ISLAMABAD: Top Brazilian experts on Wednesday said that Pakistan and Brazil would develop a comprehensive framework to fight hunger, ensure food security and help alleviate poverty.
"We will develope a framework for future cooperation to fight hunger. The two countries will also ink a memorandum of understanding soon for future cooperation to alleviate poverty," they said while addressing a press conference here.
An official delegation of the Brazilian experts on food security and poverty alleviation has been visiting Pakistan since November 30.
They have interacted with the Pakistani scientists at conference and high-level meetings and shared theie experiences of fighting hunger and poverty.
The delegation members included Marina Lima, Vicente Puhl, Ms. Cassia Amaral, Edgard Aparecido de Moura, Marcos Lopes and Ms. Cynthia Jones.
The experts said that they had invited relevant experts from Pakistan to visit their country and study the Brazilian strategy for zero hunger and poverty alleviation so that applicable mechanism could be developed for Pakistan.
Speaking on the occasion, Brazilian Ambassador to Pakistan Alfredo Leoni said that the Zero Hunger and Poverty Alleviation prograame had helped about 30 million Brazilians come out of extreme poverty during the last decade.
He said that the poverty ratio in his country had been reduced from 30 to just 7 per cent and efforts were continuing to fully eliminate the poverty.
Chairman of the Pakistan Agriculture Research Council Dr Iftikhar Ahmed, in his remarks, termed the visit of the Brazilian experts very successful. The Pak-Brazil seminar and technical exchanges were just the beginning of cooperation in the particular field.
He said that the food security issue was not only related to the availability of food but its accessibility to the people also.
He said that Pakistani food security experts wanted to learn from the successful poverty alleviation programme of Brazil to help mitigate the poverty in the country.
Pakistan has been giving top priority to fighting hunger in the country and wants to follow the Brazilian Bolsa Familia (Family Income Programme), which has received worldwide attention and is being replicated in many countries due to its success, he added.
`Bolsa Familia' is a social welfare programme of the Brazilian government, part of the `Fome Zero' network of federal assistance programmes, which provides financial aid to poor Brazilian families; if they have children, families must ensure that the infants attend school and are vaccinated.
The programme attempts to both reduce short term poverty by direct cash transfers and fight long term poverty by increasing human capital among the poor through conditional cash transfers.
It also works to give free education to children, who cannot afford to go to school to show the importance of education.
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