Reflections: Hunger – righting an imbalance

Sydney
21 July 2002

Changing face of Pope’s soldiers

Vinnies SOS for cash to fight gambling ills

Priest’s anniversary wish – that more young men take up cloth

Simon’s still in need of a home

Excitement as pilgrims are blessed

Politics and prayers

International court is ‘crucial’ for East Timor

The icon of Our Lady of Kazan

Amnesty condemns attacks by Palestinian suicide bombers

Church unity theme for cardinal at Ryde mayor’s prayer breakfast

Aust gifts set charity record

Danger if teens are ‘running on empty’

Editorial: Romance in marriage

Letters: Jesus is the centre, not the clergy

Conversation: ‘Unreal’ love? Not if your love is real - Anne and Peter McGowan, family delegates

Reflections: Hunger – righting an imbalance

Becoming Catholic ‘a turning point’

Opinion: A return to the genuine ‘good old days’?

Schools fight to keep up with demand

Chaldean leader blesses new church

Helping hand for Sydney pilgrims

‘Big kids’ in new role as Seniors

Inspirations: Students rally to Winter Appeal

Reflections: Hunger – righting an imbalance

By Bruce Duncan

The UN World Food Summit in Rome last month may not have grabbed the headlines, but the fate of many millions of people depended on its outcome.

Only Italy of the 29 OECD countries made any new practical commitment to the fight against hunger, by eliminating Mozambique’s debt of $US524 million.

Italy and Spain were the only developed countries to send top-level delegations, reflecting the low priority the West gives to UN efforts to halve the numbers of hungry people from 840 million.

Moreover, the efforts of the summit were undermined by recent huge increases in US agricultural subsidies. OECD subsidies already cost $311 billion a year.

Australia is rightly worried that the US subsidies will swamp world markets with excess production, forcing prices down and threatening Australia’s own markets.

These subsidies and increased protectionism will also wreak havoc in the agricultural markets of developing countries. The excess US production will be dumped in developing countries, undermining their own food production and local markets by the distorted pricing, and siphoning off scarce capital overseas.

Unless developing countries can access world markets, they cannot gain the benefits from increased trade.

The bitter irony is that for the first time we have the resources to eliminate world hunger, yet it persists, at least in part, because of a lack of political will in developed countries.

Aid to developing nations from developed countries has dropped from 0.7 per cent of GNP (gross national product) in 1970 to barely 0.22 per cent.

Australian overseas aid has declined from 0.55 per cent of GNP in 1969-70 to 0.25 per cent in 2001-02 ($1.725 billion).

Famine is looming again, particularly in Africa. The UN summit asked the developed nations to give an extra $US24 billion to halve the number of people in hunger to 400 million by 2015.

Australia’s Minister for Agriculture, Warren Truss, says the amount spent on farm subsidies over only 24 days would fund the entire program requested for the Food and Agriculture Organisation.

Pope John Paul II says a lack of ethical commitment is the reason the goals of the 1996 Food Summit were not met.

He insists that the world has a duty to guarantee the right to nutrition for everyone, an enormous challenge “to which the Church, too, is fully committed”.

He has called for a speedy resolution to this problem, “one of the gravest facing the human family”.

However, the US delegation opposed the concept of a global right to food and the final communique could not reach agreement on the notion. The communique lamely was forced to study the concept for two years.

Millions of lives are at risk, but world hunger is rarely examined in our media, despite the efforts of our schools, Caritas and other development and aid agencies.

Why is this?

Thousands of Australians have worked overseas in development and business projects, yet their concerns are not reflected in keen public debate.

And why are we not producing prominent figures shaping public opinion on these issues?

These should be painfully worrying questions, not just for Catholics but all people of social conscience.

Bruce Duncan CSsR co-ordinates the program in social justice studies at Yarra Theological College in Melbourne, and is a consultant at Catholic Social Services Victoria.