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GENEVA: United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki Moon was set today
to lead a concerted effort by 27 key UN agencies to tackle the
growing crisis caused by a worldwide sharp rise in basic foodstuff
prices.
The UN was scheduled at a two-day conference in
the Swiss capital Bern to reveal a battle plan of emergency
measures, while exploring other longer-term measures to solve the
world’s food crisis.
This will involve adjudicating between advocates
of protectionism and those who favor opening up markets, as well as
between supporters of biofuels and those opposing it.
Rising populations, strong demand from
developing countries, increased cultivation of crops for biofuels
and increasing floods and droughts have sent food prices soaring
across the globe.
“The world food crisis and the solutions that
the United Nations can provide will be at the center of
discussions,” said the UN. The talks hosted by Ban will take place
behind closed doors at the Universal Postal Union headquarters in
Bern, lasting all day today and Tuesday morning.
Results of the deliberations are expected
Tuesday when Ban Ki Moon gives a press conference flanked by Josette
Sheeran, executive director of the UN’s World Food Program; World
Bank President Robert Zoellick; Jacques Diouf, head of the Food and
Agriculture Organization (FAO); and Lennart Bage, president of the
International Fund for Agriculture Development.
The FAO has warned that sharp rises in cereal
prices have left 37 poor countries in an emergency situation
sparking food riots.
Ban Ki Moon called in Vienna on Friday for
immediate concerted action to resolve the global food crisis.
“In the short term, we must address all the
humanitarian crises which have been impacting poorest of poor people
in the world,” he said.
The World Food Program had made an urgent appeal
for additional $755 million to fill the gap.
But in the medium to longer term, “the
international community and its leaders in particular should sit
down together on an urgent basis and address how we can first of all
improve the economic system, the distribution systems, as well as
how we can promote new production of agricultural products.”
“The steeply rising price of food has
developed into a real global crisis,” Ban told journalists in
Vienna.
“The United Nations is very much concerned, as
all other members of the international community are. We must take
immediate action in a concerted way throughout the international
community.”
Ban estimated that around 100 million of the
world’s poorest who previously did not require help now cannot
afford to buy food.
The World Trade Organization, whose Director
General Pascal Lamy will also attend the Bern talks, said the food
crisis reinforces the need to open up world markets.
“Agricultural subsidies by rich countries have
destroyed the agriculture of poor countries,” a spokesman told
Agence France-Presse. “A more open system will be less subject to
distortion.”
The UN Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD)
is also seeking a rapid conclusion to current world negotiations in
the framework of the Doha Round.
The head of the International Labor Organization
(ILO), Juan Somavia, has warned against the danger of seeking only
temporary solutions to the latest crisis, saying this would only
mean a return to the original problem in a world in which
globalization would not benefit the world at large.
Dominique Strauss-Kahn, head of the
International Monetary Fund (IMF), has criticized protectionism and
the use of foodstuffs to make biofuels, and called for a reform of
world coordination of agricultural policy.
-- AFP
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