RIGHT TO FOOD, MAKE IT HAPPEN!

In his opening address, Mr. Diouf acknowledges the instrumental role of the recent achievements in favour of the human right to adequate food which has been played by civil society as a whole and of FIAN International as the coordinator of the working group on the right to food of the International Planning Committee for food sovereignty.
Every day 850 millions of children, women and men go to bed hungry, as the Director-General of the FAO reemphasised on the occasion of the World Food Day Ceremony 2007. Millions die every year because of hunger and malnutrition. This is unacceptable in a world of abundance.
The FAO Director-General strongly spoke out in favour of a shift of paradigm in the international and national policy-making in fight against hunger. In his speech, Mr. Diouf recalls the international anchorage of the human right to adequate food. Welcoming the adoption in 2004 of the Voluntary Guidelines for the progressive realisation of the right to food under the auspices of the FAO, he firmly confronts individual states and the International Community with the legal obligations they have adhered to. In the light of the lack of progress towards the achievement of the first of the Millenium Development Goals, targeting to halve the number of hungry by 2015, the Director-General strengthens the great potential of human rights and in particular of the right to food to offer new tools and approaches.
Following Mr.Diouf on the podium, Mr. Horst Köhler, the President of the Federal Republic of Germany sees the lack of good governance and of the primacy of interest of private actors and foreign states as being among the main root causes of the persistence of hunger nad chronic malnutrition.
President Jakaya Mrisho Kikwete, head of the state of Tanzania, highlights the need for a strengthened international cooperation and assistance, especially to the benefit of developing states, in the endavour of realizing the right to food and in fighting against hunger.
Finally, the Secretary General of FIAN International, Mr. Flavio Valente who took part in both the official ceremony and the civil society event on the afternoon of the 16th, made the point in saying that “this is the first time, that I hear the language of human rights spoken at the FAO” and pointed this as a great success of a ten years intense process of human rights work. Still there is a lot left to be done and no time to relax. “A right is not a right if you can not claim it”, said Flavio Valente.

For further information on World Food Day Activities, please contact Martin Wolpold-Bosien: wolpold@fian.org; +49-177-339 1263

To watch the official ceremony video, please go to http://www.fao.org/webcast/.