More than a vision, this year's theme for World Food Day 2000 "A Millennium Free From Hunger" is a commitment and a duty. It is a commitment because governments must prioritise their policies towards providing people with enough food to eat everyday.
More than a duty, it is a moral obligation for governments to eradicate poverty in their land. However, a commitment is meaningless if it does not translate into reality.
It is shocking to know that while World Food Day 2000 commemorates the 55th anniversary of the founding of the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) on Oct 16, where annual celebrations have been observed in 150 countries over the last two decades, there are still 800 million men, women and children who are chronically hungry today.
In Malaysia, 9.8 percent of its population or 2.2 million Malaysians earn less than RM460 a month, rendering one in every four children malnourished and 1.3 million children undernourished.
Hunger, at its very worst, is not only damaging to the physical body, it is a psychological trauma that perpetuates and gradually stunts the hopes, strength and progress of a nation. When there is hunger, there is no peace or prosperity, there is no vision or hope for the future.
And yet, despite technological advances and smart political maneuvers by governments and non-governmental organisations, why are there so many mouths left unfed and stomachs which go hungry in every part of the world?
It is evident that there is a dire need, not just to provide food for the hungry, but also to eliminate the underlying causes of hunger worldwide, rapidly and permanently.
"Meeting this challenge will not be easy as ending hunger and food insecurity is not simply a matter of growing more food," says ERA Consumers' head of food security, trades and economic division Gregory Lopez.
"The world already produces enough to provide an adequate diet for everyone. But ending hunger also means making sure that food gets into the hands and mouths of those who really need it, for example, the poor, especially women and children, isolated rural communities, ethnic minorities living on the economic margins of society, victims of armed conflicts and natural calamities," he added.
Access to food
According to Lopez, providing access to food and work has been seen as a moral obligation for rulers from the dawn of history. When rulers fail to honour this obligation, there will be an uprising of the oppressed group to establish a state that is truly in the service of the people. "When it is clear that specific people or institution are the causes of specific conditions, people have frequently resisted and rebelled. Often, the target of rebellion has been a local ruler or landowner. With the rise of the nation state, institutions or people wielding state power have increasingly been either the principal cause of the problem or have failed in their responsibility to solve the problem ... thus becoming the target of popular discontent," he said.
He recounted that when a population was predominantly rural, the resistance arose principally from peasants. The Tonghak Peasant Revolution in Korea in 1894, for example, began in response to exploitation by a local magistrate.
"The peasants occupied the country office, seized weapon, distributed illegally collected tax rice to the poor, and they destroyed a new reservoir built with their own forced labour," said Lopez.
He explained that history is in fact full of stories of peasants resisting taxes imposed on them. China, for example, over the course of centuries, peasants resisted taxes they perceived as inequitable or that had particularly become onerous as the result of a shortfall in the harvest.
Similarly, "bread" was the central issue in the French Revolution, a rebellion that was successful to the extent that a despotic monarchy was brought down, and an early declaration on human rights was drafted.
The Mexican Revolution in the early 20th century focused on issues of land for peasants and more recently the Suharto regime in Indonesia was brought down due to shortages of rice and tremendous increase in prices of basic goods.
In Malaysia, the devastating hunger fast incident in the district of Baling, Kedah in 1974 led to the fall of the Malay heartland to opposition party Parti Islam Se Malaysia a few years thereafter.
The historic and politics of malnutrition has brought about a need to develop a notion of access to food as a guaranteed right.
As a right, communities and states are obligated through "enforceable" laws, declarations and treaties to ensure that subjects never go hungry.
The rationale behind this right is also to establish procedural and legal means for seeking remedies against authorities when they fail to guarantee the rakyat 's access to food.
The state's obligation
Notwithstanding [#1]international laws and treaties,[/#] Lopez says that the "generic" state's obligation is to respect, protect and fulfil each person's access to food, a breach of which, will lead to a situation where a person suffers food deprivation.
"These will involve respecting traditional customs, native land rights and basic rights of a community to self-determination," he said.
"When protecting, the state is duty bound to protect a person's access to food against destruction by a third party (his or her neighbours, employers or business enterprise). It is also the state's duty to fulfil access to food for those in need, in particular, those who are threatened by hunger and malnutrition, it is also to ensure that people overcome their deprivation.
Lopez added that such obligation must be seen in relation to the proviso of "maximum use of available resources", as this may imply state infrastructure and resources.
"In almost all countries and at the level of the international community of states, there is no general lack of food or resources. Lack of food is rather a problem of poverty and lacking access to productive resources and work," he said.
However, the state may breach its obligations when it indiscriminately converts agriculture land to commercial purposes; when it indiscriminately logs and develops on environmentally sensitive areas; when it fails to respect traditional and land rights of indigenous people; when it is unable to create employment; when there is employment but with unfairly low wages and workers are unable to negotiate for higher wages; when the state is unable to control prices of public goods, for example transportation, water, electricity, and basic food items, which will eventually cause erosion of income; when it deliberately allows profiteering by traders; when it deliberately allows monopolistic trade practices in the food industry; when it allows the proliferation of racial, cultural, gender and age discrimination.
Consumers' role
Consumers have a very important role to play in reminding the state of its obligation to respect, protect and fulfil their citizens' right to food.
Consumers can ensure that the food procured are safe, nutritious and affordable to all by heightening public awareness and understanding world hunger through strengthening international and national solidarity in the struggle against hunger, poverty and malnutrition.
It is the people's duty to demand from their governments to adhere to the three principles mentioned above, that of respect, protect and fulfillment of obligations to ensure adequate food and sustenance for all.
We can no longer deny that only when the people reiterate their stand and pressure governments to fully fulfil these obligations will there exist a political and social reality of A Millennium Free from Hunger for All.
SUSAN LOONE is a member of the malaysiakini team.
