In a Joint Declaration, the G8 countries, the emerging nations and the African countries which joined them at the summit of Aquila, in Italy, promised, Friday July 10, to mobilize “at least 15 to 20 billion dollars over three years” to guarantee food safety in the world, and thus to fight against hunger.
Reaffirmed by the World summit of the food brought together in 1996 by FAO (United Nations for the food and agriculture), the right to food safety consists, for each individual to have, constantly the “physical and economic access to a sufficient, healthy and nutritive food making it possible to satisfy [his] energy needs and sufficient food preferences to carry out a healthy and active life”.
The goal of this “Initiative of Aquila on food safety” is to increase the investments in order to increase the agricultural production in the developing countries, as explained by the countries present in Italy. For this last day of the summit, dedicated to matters such as the assistance to the poor countries and the hunger relief in the world, the G8 leaders and the emerging nations had invited representatives from Algeria, Angola, Egypt, Ethiopia, Libya, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa and a delegation of the African Union.
“The combined effect of long time underinvestment in agriculture and food safety, the evolution of prices and the economic crisis produced an aggravation of hunger and poverty in developing countries (…) the number of people suffering from hunger and poverty exceeds the billion today”, write the leaders brought together in Aquila, who committed themselves to “ensuring sustainable development of agriculture while providing an adequate emergency food aid”.
“We (…) remain deeply worried by world food safety, the impact of the financial and economic crisis and last year’s blaze of food prices, which hits the least capable countries to face the amplification of hunger and poverty”, they add. “If the prices of basic foodstuffs dropped since their level record of 2008, they remain historically high and unstable”, they underline, whereas the blaze of prices set off last year hunger riots in several countries.
The President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), Kanayo Kwanze saluted this initiative, estimating that it was “a major swing for food aid, which consists in the fact of giving a drug to a child who is already sick, towards the assistance to the countries so that they set up the good policies in order to produce food”.
