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	Bail Out the Hungry, demands ActionAid at World Bank by FAO / ActionAid   15 October 2008   Financial crash may deepen food crisis – FAO   Governments should avoid reducing aid to developing countries’ agriculture and introducing protectionist trade measures in response to the unfolding global financial crisis, FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf cautioned today.   In a statement marking the 34th Session of FAO’s Committee on World Food Security (CFS) from October 14-17, Diouf warned that such steps could increase the risk of another food crisis occurring next year.   Some 36 countries around the world are still in need of external assistance as a result of crop failures, conflict or insecurity, or continuing local high prices, a recent FAO report noted.   “The great uncertainty now enveloping international markets and the threat of global recession may tempt countries towards protectionism and towards reassessing their commitments to international development aid,” Diouf said.   “It would be unfortunate if this were to be the case and the recently mobilized political will towards enhanced international support for developing country agriculture were to evaporate,” he added.   Diouf noted that the financial crisis, following hard on the heels of the soaring food price crisis which threw an additional 75 million people into hunger and poverty in 2007 alone, may well deepen the plight of the poor in developing countries. “Last year it was the pan,” Diouf said. “ Next year could be the fire”.   Commodity prices are currently easing, mainly on expectation of favourable crop prospects but also because of a slowing world economy, among other factors. This could mean a cutback in plantings followed by reduced harvests in major exporting countries. Given continuing low grains stocks, this scenario could lead to another turn of record food prices next year – a catastrophe for millions who by then would be left with little money and no credit.   The impact of the financial crisis may also be felt in developing countries at the macro level, with further potentially negative effects on agriculture and food security, Diouf said. “Borrowing, bank lending, official development aid, foreign direct investment and workers’ remittances – all may be compromised by a deepening financial crisis”, he noted.   Diouf recalled that governments and world leaders agreed at an FAO High-Level Conference on World Food Security held last June that “the international community needs to take urgent and coordinated action to combat the negative impacts of soaring food prices on the world’s most vulnerable countries and populations”.   A G8 Summit in Japan a month later confirmed the resolve of world leaders to address global food security as a top priority and demonstrated a growing political will to reverse disturbing trends in global hunger, he noted.   “It is vital that this momentum be maintained,” Diouf said. “Unless political will and donor pledges are turned into real and immediate action, millions more may fall into deeper poverty and chronic hunger.”   “The global financial crisis should not make us forget the food crisis. Agriculture needs urgent and sustained attention too to make hunger and rural poverty part of history,” he added.   Oct 2008 (ActionAid)   As developed economies scramble to stabilize their financial markets through more vigorous regulation, the international anti-poverty agency ActionAid is urging leaders at a World Bank summit in Washington on Oct. 11-13 to take action to save the lives of people who are dying because of the world food crisis, which has catapulted over 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry.   Nearly one billion people – a sixth of the world’s population - now face devastating hunger. Shefali Sharma, Head of ActionAid’s Food Crisis Taskforce, said:   “We are witnessing an unprecedented effort to bail out the global financial industry and an acknowledgement that for too long, lack of government involvement and oversight has led to massive failures in the market. A similar rethinking needs to take place on the food crisis. At least $30 billion a year is needed now to invigorate environmentally friendly small scale food production in developing countries and to ensure that the poor and vulnerable are spared the brunt of the fuel and food crisis. But for this investment to be effective, we need a clear break from past Bank orthodoxy and prescriptions on agriculture and for the institution to support the Right to Food Framework enshrined at the UN.”   The financial, fuel and food crises form the backdrop of the World Bank and IMF annual meetings. Over the weekend, governments and the Bank will discuss the three crises and potential responses. In its new report, Rising Food And Fuel Prices: Addressing the Risks To Future Generations which will be released on Oct. 12, the Bank acknowledges that “For those already struggling to meet their daily food and nutrient needs, the double shock of food and fuel price rises represents a threat to basic survival. The poorest households are reducing the quantity and/or quality of the food, schooling, and basic services that they consume, leading to irreparable damage to the health and education of millions of children.” Women and girls will be the hardest hit, the report warns, because “gender disparities in the quantity and quality of food consumed increase during times of shortage,” compelling mothers and daughters to “skip entire days of eating.” Ironically, Women grow 60-80% of the world’s food.   Having acknowledged the food crisis and the immediate need for social safety nets, the Bank continues to struggle with a bigger role for the State in resolving these crises even as it supports the financial bailout.   Commenting on the Bank’s strategy ActionAid USA’s Governance Policy Analyst, Rick Rowden said:   “Today when countries’ social protection mechanisms are being stretched, the World Bank has noted that ‘Many countries have inadequate safety nets and some are realizing that they have underinvested in these systems,’ but countries are not just ‘realizing’ this now. In fact, such chronic underinvestment has long been a result of the loan conditions and policy advice of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund over many years to cut back on spending and public investment in order to achieve the IMF’s overly-austere definition of ‘macroeconomic stability.’ Even now, as the IMF announced emergency lending to 15 countries, it has kept in place its unnecessarily restrictive fiscal and monetary policy targets that will continue to block countries from being able to increase public investment. These contradictions must be addressed.”   Commenting on the report, Sharma said:   “ActionAid supports the need to address short-term safety nets so that cash to buy food gets to the most vulnerable – women and children. However, the report falls far short of supporting free and universal provision of basic health care and education, pushing for reduction in costs for the poor instead. While the Bank is finally waking up to the need for government spending on essential services such as health and education, it does not go far enough in acknowledging the policy space that developing country governments need now more than ever to be able to deal with the triple crises. If the US can spend $700 billion dollars on bailing out Wall Street, surely a case can be made that developing country governments need the investments and the policy flexibility to use the best tools at their disposal in protecting their poor.”   Aftab Alam Khan, ActionAid’s International Food Rights Coordinator, said:   “The World Bank has been a promoter of free market ideology that has brought the global food and financial structures to a collapse. The Bank needs to acknowledge its own failures in order to change the direction that is pushing millions more people into hunger. The most fundamental solution that the Bank must recognize is every State’s power to ensure that every one of their citizens has the right to food.”   On one point at least, the World Bank’s report offers some reassurance. “The costs to national treasuries and the development community of responding to the crisis now, are many multiples less than the potential costs of millions more undernourished children.” Visit the related web page
	International Day for the Eradication of Poverty by Kemal Dervis Administrator of UNDP   Oct 2008   This year’s International Day for the Eradication of Poverty comes at a particularly challenging time for the world’s poor. While we are yet to see the full impact of the global financial crisis on developing countries, it’s clear that together with high and volatile food and fuel prices, current global economic conditions threaten the gains that have been made to reduce poverty and advance development for large numbers of people.   The effect of the financial crisis could reduce demand for developing countries'' exports, as well as the availability of credit and foreign direct investment to finance projects.   Donor countries must recommit to meeting development assistance targets in recognition that in our inter-dependent world in which our destinies are inextricably tied to each other, leaving the poorest and most vulnerable further behind is not acceptable.   For developing countries, it’s vital that governments formulate a strong mix of social and economic policies that stimulate productive public and private investment that sustain inclusive growth. Importantly, governments need to resist the pressure to reduce service delivery which impacts the poor particularly hard, and instead ensure that social safety nets are in place for the most vulnerable. It is of particular importance to ensure that poor farmers and small scale entrepreneurs have the protections and opportunities they need to improve their livelihoods.   In these difficult times, it is, therefore, important that we strengthen the protections and recognize the rights of the poor and vulnerable. The theme of this year’s Day, “Human Rights and Dignity of People Living in Poverty,” is, for that reason, especially pertinent. In this, the 60th year of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are reminded that “all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights” and that the fight against poverty is not an act of charity, rather a matter of economic and social rights for all people.   UNDP supports the strengthening of countries’ capacity to mainstream human rights in national development programmes and policies, focusing, in particular, on the principles of non-discrimination and equality. In practical terms this means that UNDP supports the design and implementation of national development and poverty reduction strategies that improve opportunities for marginalised and vulnerable groups and supports their participation in the development process.   On this International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, let us redouble our efforts to give the most vulnerable individuals and groups the chance to escape poverty and destitution, in respect of human rights for all.
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