Table set thinly as Food Summit pledges to halve world hunger in 20 years.

Over the past half century, agricultural production has managed to keep pace with and even outstrip population growth. Yet, there are today some 840 million people worldwide who are chronically undernourished, unable to get enough food to meet their body's energy or nutrient requirements. Over 200 million children under the age of five still suffer from basic protein and energy deficiencies. Millions suffer from diseases and retarded development related to diet deficiencies. And every year, nearly 13 million children die unnecessarily as a direct or indirect result of hunger and malnutrition. That means that while you read this paragraph, 20 more children have died of hunger and malnutrition.

By the year 2030, planet Earth is expected to have to nourish 8.7 billion people - up by half from the current 5.7 billion inhabiting this Earth. Just maintaining current levels of food availability will require rapid and sustainable production gains to increase supplies by more than 75 per cent - all without destroying the natural resources on which our survival depends.

It is clear that achieving food security for the world's hungry, who make up 20 per cent of the population of developing countries, means policies that can make it possible for them to grow or buy the food they need today and into the future.

Meeting against this backdrop and in the shadow of the emergency in eastern Zaire, the World Food Summit (13-17 November 1996) concluded in Rome by setting a course for achieving universal food security - "Food for All" - when it adopted by acclamation the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action. These documents also pledge efforts to halve the number of hungry in the world no later than 2015.

Representatives of 186 countries in the Rome Summit included 41 Presidents, 15 Vice-Presidents and 41 Prime Ministers. A total of 9,863 delegates attended, including representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), United Nations agencies and other international bodies, journalists and support staff. NGOs, youth, parliamentarians, family farmers associations and the private sector held parallel meetings in Rome and reported back to the Summit on their conclusions.

In the Declaration, Heads of State and Government or their representatives said it was "intolerable" and "unacceptable" that over three quarters of a billion people throughout the world "do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs". Reaffirming that "a peaceful, stable and enabling political, social and economic environment is the essential foundation" to food security, they pledged "actions and support" to implement the Summit Plan of Action.

The Action Plan, which is also intended to help deal effectively in the future with emergencies such as in Zaire, contains seven detailed commitments, including sustainable increases in food production, poverty eradication, access to adequate food, and the contribution of trade to food security.

In the Plan of Action, 186 countries pledged their "political will and common and national commitment" to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger from the world by ensuring that "all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life".

The Rome Declaration and Plan of Action give Governments the prime responsibility for achieving food security, and call on them to actively cooperate in a "Food for All" campaign to be based on the Plan's commitments.

'Race against time'

At the Summit's closing session, Food and Agriculture Organization Director-General Jacques Diouf challenged the world to a "race against time" to achieve the Summit goal of reducing the number of hungry by half by 2015. "This is not a maximum goal; it's a minimum goal", he said. The Summit was only the beginning of the fight to ensure that "babies would not cry of hunger and that mothers will not be looking at children who have no hope". He added: "We have the possibility to do it. We have the knowledge. We have the resources. And with the Rome Declaration and the Plan of Action, we've shown that we have the will ."

The need for a Summit, said South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki, "surely constitutes a severe rebuke for all of us, that through the ages, we could have given birth to a human civilization, one of whose legacies is dire poverty for hundreds of millions of fellow human beings". The delegates clearly knew what needed to be done; otherwise, "we would not have produced the directives to ourselves" contained in the two documents.

As President of the Council of the European Union, Irish Prime Minister John Bruton endorsed the Rome Declaration and the Plan of Action, saying the Union was convinced that the Plan provided a "sound basis" for moving towards eradicating hunger and providing adequate food, for all. Their commitments, he stressed, "must not be empty promises. We have a solemn duty as national and international leaders to ensure that words are matched by actions."

Italian Prime Minister and Summit Chairman Romano Prodi said the agreements were a milestone. "Before the eyes of the world, you made a public commitment", he said, adding: "I hope we will never forget our commitment."

While the Summit opened with the adoption by acclamation of the Declaration and Plan of Action, it closed with unresolved disparities concerning implementation. Although the texts had been approved in advance, after more than two years of negotiations that led to compromise language in contentious areas such as trade, development aid, population, sanctions and women's rights, in a sign of the abiding differences 15 countries, including the world's biggest food aid donor - the United States - lodged reservations or interpretative statements.

Although the United States called the Declaration and Plan of Action "a realistic road map", it said in a written interpretive statement that it had not agreed to a target of spending 0.7 per cent of annual economic wealth on official development assistance. It would, however, continue to provide high quality aid on a case-by-case basis as appropriate. It also believed that the attainment of any "'right to adequate food' or 'fundamental right to be free from hunger' is a goal or aspiration to be realized progressively that does not give rise to any international obligations nor diminish the responsibilities of national Governments toward their citizens".

Maintaining the position it took at the 1994 Cairo Conference on Population and Development and the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women, the Holy See expressed concern over such terms as "family planning" and "reproductive health care services". Several Islamic countries joined in those objections. A number of countries, including Iraq, Libya, Burundi and Sudan, expressed reservations regarding economic sanctions, saying these ran counter to the Summit's pledge to alleviate hunger.

The Plan of Action contains seven commitments, which are expected to lead to significant reductions in chronic hunger. These cover: the general conditions for economic and social progress conducive to food security; poverty eradication and access to adequate food; sustainable increases in food production; the contribution of trade to food security; preparedness, prevention and response to food emergencies; optimal investment in human resources, sustainable production capacity and rural development; and cooperation in implementing and monitoring the Action Plan.

Under resolution 51/171 of 16 December, the General Assembly welcomed the outcome of the Food Summit and urged the international community, including international and regional financial institutions, "to cooperate actively in a coordinated manner" in the Plan's implementation. It also recommended that, at next year's special session that will review the implementation of Agenda 21 - the action plan that emerged from the 1992 Rio Earth Summit - the Assembly give "due attention" to the Rome results.

The Commitments

In addition to pledging an ongoing effort aimed at "reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than 2015", the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action also record seven commitments for national and international action:

* Ensure an enabling political, social, and economic environment ... for the eradication of poverty and for durable peace, based on full and equal participation of women and men .

* Implement policies aimed at eradicating poverty and inequality and improving physical and economic access by all, at all times, to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe food .

* Pursue participatory and sustainable food, agriculture, fisheries, forestry and rural development policies and practices ... which are essential to adequate and reliable food supplies ... and combat pests, drought and desertification.

* Strive to ensure that food, agricultural trade and overall trade policies are conducive to fostering food security for all through a fair and market-oriented world trade system .

* Endeavour to prevent and be prepared for natural disasters and man-made emergencies and to meet transitory and emergency food requirements in ways that encourage recovery, rehabilitation, development and a capacity to satisfy future needs .

* Promote optimal allocation and use of public and private investments to foster human resources, sustainable food, agriculture, fisheries and forestry systems, and rural development.

* Implement, monitor and follow up this Plan of Action at all levels in cooperation with the international community.

RELATED ARTICLE: Crop Patterns

* In the industrialized world, people are consumed by the dangers of weighing too much. In too many parts of the world, people are more concerned about the dangers of weighing too little.

* The first recorded famine was in Egypt in 3500 BC.

* During the Irish potato famine from 1845 to 1850, more than 1 million people died and at least as many migrated. While the immediate cause may have been failures in the potato crop in successive years due to blight, a variety of social and political factors were also at work, exacerbated by widespread poverty.

* In 1943, the Bengal famine claimed between 2 million and 3 million people - not because food was in short supply, but because the price of food was beyond the reach of the poor.

* The average daily energy supply has risen from 2,440 calories to 2,720 calories over the last two decades.

* Most chronically undernourished people live in over 80 low-income food-deficit countries.

* The largest number of chronically undernourished people - 512 million or well over half the world's hungry - is in South and Southeast Asia.

* Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest proportion of chronically undernourished people: 43 per cent of the population as compared to 20 per cent overall in developing countries.

* One in seven people in the world go to bed hungry every night.

* For every farmer in the developed world, there are 19 in the developing world.

* A gene transferred from a wild rice plant in India has conferred disease resistance to varieties that are now grown across 11 million hectares in Asia.

* During the 1980s, more than 15 million hectares of tropical forests were lost each year.

* 12 per cent of total military spending in developing countries would provide primary health care for all, including immunization of all children, eliminate severe malnutrition and halve moderate malnutrition, and provide safe drinking water for all.

* Three crops - maize, wheat and rice - provide over half the world's calories.

* Over 500 species of insect and mite are resistant to pesticides.

* Nature needs 3,000 to 12,000 years to build up a layer of soil sufficient to support agriculture.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Right to Be Free from Hunger

Member States of the United Nations early on identified access to adequate food as a universal human right and collective responsibility. The 1948 Universal Declaration on Human Rights recognized that "everyone has a right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food". These concepts were developed more explicitly in the 1966 International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which stressed the "right of everyone to ... adequate food" and specified that the fundamental right of everyone is to be free from hunger.

RELATED ARTICLE: The Problem

Some 840 million people in developing countries today face chronic undernutrition, and almost 200 million children under the age of five suffer from protein or energy deficiencies. As many as 82 nations fall into the category of low-income food-deficit countries: 41 in sub-Saharan Africa, 19 in Asia and the Pacific, 7 in Latin America and the Caribbean, 6 in the Near East/North Africa, and 9 in Europe/Commonwealth of Independent States. At the same time, commitments of external assistance (bilateral and multilateral) to developing country-agriculture dropped from $18.6 billion in 1982 to $11.7 billion in 1992 (in constant 1990 United States dollars).

Agriculture's share in total official development finance also fell, from 24 to 16 per cent over the same period. To make matters worse, fisheries resources are being over-exploited and forests are being destroyed, with available arable land per caput currently at 0.25 hectare.