The UN Hunger Summit on Monday vowed "urgent action" to combat food shortages but drew fire for failing to pledge new funds or set a timetable to beat the scourge affecting more than one billion people. As Pope Benedict XVI slammed the "greed" of grain speculators, participants at the summit in Rome declared hunger was "an unacceptable blight on the lives, livelihoods and dignity of one-sixth of the world's population."
Their joint final declaration - which was rolled out on the first day of the three-day summit - also outlined five "principles" including "direct action" to help the most vulnerable. But no new financial commitments were contained in the document, which calls on wealthy nations to honour pledges of 20 billion dollars (13.3 billion euros) in aid over the next three years made at a Group of Eight summit in July.
The final declaration also omitted any mention of a UN 2025 deadline for the eradication of world hunger, prompting an angry response from campaigners. Matt Grainger of the humanitarian group Oxfam slammed the declaration as "completely uncosted, unfunded and unaccountable."
"They really had a chance here to come up with some really concrete," Grainger told AFP, calling the three-day summit a "massive wasted opportunity." Some 60 heads of state and government are attending the World Summit on Food Security at the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation's Rome headquarters, but leaders of the world's wealthiest countries are conspicuous by their absence.
The summit delegates said they "commit to substantially increase" the percentage of development aid spent on agriculture and food security. They vowed a "twin-track approach" to food security comprising direct action for the most vulnerable and sustainable "medium and long-term programmes to eliminate the root causes of hunger and poverty."
Opening the summit, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, calling for a "single global vision" to address the plight of the world's hungry, said "the food crisis of today is a wake-up call for tomorrow." By the time the world population reaches some nine billion in 2050, "we know we will need to grow 70 percent more food, yet weather is becoming more extreme and more unpredictable," he said.
The UN chief added that the issues of climate change and food security are interlinked. "There can be no food security without climate security." Pope Benedict XVI, for his part, lamented "greed which causes speculation to rear its head even in the marketing of cereals, as if food were to be treated just like any other commodity." To help create a sense of urgency ahead of the summit, FAO chief Jacques Diouf went on a 24-hour fast on Saturday, and Ban followed suit on Sunday.
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi, Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and his controversial Zimbabwean counterpart Robert Mugabe were among the some 60 heads of state and government taking part. Accepting an award from the anti-poverty group ActionAid for his efforts to combat hunger, Lula said there had to be "political will" and criticised the apparent indifference of the international community.
"Many seem to have lost the capacity for indignation over such suffering," he said. The international peasants' organisation Via Campesina for its part accused the FAO of favouring multi-national companies in the fight against hunger. "The summit must make radical decisions to change the system of production. They need to give means to small farmers and not to big multi-nationals," said general co-ordinator Henry Saragih outside the FAO headquarters. Non-governmental organisations are holding a parallel forum with the slogan "People's Food Sovereignty Now!" to be attended by Diouf and Rome Mayor Gianni Alemanno. More than 400 delegates from around 70 countries are attending the forum.
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