Bail Out the Hungry! Demands ActionAid at World Bank/IMF Meetings
Washington D.C.—October 10, 2008 - As the global bank rescue package nears $2 trillion, the international anti-poverty agency ActionAid is urging leaders at a World Bank summit in Washington on Oct. 11-13 to commit new funds to save the lives of people who are dying because of the world food crisis, which has catapulted another 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry. Nearly one billion people – a sixth of the world’s population - now face devastating hunger.
Shefali Sharma, Head of ActionAid’s Food Crisis Taskforce, said:
“An estimated $1.8 trillion dollars has been found in a matter of weeks to bail out investment bankers. It is outrageous that the world’s poorest people, suffering daily from soaring food and fuel prices, are still waiting for their rescue package.”
New research by ActionAid in its “Failing the Rural Poor,” report shows that rich countries have allowed aid to agriculture to drop to only $3.9 billion per year, compared to the $30billion that the UN says is needed to ensure developing countries to achieve food security. ActionAid is calling on finance ministers meeting in Washington this week to guarantee that aid to poor countries will not be cut and that budgets for smallholder farming and for social protection will be expanded to stop the numbers of hungry people continuing to soar.
“It is a moral responsibility for governments gathered here this weekend to guarantee that this economic crisis will not further exacerbate the food crisis for the world’s poorest.” said Sharma. “At least $30 billion a year is needed to support small farmers and address worldwide hunger as a result of these multiple crises.”
Aid to food crop production has collapsed from US$564 million in 1980 to just US$133 million in 2006, says the report, while support to rural credit programs has fallen even further, from US$860 million in 1980 to US$66 million in 2006.
Instead, aid to agriculture was diverted into liberalization initiatives that dismantled public support to agriculture, and left governments without means to regulate food markets – resulting in falling agricultural outputs and a further deterioration of food security among vulnerable groups.
Aftab Alam Khan, ActionAid’s International Food Rights Coordinator, said:
“The World Bank has been a promoter of free market ideology that has brought the global food and financial structures to a collapse. The Bank needs to publicly renounce failed liberalization policies and harmful trade agreements, and take the lead on forging a new path based on food as a fundamental human right.
The World Bank and other donors should expand and redirect aid to production of staple foods for local consumption, and scaling up low-carbon, low-input farming systems, says ActionAid’s report. Public support to small farmers needs to be re-introduced, while mechanisms to stabilize and regulate food markets are also vital.
In a staff paper, the World Bank acknowledges that “The poorest households are reducing the quantity and/or quality of food, schooling, and basic services that they consume, leading to irreparable damage to the health and education of millions of children,” while women and girls are forced to “skip entire days of eating.”
However, while admitting that governments will need to spend more on social protection, health and education, the Bank and Fund have stopped short of dropping the tough inflation and budget deficit ceilings that they require developing countries to meet.
Rick Rowden, ActionAid USA’s Governance Policy Analyst, said:
"Even now, as the IMF announced emergency lending to 15 countries, it has kept in place its unnecessarily restrictive fiscal and monetary policy targets that will continue to block countries from being able to increase public investment and social spending. These contradictions must be addressed."
ActionAid’s report argues that donor-driven liberalization of agriculture and trade directly contributed to the near-collapse of food production in many developing countries.
ActionAid’s HungerFREE campaign to push for the right to food has been launched in over 30 countries over the past 18 months. On 16 October 2008, World Food Day, protests and actions by women will present how poor women farmers can help solve the food crisis in Africa, Asia and Latin America.
