[Ftffacilitationteam] World Bank annual meetings.

Mar Oct 14 14:50:15 GMT+2 2008

Dear all,
following the message I received from Alejandra I thought whether we should not be sending our document on women and the food crisis to the meeting of the World Bank. What do you think? Please respond soon so we can send it maybe tomorrow.
Thanks,
Ana

Ana Agostino
ICAE
International Council for Adult Education
General Secretariat
18 de Julio 2095 - Apto  301
11200 Montevideo - Uruguay
Tel/fax: 005982 409 79 82
E-mail: ana en icae.org.uy 
www.icae.org.uy

----- Original Message ----- 
From: Alejandra Scampini 
To: ana en icae.org.uy 
Sent: Thursday, October 09, 2008 1:19 PM
Subject: FW: AA release on World Bank annual meetings.

hi all, here's AA's press release on the food crisis ahead of the World Bank annual meetings this weekend. 

Bjs

Alejandra

Bail Out the Hungry, demands ActionAid

World Bank Summit this Week in Washington Could Provide a Life-line for World's Poorest 

For more information contact:  Denise Hughes @  917.549.2621 or Denise en creative-connectors.com

Washington D.C.-October 8, 2008-As developed economies scramble to stabilize their financial markets, ActionAid is urging leaders at the World Bank summit in Washington to take action to save the lives of people who are dying because of the world food crisis.

The crisis has catapulted another 100 million people into the ranks of the hungry. Nearly one billion people - a sixth of the world's population - now face devastating hunger.

"We are witnessing an unprecedented effort to bail out the global financial industry and an acknowledgement that for too long, lack of government involvement and oversight has led to massive failures in the market," said Shefali Sharma, Head of ActionAid's Food Crisis Taskforce.

"A similar rethinking needs to take place on the food crisis. At least $30 billion a year is needed now to invigorate environmentally-friendly small scale food production in developing countries and to ensure that the poor and vulnerable are spared the brunt of the fuel and food crisis.  

"But for this investment to be effective, we need a clear break from past Bank orthodoxy and prescriptions on agriculture and for the institution to support the Right to Food Framework enshrined at the UN."

In its new report, Rising Food And Fuel Prices:  Addressing the Risks To Future Generations - released on Oct. 12,  the Bank acknowledges that: "for those already struggling to meet their daily food and nutrient needs, the double shock of food and fuel price rises represents a threat to basic survival. 

"The poorest households are reducing the quantity and/or quality of the food, schooling, and basic services that they consume, leading to irreparable damage to the health and education of millions of children."   

Women and girls will be the hardest hit, the report warns, because "gender disparities in the quantity and quality of food consumed increase during times of shortage," compelling mothers and daughters to "skip entire days of eating."  Ironically, Women grow 60-80% of the world's food.   

Having acknowledged the food crisis and the immediate need for social Social safety nets, the Bank continues to struggle with a bigger role for the state in resolving these crises even as it supports the financial bailout.  

Commenting on the Bank's strategy ActionAid USA's Governance Policy Analyst, Rick Rowden said:

"Today when countries' social protection mechanisms are being stretched, the World Bank has noted that "Many countries have inadequate safety nets and some are realizing that they have underinvested in these systems," but countries are not just "realizing" this now.  

"In fact, such chronic underinvestment has long been a result of the loan conditions and policy advice of the Bank and the International Monetary Fund over many years to cut back on spending and public investment in order to achieve the IMF's overly-austere definition of 'macroeconomic stability.  

"Even now, as the IMF announced emergency lending to 15 countries, it has kept in place its unnecessarily restrictive fiscal and monetary policy targets that will continue to block countries from being able to increase public investment.  These contradictions must be addressed." 

Commenting on the report, Sharma said:

"ActionAid supports the need to address short-term safety nets so that cash to buy food gets to the most vulnerable - women and children.  

"However, the report falls far short of supporting the free and universal provision of basic health care and education, pushing for reduction in costs to the poor instead. 

"While the Bank is finally waking up to the need for government spending on essential services such as health and education, it does not go far enough in acknowledging the policy space that developing country governments need now more than ever to be able to deal with the triple crises.  

"If the US can spend $700 billion dollars on bailing out Wall Street, surely a case can be made that developing country governments need the investments and the policy flexibility to use the best tools at their disposal in protecting their poor."  

ActionAid's report Failing the Rural Poor covers the right to food, problems in the current aid architecture for agriculture and outlines recommendations for governments and donors to steer investment in agriculture in the right direction. 

Aftab Alam Khan, ActionAid's International Food Rights Coordinator, said:

"The World Bank has been a promoter of free market ideology that has brought the global food and financial structures to a collapse. The Bank needs to acknowledge its own failures in order to change the direction that is pushing millions more people into hunger."

"ActionAid is presenting a 10-point plan to end hunger, and the most fundamental solution that the Bank must recognize is every State's power to ensure that every one of their citizens has the right to food."

ActionAid's HungerFREE campaign to push for the right to food has been launched in over 30 countries over the past 18 months.  On 16 October 2008, World Food Day, protests and actions by women will present how poor women farmers can help solve the food crisis in Africa, Asia and Latin America.  

But enshrining nutritious food as a human right, as ActionAid has long encouraged, is no mean feat in Washington D.C. 

For months, for example, journalists have pressed the U.S. presidential and vice presidential candidates to single out just one spending item they might have to cut given the nation's present economic crisis.

Only Joe Biden, in his debate with Sarah Palin last week, was specific, suggesting that in such hard times his administration might have to "slow down" the nation's commitments to increase foreign assistance. 

Though Senator Biden's response may have eased the insecurities of the American middle class, it was a reminder of the costly political capital that leaders must spend to aid the poor. 

On that point at least, the World Bank's report offers some reassurance. "The costs to national treasuries and the development community of responding to the crisis now," it says, "are many multiples less than the potential costs of millions more undernourished children." 

Alex Wijeratna 
Campaigns Officer 
ActionAid UK
Hamlyn House 
Macdonald Rd 
London N19 5PG
Tel: + 44 (0) 207 561 7613 
Mobile: 07725 406 730 
Skype: alex.wijeratna 

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Registered office: ActionAid, Hamlyn House, MacDonald Rd, London N19 5PG, UK
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