•  Home
•  Who We Are
•  What We Do
•  Media Centre
•  Publications
•  Humphrey Award
•  Reference
•  Links
•  Contact Us

Canada must put global hunger ahead of narrow national interests

News Release

CANADA MUST PUT GLOBAL HUNGER
AHEAD OF NARROW NATIONAL INTERESTS

MONTREAL - July 5, 2004 – The Canadian government's commitment to halve hunger worldwide by 2015 must be reinforced by a principled position that upholds the human right to adequate food, says Rights & Democracy.

In its role as a member of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization's Inter-Governmental Working Group (IGWG) on the right to adequate food, Canada, along with the United States, Japan and the European Union, has contributed little so far in the way of practical solutions to ending hunger. Instead of strengthening Canada's commitment to the United Nations Millennium Goal to halve global hunger by 2015 and its ratification of previous treaties upholding the right to food, the Canadian delegation to the IGWG has shown greater interest in finding creative ways around them.

The IGWG, whose mandate is the elaboration of voluntary guidelines on the right to adequate food, needs a firm commitment to this most basic human right from its developed country members, including Canada. However, effective guidelines will only be realized when all countries put their desire to end hunger ahead of narrow national interests.

For example, Canada remains the only country on the IGWG opposed to the inclusion of the right to water in the context of the right to adequate food, despite a recent poll showing more than 80% of Canadians strongly in favour of recognizing water as a basic human right.

"Canada should be playing a more positive role in efforts to establish practical guidelines for reducing global hunger," said Jean-Louis Roy, President of Rights & Democracy. "As one of the signatories to the UN treaty that governs the right to food, Canada should prioritize efforts to meet its obligations rather than supporting efforts to weaken them."

Despite recent efforts to limit the participation of civil society in the negotiations through procedural and financial limitations, civil society groups including Rights & Democracy are pressing governments to take this process seriously rather than reducing it to a political debate.