African NGOs and CSOs adopt the Cairo declaration on food security. The Bamako Declaration was also approved by more than 200 African social movements.

Meeting in the capital of Egypt in parallel with the twenty-second Regional Conference for Africa of the FAO, from 4 to 8 February 2002, representatives from 30 non-governmental organizations and civil-society organizations expressed their concern over the negative impact that the programme of structural adjustment continues to exert in the rural sector of Africa.

One of the papers produced during this preparatory consultation of the parallel event of the World Food Summit: five years later was the Cairo Declaration on Food Security in Africa, accompanied by a plan of action directed at transforming the political commitments into reality. In both, problems were addressed in relation to food sovereignty and the right to adequate food, effective models of agricultural production, peace, democracy and governance, programmes to manage the AIDS threat, public health, gender equality, financing of the agriculture sector and the improvement of rural infrastructures.

The leaders meeting in Cairo also requested a reform of the African constitutions to include the right to adequate and secure food for all, a careful monitoring of the impact of the decisions of the WTO in African agriculture and support for preservation methods of indigenous foods

In addition, we offer below, available in English and French, the Bamako Declaration, written by the African Social Forum as a result of the meeting held in Bamako, Mali, from 5 to 9 January 2002. More than 200 African social movements represented there repeatedly condemned the dangers of neo-liberal globalization for the African continent, asked for awareness concerning the fragility of their markets against the global market, requested control over the flow of financial capital developed by multinational corporations in the zone, implored that the Official Aid to Development stop being linked to political conditions, warned about the African technical incapacity to meet, under fair conditions, a new round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization, and noted the meagre progress made in themes of gender on the continent during recent years. All this was embraced by the motto: "Another Africa is possible."


The NGOs worldwide prepare for the Forum on Food Sovereignty, an event parallel to the World Food Summit:fyl

Work continues in preparation for the International Planning Committee of NGOs/SCOs for the Forum for Food Sovereignty, from 8 to 13 June 2002 in Rome, which will bring together hundreds of farmer organizations, fisheries groups, agriculture syndicates, indigenous peoples, and NGOs. A forum that finds its legitimacy in the autonomy of the participants and that does not wish to be presented as an "anti-summit", nor as an "office of the FAO."

With the invaluable support of the Italian Committee, which has taken charge of the entire organization and logistics, the important event is already taking form around three overarching themes:

• Right to food and resources (including rights to land, water and biodiversity; rights of the agro-food sector; and the rights of indigenous peoples).
• Alternative models of agriculture (discussing the model of industrial production as well as the GMOs, and presenting the existing alternatives)
• Food sovereignty (understood as democracy, participation and rights of the people to decide their own food, agricultural-development and market policies

Acting as delegates in the forum, 606 participants will take charge of formulating a strategy of action conceived as the sum of the strategies that are already being formulated in NGO meetings parallel to the regional conferences of the FAO for the preparation of the summit. This work will take up the mornings of 8 and 9 June. A group of these delegates will also participate in meetings with the governments in the FAO offices, where it will present the common position of the NGOs with respect to the summit.

An unlimited number of persons can be accredited on participating in the workshops and activities scheduled for the afternoon and night within the framework of the forum. For this, it will suffice to write to the Italian Committee of the Forum for Food Sovereignty: ngoforum@libero.it.

In addition to the core issues mentioned above, the forum will discuss an international code of conduct concerning the right to adequate food, proposed by the NGO International Institute Jacques Maritain, FoodFirst Information & Action Network (FIAN) and World Alliance for Nutrition and Human Rights. This text has been reviewed and approved by already more than 800 NGOs throughout the world. The primary aim of this code, which without being legally binding would have greater possibilities for approval than would an international convention, is to specify the content of the obligations of the states at the national and international level, as well as to delineate the responsibilities of the other actors of civil society with respect to the right of each person to food.

For more information, visit also the FAO-NGO/CSO website


Africa prepares the World Food Summit: five years later

Meeting in Cairo from 4 to 8 February 2002, the ministers of agriculture and delegates from 45 African countries set the agenda that the continent will have to deal with in Rome next June. The twenty-second Regional Conference for Africa of the FAO started on one note: Africa is the only region in the world in which the per capita food supply has diminished in the last four years. Nearly 200 million Africans are undernourished, and this is due in large measure to the limited possibilities of production for domestic consumption and the poor organizational networks for distribution and markets. These figures become even more dramatic under the consideration that, in sub-Saharan Africa, some 24.5 million people suffer from HIV/AIDS, a disease that could take some 20 million lives among African farmers before 2020.

"Above all in the sphere of agriculture, it is truly necessary to develop new negotiations in the WTO ," Jacques Diouf, Director General of the FAO, pointed out in the conference, "so that the developing countries have a greater opportunity to participate in international commerce."

Diouf called for increased investment in infrastructure on the continent, in particular in small-scale irrigation systems, soil recovery and conservation, rural roads, and markets. For water control and land improvement, 37 US billion dollars are currently needed. Other key points in the Cairo conference that will be brought up in Rome include the illegal fishing off of African coasts as well as the need for a code of conduct to regulate it, and the urgency of harmonizing African economic policies.

During the meeting, ministers and delegates praised the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) initiative, a determined effort by African leaders to strengthen agricultural policies and regional commerce.


Director-General of the FAO, Jacques Diouf, warns the Near East against increasing dependency on food imports while more than 35 NGOs recommend priorities for the region

Ministers of agriculture and delegates from 24 countries met in Teheran from 9 to 13 March on FAOs 26th Regional Conference for the Near East to assess the current food and agricultural situation in the region, to follow up on World Food Summit targets set in 1996, and prepare for the next World Food Summit: five years later scheduled in Rome, June 2002. NGOs and Civil society organizations from 15 countries met in Teheran in the same period to discuss and present priority issues to the Regional Conference.

Agricultural production in the region has not kept pace with the rapidly increasing demand for food. The value of the region's agricultural imports is now three times the value of its exports.

Despite the fact that many countries in the region have liberalised their agricultural sectors, agricultural trade in the region has remained limited partly because of the dominance of few and low-value products in the region's exports such as fruit and vegetables. From 1992 to 1996 fruits and vegetables constituted about 40% of the region's total value of agricultural exports.

Director-General of FAO, Dr. Jacques Diouf, urged Near Eastern governments to formulate strategies to diversify exports into other and higher value products in order to promote competitiveness and to better integrate domestic trade into the World market.

Diouf also called for renewed attention to the severe problem of water scarcity in the region which is one of the main inhibitors to agricultural development. The phenomenon of recurring droughts causes serious damage to agricultural activity. During the past twenty years many countries in the region experienced the worst droughts in decades. The region has the lowest indicators relating to undernourishment compared to other regions in the world. Calling for "more crops per drop", Diouf urged governments and experts to formulate policies and strategies to increase the efficiency of water and develop more efficient water management systems.

Other issues discussed at the conference were forest cover - forests disappearing faster in the Near East than in most other parts of the world, the risks of exposure of Near East countries to livestock diseases, as well as biodiversity and its potentials for agriculture, fisheries and forestry in the region.

As an expression of reinforced political will, the establishment of an "International Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty" was announced at the conclusion of the conference, originally called for at the annual World Food Day observance at FAO last October by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany, Mr. Johannes Rau.

FAO has been called to formulate operational modalities for the International Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty for the timely consideration and adoption by member countries.

Diouf said that "Such an alliance could be the tangible expression of reinforced political will and an important step towards removing the despair and anger that are so favourable to extremism."

36 NGOs and civil society organisations from the region held a parallel consultation in Teheran to recommend policies and priorities to the FAO Regional Conference. NGOs, CSOs as well as the FAO called for political participation at the highest possible level at the World Food Summit: five years later in June 2002 as a necessary means to effectively address food insecurity and poverty in the Near East.


Members of the Network support the preparation of Ecuador for the next World Food Summit

Among the numerous countries that are already planning to attend the important appointment in Rome in June 2002, Ecuador has gained the support of various participants of the Network on Rural Development and Food Security (REDERSA) for the preparation of the country´s paper that will be presented at the summit.

The REDERSA, which in Ecuador rallies broad participation of the civil society, agencies of the United Nations and governmental institutions has thus provided a wide perspective on the advances made within the country regarding the commitments made in 1996.

The report begins with a description of the socio-economic characteristics of the country between 1996 and 2001, and reviews the situation of food and national nutrition. It also contains an analysis of the main factors influencing the food security in the country. Before concluding with a number of final considerations, the paper enumerates the policies and programmes that have influenced food security, indicating their opportunities and their limits.

Click here to view an executive summary (only available in Spanish) of this report.

In addition, various members of the REDERSA participated in the NGOs/SCOs Workshop of Ecuador on the participation in the summit held in Quito on 18 July 2001. The paper (only available in Spanish) that came out of that meeting is an analysis of the political, technical and legal advances of the food security between 1996 and 2001, with some reflections on such questions as dependence on the exterior and food sovereignty within the country.

For more information, please contact: FAO-ECU@field.fao.org


Turkey: The thematic group of the network debates the position of Turkish NGOs in the World Food Summit

One of the meetings of the Thematic Group for Rural Development and Food Security in Turkey served as an independent forum for defining the participation of the NGOs of the country in the World Food Summit in June.

During recently held meetings, the NGOs and the civil society belonging to the thematic group debated the outline of the paper that will be presented at the summit and they gave new suggestions on problems that should be included in the position paper.

In the group, there was discussion on the need of: bolstering the country's market-oriented agricultural production; replacing imports of such products as sunflower oil, unrefined oil, corn, rice and legumes, which the country has sufficient potential to produce; and boosting exports of agricultural products. Another idea proposed was to substitute social aid with aid for agricultural production. The need to confront acute issues such as rural unemployment and human development was also underlined

A general agreement at the meetings was that civil society in Turkey must play a much broader role in formulating policies. Other points included in the agenda were the need to fight against depopulation in the forested zones that the country is currently decreasing strongly, the urgency of a dietary and nutritional policy that has not been addressed to date, and the potential of association between producers and consumers, as well as better integration between agriculture and national industry.

In a separate meeting of the TG, some representatives of the government institutions discussed and reviewed the preliminary draft Government Report for WFS: fyl. The document was broadened to cover additional relevant activities of all stakeholders.

During the next meeting of the TG, scheduled for 22 May 2002 final preparations for WFS: fyl will be made. Other issues on the agenda will be organization of public awareness on rural development needs and fund raising; WFD/TeleFood activities 2002 and International Year of Mountains and Arrangements to prepare the National Plan of Action for Nutrition.