Aid for populations in crisis : The United Nations declare famine

Geneva

Special report

Josette Sheeran, the director of the United Nations’ World Food Program (WFP) is very worried. She is American, surprisingly part of Bush’s team, and 10 days ago came to lobby urgently a European Parliament commission for an increase in their contribution to the WFP’s budget. With 2008 hardly even begun, this budget of nearly 2 billion euros to provide food aid to populations in crisis situations (Darfur, Burundi….) is already nearly 350 million Euros in deficit. The WFP is also suffering the backlash from exploding food and agricultural prices.

Overall, the FAO’s (the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation) combined index for basic products has seen a 40% rise in one year (from 2006 to 2007). This is a first. The situation is serious. If an average European household feels the impact of this price explosion on purchasing power, it’s not difficult to imagine the effect it is having in developing countries.

Josette Sheeran predicts that escalating prices “are putting the world’s most vulnerable populations (the nearly 2 billion people that live on less than 1 euro per day – editor’s note) at serious risk of famine”. In a UN study submitted several days ago, Jean Ziegler, their specialist in the right to food, highlights his concerns over the negative impact of the race to produce biofuels : he explains, “one tank of fuel for a European car is produced using 350kg of maize. This is the quantity that one African child will live on for a year.”