DEVELOPMENT-EU: Aid Chief Opposes UN Plans

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Greta Hopkins

BRUSSELS, Jun 8 2002 (IPS) - The European Union aid chief has criticised the United Nations for attempts to create new funds ahead of the World Food Summit.

A focus on new funding initiatives instead of “the real work” is one reason for “the absence of an unreserved congratulatory mood around the summit,” Poul Nielson, European Union (EU) Commissioner for Development and Humanitarian aid told IPS in an interview Friday.

Eighty per cent of the starvation in the world is caused by conflicts, he said, and leaders in developing countries should take responsibility for this. “The hard core of the food security problem is absolutely man made,” Nielson said. The responsibility for change is mainly in the hands of the politicians, he said.

“To do something meaningful, these crazy conflicts must be stopped,” Nielson said. “The cost in terms of the human suffering of innocent people is unacceptable.”

Nielson will attend the World Food Summit in Rome June 10-13 on behalf of the European Commission (EC), the executive arm of the 15-nation EU.

The meeting of world leaders organised by the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) of the UN is intended to follow up on the first food summit in Rome in 1996. Leaders made a commitment then to halve the number of the world’s hungry by 2015.

Six years later, more than 200,000 die every day from hunger-related diseases, according to the UN. At the present rates of tackling hunger, the summit goal will not be reached until 2030. About 580 million people will remain undernourished, according to the UN.

Humanitarian organisations have deplored the lack of progress, and the lack of interest shown by most world leaders in the Rome summit. Nielson says, however, that the EC has brought positive changes such as its focus on long-term food security.

“We still don’t shy away from doing what needs to be done in disaster situations,” he said. “But it is quite clear that a more sophisticated forward-oriented type of policy is the only right thing to do.”

Nielson admitted that producers in developing countries cannot compete against European agricultural subsidies. Nobody argues that these subsidies should be increased or even kept at current levels, he said.

But the EC has ended the link between food surpluses and food aid, Nielson said. “We do not let surpluses decide what we do today,” he said. “The need out there defines what we do.” The EC is more flexible than ever in providing cash rather than aid in kind, he said.

The EU has given the 49 least developed countries unrestricted access to its market, he said. The EU imports more farm produce from developing countries than the U.S., Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand combined, he said.

On the debate on patenting of plant life by multinational companies, Nielson said the EU is in a no-win situation. “Whatever we do in this area will be criticised by both sides in a political environment that is not very eager to compromise,” he said. “We have to launch a broadly based strategy to counter and balance the forces of economic strength and create some minimum of decency on the market place. This is why more governance and more binding multilateralism is needed.”

Nielson said that genetically modified crops can create new opportunities for developing countries. Introducing new types of rice in Asia brought a leap in productivity, he said. “That was a scientifically driven success story,” Nielson said. “It is one reason why Asian countries are moving out of the very poor developing category.”