Last year, 41 million hectares of arable land were appropriated by investment funds and multinational companies in Africa alone. The result has been the expulsion of small farmers. What must be denounced is the role of the World Bank, but also that of the European Investment Bank and the African Development Bank, which financed the land thefts. In order to justify this theft they hide behind a shameful theory, which says that agricultural productivity is very low in Africa. This is true. But this is not because African farmers are less competent than French or Walloon farmers. It is because these countries are strangled by their foreign debt. So they have no money to build up reserves in case of disasters or to invest in subsistence agriculture. It is entirely false to claim that the solution will come from the sale of land to multinationals. What must be done is put these countries in a position to invest in agriculture and give their farmers the minimal tools to increase productivity: tools, irrigation, improved seeds.
What are finally the reasons for hope?
Hope is twofold. There is firstly the emergence of a peasant uprising represented by the movement Via Campesina, which represents nearly 135 million small farmers around the world. This movement has come up with a very concrete project, a Convention on the rights of farmers, and brought it to the United Nations. This proposal will be debated in March by the Council of Human Rights, which must decide whether to make it an instrument of international law. This is obviously a difficult and uncertain process, but I am convinced that this agreement will eventually be realized and it will become a powerful weapon. On the other hand, the dominant countries are democracies, even if their democratic values stop at their borders to make way for the laws of multinational corporations. However, these democracies are not powerless. Any of these mechanisms can be broken by the democratic will of public opinion. We could vote right away on total debt relief for the poorest countries. You can also decide that only the actual players can trade in the agricultural commodity markets, those who deliver the goods [and not the speculators]. Hunger can easily be removed democratically and peacefully in a short period of time.
[1] Jean Ziegler is a professor emeritus in sociology at the University of Geneva and at the Sorbonne, Paris. He has been leading a long and passionate fight for justice and humanity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food from 2000 to 2008 and, since then, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council's Advisory Committee , where he works as an expert on economic, social and cultural rights, including the right to food.
Professor Ziegler is a prolific author of books, at first in particular dealing with the dire situation of hunger in Africa. Since 1964 he has written innumerable books, among which "Sociology of the New Africa", "The Living and the Dead", "Pillage on Africa", "Turn the Guns Around", "The new rulers of the world and those who resist them", "The Empire of Shame" (not translated into English), "Hatred of the West" (not translated into English), and most recently, published October 13, 2011, "Mass Destruction -- The Geopolitics of Hunger".
[2] Causes of Poverty - by Anup Shah -- This Page Last Updated Saturday , September 24, 2011
- Almost half the world -- over 3 billion people -- live on less than $2.50 a day .
- The GDP ( Gross Domestic Product ) of the 41 Heavily Indebted Poor Countries (567 million people ) is less than the wealth of the world ' s 7 richest people combined .
- Nearly a billion people entered the 21 st century unable to read a book or sign their names .
- Less than one per cent of what the world spent every year on weapons was needed to put every child into school by the year 2000 and yet it didn ' t happen .
- 1 billion children live in poverty (1 in 2 children in the world ). 640 million live without adequate shelter , 400 million have no access to safe water , 270 million have no access to health services . 10.6 million died in 2003 before they reached the age of 5 ( or roughly 29,000 children per day ).
Source - original text in French: La libre Belgique
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