World Hunger (Hansard, 27 June 2002)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Baroness Amos)

The importance of the 1996 target was reaffirmed in the Millennium Summit declaration. The millennium development goals are at the centre of our work in fighting poverty and hunger. In the millennium declaration the international community explicitly linked hunger with the global poverty target. Transforming this commitment into action means tackling poverty and its root causes—and making sure that food security and nutrition concerns are integrated into poverty reduction processes.

The Department for International Development is responsible for leading the UK Government's contribution to achievement of the millennium goals. A wide range of actions implemented by DfID and described in the departmental report for 2002 help ensure that the hunger target is met. These include promoting broad economic growth; better education, health and social protection; revitalising agriculture; and working to assure improved governance, peace and democracy. They have produced two key documents, one on the subject of Eliminating Hunger and a consultation paper on the role of agriculture in poverty reduction. The development community has recognised these as important contributions to the policy debate. The department worked to influence the negotiation of the World Food Summit declaration in line with this analysis and will be following through at WSSD.

But progress towards the hunger targets is too slow. In many countries the number of hungry people in increasing. The international community urgently needs to reconsider its approaches and policies to tackle hunger if we are to meet the global hunger target. We attach importance to the role of trade liberalisation in helping to achieve food security for all. Tackling hunger will require significant progress in the opening up of access to agricultural markets, particularly by developed countries. We want to see substantial cuts by developed countries in agricultural support that distorts trade. We are pushing for large reductions in all forms of export subsidies and the untying of food aid from agricultural surpluses in developed countries. And we are helping to build capacity in developing countries to negotiate and engage with international processes such as the Doha Development Round.

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We are one of the largest providers of extra-budgetary funds to the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations. We are also a significant contributor to the international agricultural research system that underpins productivity increases by poor farmers in developing countries.

In our work with developing countries we are highlighting areas where greater efforts are needed to eliminate hunger. These include ensuring that poverty reduction strategies focus on hunger; helping create better domestic policy frameworks for agriculture; increasing access to knowledge from which to make informed decisions about technology choice; generating better responses for coping with conflict and natural disasters; developing social protection mechanisms to provide a safety net for the most vulnerable; and improving capacity to assess food insecurity so that we can identify who is vulnerable and why.

?The paper Eliminating Hunger, together with DfID's 2002 departmental report, will be placed in the Library of the House.