Our opportunity to fight world hunger
IF campaign chair David Thomas explains how the G8 can deliver for the world’s poorest people.
In January, over 150 people gathered to form giant human letters spelling out the word ‘IF’ (pictured) on the lawn at Queen’s University Belfast. This was the Northern Ireland launch of the Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign, which is supported by over 170 organisations UK-wide, including 21 in Northern Ireland.
The campaign is based on a simple question. Why is it that in a world that produces enough food for everyone, not everyone has enough food? One in eight women, men and children go to bed hungry every single night.
We are calling on the UK Government to show leadership by tackling some of the root causes of hunger and, in turn, to use that leadership to urge other countries to take similar action at the G8 summit. The campaign highlights four key areas that it will be urging G8 leaders to make progress on: aid, land, tax and transparency.
At the UN General Assembly in 1970, rich countries committed to a target of spending 0.7 per cent of gross national income as official development assistance. However, more than 40 years later, it has still not been achieved. The UK Government confirmed in the Budget that it will become the first of the G8 countries to meet this target in 2013 and the IF campaign is hoping that it will use its position on the world stage to encourage other countries to follow suit.
In the developing world, an area the size of County Fermanagh is sold or leased every six days. In Cambodia, for example, over half the available farmland has been acquired by companies. Although the right kind of investment can benefit small-scale producers, in many cases these land acquisitions are not adequately overseen and impact negatively on the food security of poor communities. As many as 58 per cent of global land acquisitions in recent years have been for growing crops that could be used as biofuels. The IF campaign is calling on the UK Government to scrap its biofuel target and put the issue of ‘land grabs’ in developing countries on the G8’s agenda.
Developing countries lose an estimated $160 billion a year as a result of tax dodging by some unscrupulous multi-national companies. This lost tax revenue is money that could be used by governments to invest in support for small-scale farmers and efforts to tackle malnutrition. The recent spate of high profile cases of tax dodging by some multi-nationals operating in the UK has brought the issue to the public attention. David Cameron and George Osborne have both condemned aggressive tax avoidance schemes used by such multi-nationals and wealthy individuals.
However, if the loss of tax revenue has an impact on the UK, this impact is even more severe in poor countries, which have a reduced capacity to collect taxes and investigate cases of suspected tax dodging. The Prime Minister has already announced that tax will be on the agenda of the G8. The IF campaign is calling on the UK to launch a convention on tax transparency at the G8, under which countries would commit to help developing countries to recover tax due to them. Tax havens would be required to share information with developing countries on hidden wealth and assets.
One of the issues that underpins problems with land deals and tax dodging is a lack of transparency. The IF campaign is calling for greater transparency in land acquisitions, to prevent corrupt deals. Governments should be more transparent about how they spend the money they receive so that their citizens can hold them to account.
We hope to engage millions of people across the UK in the issue of global hunger, raising awareness of the underlying causes and, importantly, putting pressure on the Government to take action at the G8. In June, the focus of the campaign will turn to Northern Ireland and the Lough Erne resort. The organisations and supporters of the IF campaign will be hoping and praying that bold actions will be taken so that we will be the generation that sees the end of the global hunger crisis.
