her food insecurity problems because of institutionalized corruption and disjointed agricultural policies and programmes. Even less endowed countries like Bolivia, Uganda, Mozambique, Mali, Nepal, Guatemala, Indonesia, Brazil, India and South Africa are far ahead of Nigeria in designing a road map and legislations to achieve food security and steadily advancing to realize the MDG One by 2015.
"The right to food has also been formally recognized in the constitutions of some of these countries. South Africa’s post-apartheid constitution of 1994 pledges in its bill of rights: "Everyone has the right to have access to sufficient food and water…" It specifies that the state has to provide for the right of every child to adequate nutrition. Efforts are also under way to develop a legislative framework for the right to food.
"In India, the mandatory mid-day school meal programmme for all children in government and government-assisted primary schools is the largest school meal programme in the world serving more than free 50 million cooked meals daily, while in Brazil, a school feeding programme provides meals to 37 million children as part of the county’s Zero Hunger programme initiated by President Luiz Lula da Silva. As of 2005, the programme had a budget of US46 billion. These are instances of coordinated government food aids intervention to ensure food security and right to food by the disadvantaged.
"Before Nigeria could be food–secure, the nation must fully explore the comparative advantage of her agricultural endowment. Transform her agriculture from the "slash and burn" subsistence to technological driven agriculture. There should be massive government intervention in terms of subsidies, credit guarantee, provision of storage and processing facilities to enhance farmers’ income and citizens’ rights to adequate food at all times", he said.
According to him, "the media and civil society groups must champion the advocacy to have citizens’ rights to food properly legislated and entrenched in the constitution since food security is sine qua non to national security".
The group the said, will soon launch the campaign with others to advocate for this legislation to formally guarantee Nigerians unfettered fundamental rights to food.
No comments:
Post a Comment