The U.N. declaration recognized that a grave food crisis afflicted two-thirds of the world’s population and acutely imperiled the basic human right to life and dignity.
The world food problem, including the history and geography of hunger and malnutrition, is a complex issue. Ever since Thomas Robert Malthus
While statistics on the persistence of starvation prior to World War II lack accuracy, we know that massive famines
During the post-World War II years, food supplies in most developing countries moved upward at modest rates, but the shift was from a substandard diet for many human beings. In the early 1970’s, however, the world witnessed a dramatic change in the international food situation that negatively influenced world hunger. The shift was related to a host of factors, including a soaring demand for food spurred by both global population growth and rising affluence.
The limitations of the international community’s ability to respond to changing global food emergencies became clear by the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. World food reserves had gone from oversupply after World War II to a ninety-five-day supply in 1961, and then to a twenty-six-day global supply of grain by 1974. From 1962 to 1972, the world price of a bushel of wheat and that of a barrel of oil were roughly the same. Between the years 1973 and 1975, the price-setting policy of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries
The Economic and Social Council
Waldheim noted with dismay that governments and the international community had failed to meet the target of a 4 percent annual increase in global agricultural production that had been called for four years earlier by the International Development Strategy for the Second United Nations Development Decade. Because excessive food imports and consequent drains on the foreign-exchange reserves of the developing countries had continued unabated, the conference agenda included concrete strategies for increasing food production in both developing and developed countries, measures to strengthen world food security policy, and proposals toward stabilizing and expanding markets for exports from the developing nations.
On November 16, 1974, conference representatives adopted the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition. The declaration’s preamble and twelve principles were linked to the aims and objectives of the New International Economic Order
The declaration noted that states have the responsibility for removing obstacles to food production by means of agrarian, tax, credit, and investment policy reform, and for recognizing the key role played by women in agricultural production. Appropriate education, extension programs, and financial facilities are to be made available to women as well as men. Marine and inland water sources are to be exploited for food requirements, even as food production at all levels is to be carried out with waste prevention policies in place and a willingness to conserve the planet’s natural resources.
The declaration also specified that developed nations must aid developing nations by means of unconditional technical and financial assistance. The delicate interrelationship between the world food problem and international trade requires the cooperation of all countries in an effort to stabilize world markets and promote equitable and remunerative prices through international agreements. Finally, it is the common responsibility of the entire international community to secure adequate world food supply reserves, including emergency reserves.
The most significant impact on human rights at the World Food Conference was the establishment of the World Food Council
One important human rights development at the grassroots level was the establishment of World Food Day, observed each year on October 16. The day serves as an annual reminder of the scope and consequences of hunger and its principal cause, poverty. On many college and university campuses in the United States, students participate in a simple, symbolic meal of rice and water as an act of solidarity with the undernourished. Primary and secondary schools have held essay contests, workshops, debates, exhibitions, and farm visits as reminders of the basic human right to food.
WFC initiatives positively influenced global human rights. WFC policies raised the political profile and priority of world food issues, doubled the assistance of donor countries for food and agricultural development between 1975 and 1979, facilitated an agreement on a 7.6-million-ton Food Aid Convention, helped establish both an International Emergency Food Reserve administered by the World Food Program (WFP) and a food credit facility in the International Monetary Fund, and continued to promote cooperation among less developed countries in food and agriculture.
Malnutrition continues to deny about 850 million human beings their basic human right to realize their full potential and human dignity. Every year, about 6.5 million children under the age of five die as a result of hunger and starvation. Suffering from undernutrition is concretely apparent in the young mother nursing her emaciated child during famine in Ethiopia, in the huddled masses of drought victims waiting to be admitted to a refugee camp in the Sahelian region of Africa, in the naked frames of Bangladeshi children living in shanty towns with inconceivably poor water and sanitary facilities, and in the dehumanizing barrios in Recife, Brazil.
Since the advent of the Universal Declaration, the overall percentage of people suffering from chronic undernutrition has declined. Although the 1974 Universal Declaration helped bring direct or indirect food aid relief to many victims of hunger, much more care and work remains to be done at the global level.
Political, economic, population, and environmental factors all thwart efforts toward the global eradication of hunger and malnutrition. In 1974, the United States opposed expansion of the WFP, which sought to aid in famine areas and to help vulnerable groups such as pregnant women and others through food-for-work projects. In late 1975, the U.S. Congress passed a new assistance bill, H.R. 9005, which many humanitarians hailed as an opportunity to recapture food aid for a human rights commitment. The bill, however, spelled out in no uncertain terms the link between U.S. food aid and the goal of expanding commercial markets for American commodities abroad.
When the representatives of many nations gathered at the Millennium Summit
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Brown, Lester R. “The New World Order.” In State of the World 1991, edited by Lester R. Brown et al. New York: W. W. Norton, 1991. Discusses selected global economic, environmental, food, and population indicators affecting hunger and malnutrition. Includes useful data on regional and world grain production from 1967 to 1990 and world grain stock supply trends from 1963 to 1991. Notes, index, and excellent related articles. -
George, Susan. Ill Fares the Land: Essays on Food, Hunger, and Power. Washington, D.C.: Institute for Policy Studies, 1984. Articles attempt to reconstruct an alternative knowledge about hunger and malnutrition, concluding that hunger is primarily a problem of socioeconomic power and will. No index or bibliography. -
The Hunger Project. Ending Hunger: An Idea Whose Time Has Come. New York: Praeger, 1985. An excellent resource for the general reader. Organized around the issues of population, food, foreign aid, national security, and the New International Economic Order. Appendix. -
Johnson, D. Gale, and G. Edward Schuh, eds. The Role of Markets in the World Food Economy. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1983. Scholarly essays that address the world food situation and hunger from the perspective of pricing policies and the role of trade, markets, and governments in the world food economy. Index. -
Lappé, Frances Moore, and Joseph Collins. Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity. Rev. ed. New York: Ballantine, 1979. Shatters the “myth of scarcity” and introduces the economic and political roots of hunger into the discussion of the causes and cures of world hunger and malnutrition. Includes notes, recommendations for further study, and index. -
Lappé, Frances Moore, Joseph Collins, and Peter Rosset. World Hunger: Twelve Myths. 2d rev. ed. New York: Grove Press, 1998. Drawing from research from the Institute for Food and Development Policy, the authors point out the misconceptions about hunger and examine the politics that have prevented the hungry from getting the food they need. Extensive notes. -
Nielsen, Ron. The Little Green Handbook: Seven Trends Shaping the Future of Our Planet. New York: Picador, 2006. Acclaimed, comprehensive source on the global trends that are negatively affecting the environment. Covers topics ranging from global warming to world conflicts. Includes bibliographic references, notes, appendixes, and indexes. -
Sanchez, Pedro, et al. Halving Hunger: It Can Be Done. Sterling, Va.: Earthscan, 2005. Authors of this Millennium Project Task Force Report examine world progress toward eliminating hunger. -
Warnock, John W. The Politics of Hunger. New York: Methuen, 1987. Surveys the evolution of agriculture under colonial rule and examines the long-term ecological and resource constraints on a sustainable food system and impacts on the underdeveloped world. Includes tables, references, and comprehensive index.
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