Plea For Aid To Avert Starvation
Warning that rising food and oil prices pose a crisis for the worlds poor, Robert B. Zoellick, the President of the World Bank, has written to President George W. Bush and other leaders convening in Japan next week for the G8 summit calling on them to make new aid commitments to avert starvation and instability in dozens of countries around the globe.
Zoellicks letter came with a lengthy study of the impact of rising prices for food, fuel and commodities on the worlds poor. Zoellick wrote that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Food Program (WPF) had short-term needs of 10 billion US dollar (ca. 48 milliarder DKR).
Zoellick calculates that, for the worlds 41 poorest countries, the combined impact of high food, fuel and other commodities is a “negative shock” to their economies, reducing GDP by between 3 and 10 percent, causing “broken lives and stunted potential” for millions.
The letter says the trust funds and aid funds set up by the worlds richest countries are on the verge of running out of grant money to finance school feeding, mother and child nutrition programs and food-for-work programs.
He called for three immediate steps to be discussed at the summit meeting. They include supplying sufficient money for a “rapid financing facility” for those needing food aid, and establishing a program to get seed and fertilizers to small farmers, especially in Africa.
Zoellick is also calling on more than two dozen countries to ease export bans on food, which he said have contributed to higher prices.
Meanwhile, World Food Programme (WFP) executive Director Josette Sheeran appealed to countries to exempt humanitarian agencies from their export restrictions or taxes so that states with excess food stores could contribute to feeding the worlds hungry.
– As countries deal with the food crisis, more and more are shutting down their markets for export … It is becoming more and more difficult to buy, she said Tuesday in Cairo.
Sheeran noted that 80 percent of WFP funds were now spent buying food in the developing world to feed the hungry in poor countries, and said she considered that “a revolution in food aid that is very positive”.
But the WFP was now often having to tender for food globally rather than purchasing from the same regions where food was needed, meaning that it had to bring stocks in from much farther away.
Kilde: www.worldbank.org
