[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 153 (Thursday, December 17, 1998)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E2337-E2338]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     GLOBAL HUNGER AND UNITED NATIONS FOOD AND AGRICULTURE PROGRAM

                                 ______
                                 

                          HON. LEE H. HAMILTON

                               of indiana

                    in the house of representatives

                      Thursday, December 17, 1998

  Mr. HAMILTON. Mr. Speaker, I want to bring to the attention of our 
colleagues an editorial from former Senator, now Ambassador, George 
McGovern, concerning global hunger and United Nations Food and 
Agriculture Program.
  George McGovern has distinguished himself through a life-long 
commitment of service to the United States and to addressing world 
hunger. As he recounts in this article, it was his experience in the 
U.S. Armed Forces in Europe during World War II which first made him 
aware of the devastating impact of starvation on a population. 
Thereafter, he devoted much of his effort in the U.S. Senate to 
programs designed to alleviate famine. Today he is serving his country 
once more as Ambassador to the United Nations Food and Agriculture 
Program. And now he is clarifying for us many of the challenges faced 
by the United Nations in these efforts, and the benefits which they 
have brought to hundreds of millions of people around the world.
  As Ambassador McGovern notes, foreign assistance programs which help 
the hungry and promote economic development serve the interests of both 
of the recipient countries and the United States. However, our 
leadership in this capacity is threatened today by our delinquency in 
paying our dues to the United Nations. United States contributions to 
hunger-related organizations are very positive, effective, and should 
remain a priority of our engagement with the world.

              [From the Los Angeles Times, Nov. 23, 1998]

                   Too Many in the World Are Left Out

                          (By George McGovern)

       In the fall of 1944, as a 22-year-old American bomber pilot 
     based in war-torn Italy, I saw widespread hunger for the 
     first time: emaciated children begging for food on the 
     streets, teenage girls selling their bodies to stay alive, 
     young mothers scratching through the garbage dumps near our 
     bomber base to find scraps of food. This was even worse that 
     the hunger I witnessed during the years of the Great 
     Depression in the 1930s, when our family, who lived in a farm 
     community in South Dakota, fed a steady stream of out-of-work 
     ``hobos'' who came to our door.
       Not surprisingly, hunger became a primary issue for me when 
     I was elected to Congress in 1956. I became director of the 
     U.S. Food for Peace program and later was President Kennedy's 
     designee on what came to be known as the World Food Program--
     the world's largest international food aid organization. Last 
     year, the program provided food assistance for more than 52 
     million people in 76 countries. Through these programs I saw 
     how much can be done when nations come together to combat 
     hunger. In the past 25 years, for example, despite a doubling 
     of the world's population, the percentage of chronically 
     undernourished people in the world has been cut in half and 
     the absolute number of chronically undernourished people has 
     been reduced by more than 100 million.
       We can take heart from these and other similar steps 
     forward, but this does not mean the job is done. This winter, 
     Russia will be facing acute food shortages caused by poor 
     crop conditions and the collapse of the Russian economy. 
     Millions of Russians will go over the edge of starvation in 
     the absence of international food aid now. Indonesia, 
     hurricane-struck Central America and large parts of Africa 
     currently are sustained by international food donations.
       The fact is that many of our fellow human beings are left 
     out, living on the knife-edge of existence. As world Bank 
     President James Wolfensohn reminded us. ``In too many 
     countries, the poorest 10% of the population has less than 1% 
     of the income, while the richest 20% enjoys over half.''
       In too many countries, girls are half as likely as boys to 
     go to school. In too many countries, children are impaired 
     from birth because of malnutrition. And in too many 
     countries, ethnic minorities face discrimination and fear for 
     their lives at the hands of ethnic majorities.

[[Page E2338]]

       In this world of plenty, of marvelous scientific advances, 
     of growing freedoms, we cannot ignore the tragedy of millions 
     who are excluded from the blessings we enjoy. There is a 
     moral imperative to be concerned and to act. It is simply 
     wrong for a child anywhere in the world to suffer the 
     crippling effects of malnutrition. It is wrong--even 
     outrageous--that more than 800 million people, 14% of the 
     human race, are malnourished, many near starvation. It is 
     wrong to accept as ``unavoidable'' the millions of hungry 
     people we read about or see on TV. It is wrong to let 
     politics and ideology interfere with helping the hungry, 
     especially children. When criticized for helping the 
     communist government of North Korea establish child-feeding 
     programs in that drought-stricken country, Catherine Bertini, 
     who is head of the World Food Program replied. ``I can't tell 
     a hungry 5-year-old boy that we can't feed him because we 
     don't like the politics of his country.''
       But beyond that, it is in our self-interest to end hunger. 
     After all, we live in one world. Rich and poor alike, we 
     breathe the same air; we share a global economy. Killers like 
     AIDS and environmental calamities and other threats to health 
     don't stop at national borders. The chaos associated with 
     political instability rooted in poverty and desperation is 
     rarely contained within a single country.
       Earlier this year, when President Clinton asked me to be 
     the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations food and 
     agriculture agencies in Rome, I readily accepted because 
     of my lifelong interest in agricultural matters and in 
     solving the problem of hunger. At the agency, I work with 
     such organizations as the Food and Agriculture 
     Organization, which is headed by Senegalese agricultural 
     authority Jacques Diouf; the World Food Program, directed 
     by Bertini, an American, and the International Fund for 
     Agriculture Development, under the direction of Fawzi al 
     Sultan, a Kuwaiti banker. Our common purpose, articulated 
     at the World Food Summit hosted by the Food and 
     Agriculture Organization in November 1996, is to reduce 
     hunger by promoting an adequate supply and distribution of 
     food in the world.
       This plan, endorsed by all 186 nations represented at the 
     summit, has the practical and achievable goal of reducing by 
     half the number of hungry people in the world by 2015. 
     Consider these facts:
       Over the past 50 years, infant and child death rates in the 
     developing world have been reduced by 50% and health 
     conditions around the world have improved more during this 
     period than in all previous human history.
       In the past three decades, agricultural production 
     techniques, developed through the internationally supported 
     system of research centers, enabled a ``green revolution'' in 
     many countries. Improved seed and associated break-throughs 
     in agricultural practices resulted in the most dramatic 
     increase in crop yields in the history of mankind, allowing 
     nations like India and Bangladesh, which in the early 1960s 
     and mid-1970s, respectively, were kept alive through outside 
     food assistance, to become nearly food self-sufficient.
       The United States played a leading role in alleviating 
     hunger, especially in the period immediately following World 
     War II, by encouraging the international community to set in 
     place the institutions and methods to address the issue. As 
     prosperity spread across Europe and other parts of the world, 
     more nations have shared in the task of solving the problems 
     of food insecurity.
       The Food and Agriculture Organization is providing 
     technical assistance in a variety of ways: establishing 
     productivity-enhancing technology such as user-managed, small 
     scale irrigation schemes; eradicating and controlling pests 
     like desert locust that threaten food security for millions 
     of people living in a swath extending from the Red Sea to 
     West Africa; monitoring crop conditions around the world to 
     provide early warning of food supply difficulties and 
     disasters; and conserving scarce food resources such as 
     fisheries and biodiversity to protect future food security.
       The World Food Program that is meeting emergency food needs 
     in Rwanda, North Korea, Sudan and the Horn of Africa has 
     saved hundreds of thousands of lives. Also, the program often 
     plays a development role in nonemergency situations 
     characterized by chronic hunger and malnutrition, using 
     ``food for work'' to enable thousands of communities to build 
     schools, improve community water systems and expand other 
     basic infrastructure. And the International Fund for 
     Agricultural Development, established only 20 years ago, 
     provides development loans for addressing the basic needs of 
     small farmers and poor rural communities. The agency was the 
     first to provide funds to the now spectacularly successful 
     Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, which created a model for 
     channeling microcredit to the very poor. The agency is 
     currently supporting similar grass-roots microcredit models 
     in West Africa.
       Obviously, progress in ending world hunger can be greatly 
     advanced by progress in other related problem areas, 
     including better family planning to restrain excessive 
     population growth. There must also be continuing efforts to 
     halt the bloody and disruptive political and military 
     conflicts in developing countries that drive multitudes of 
     people from their homes, fields and jobs.
       Reaching the goal adopted at the World Food Summit, to 
     reduce the number of undernourished people by one-half in the 
     next 17 years, is beyond the capacity of any single country 
     or organization. It will require the effort of many 
     international organizations and national governments and the 
     help of private voluntary organizations, such as CARE, Church 
     World Service, Lutheran World Relief, Catholic Relief 
     Services and the United Jewish Appeal.
       The target beneficiaries themselves have a key role to 
     play, because reducing hunger and achieving security is much 
     more than simply distributing food aid. It's about developing 
     concerned and capable government leadership responsive to 
     citizens. It's about having sound economic policies and 
     educating people. It's about reducing disease and improving 
     public health. It's about improving cultivation practices and 
     making production tools, including rural credit, available. 
     It's about conserving forests, fisheries, genetic resources 
     and biodiversity. It's about establishing effective markets. 
     And it's about having essential infrastructure including 
     farm-to-market roads.
       These difficult but achievable soil motivate the U.N. food 
     and agricultural agencies in Rome as they assist communities 
     and nations to eliminate hunger and to establish the basis 
     for sustained productivity. This work requires technical 
     knowledge, cultural sensitivity, organizational development 
     skills, a realistic appreciation for market incentives and a 
     good measure of altruistic motivation.
       During a recent trip to Egypt, I visited a rural community 
     in the desert between Cairo and Alexandria. Here, the 
     government has settled about 15,000 families on so-called 
     ``new lands.'' To prepare these lands for production with 
     water diverted from the Nile River, the settler families 
     undertake the task of desalinating the soil, a repeated 
     process of tilling, flooding and draining that typically 
     takes more than three years. In addition, an array of basic 
     village facilities and irrigation infrastructure has to be 
     built. The work required of the settlers is backbreaking. But 
     also needed are support, guidance and money, requirements 
     being fulfilled by a collaborative effort of the 
     International Fund for Agricultural Development, which is 
     financing the nonlabor cost of the on-farm infrastructure; 
     the World Food Program, which is supplementing the family 
     diets until the fields come into production, and the Food and 
     Agriculture Organization, which helps monitor and guide the 
     technical aspects involved in getting the land fit for 
     production.
       This is the kind of investment activity that leads to 
     sustained food security. This is the kind of activity that 
     Americans and citizens in other donor countries support.
       I am proud of the tradition of the people of the United 
     States to give a helping hand to the hungry and to those in 
     need. I am proud of the record of foreign assistance that the 
     United States has provided to nations to undertake essential 
     economic development initiatives; it has paid dividends to 
     both the recipient countries and to us. Likewise, I am proud 
     of the pivotal role that the United States has played in 
     making the system of United Nations agencies strong and 
     effective. It saddens me that the United States is today 
     delinquent in paying what it owes to the U.N., including to 
     the Food and Agriculture Organization, the family of 
     multilateral organizations that plays such a key role in 
     eliminating hunger.
       There are no easy solutions to the problems of poverty and 
     underdevelopment in our world. However, eliminating hunger is 
     the place to start and should be our priority. The need is 
     evident. The methods are known. The means can be made 
     available.

     

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