Nobel laureates say food is human right

Nobel laureates say food is human right, call for solutions to global food crisis

2008-07-16 23:32:10 -

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) - Nelson Mandela's global crisis task force turned its attention to hunger Wednesday, devoting a daylong meeting to soaring food prices.
The Nobel laureates and human rights activists the former South African president brought together as The Elders at his birthday last year have sent peace missions to the Middle East and Sudan's Darfur and spoken out against sham elections and political violence in Zimbabwe.
With the food crisis, they were taking on an issue that some experts say could lead to new wars, and that has touched all parts of the world, rich and poor.
Food riots have broken out in the poorest countries, and the crisis has set back efforts to lift Africa out of poverty.
Elders chairman and former Cape Town Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu _ speaking after the meeting to an audience that included entrepreneur Richard Branson, a main supporter of The Elders _ called the right to food «fundamental.
Another Elder, former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the solution was not just humanitarian aid today, but steps to improve food security tomorrow.
Besides his work with The Elders, Annan chairs the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, which works with millions of small-scale farmers to try to boost productivity and incomes without harming the environment.
Annan called for a focus on small-scale farmers, many of them women. He encouraged banks and other lenders to extend services to small farmers so that they can afford fertilizer and other productivity-boosting measures and to help them take on the risks associated with expanding their enterprises.
He added governments needed to improve rural infrastructure, and scientists need to develop better seeds and improve soil in Africa, «the only continent that cannot feed itself.
Mandela, who turns 90 Friday, did not attend Wednesday's meeting, at which The Elders consulted with Olivier de Schutter, appointed by the U.N. last year to study the food crisis, and experts from the development group ActionAid International.
Tutu said world leaders were wasting resources fighting terror instead of poverty, saying even a small portion of global defense budgets could end hunger.

«We have it in us to make this a better world, a caring world, a compassionate world in which everyone would enjoy the right to food and freedom from hunger,» he said.
Along with Tutu and Annan, the Elders are Ela Bhatt, a women's rights campaigner from India; Algerian diplomat Lakhdar Brahimi; former Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland; former U.S. President Jimmy Carter; Brazilian sociologist and former President Fernando Cardoso; Li Zhaoxing, a former Chinese envoy to the U.N. who started his diplomatic career in Africa; Mandela's wife Graca Machel, a longtime campaigner for children's rights; former Irish President Mary Robinson; and Muhammad Yunus, founder of Grameen Bank, the pioneering micro-credit institution.
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