By NNN-KUNA,
United Nations : UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday said the global food crisis demands urgent, coordinated international action, warning that deprivation breeds violence as witnessed in many parts of the world.
Speaking on his behalf, Deputy Secretary-General Asha-Rose Migiro told the first international meeting organized by the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) to address the crisis that “our challenge is to deal with this problem now, so that it will not eternally recur.”
She said “we must not be lulled into a false complacency by the fact that prices for some basic foodstuffs have lately begun to recede, or that the crisis does not dominate news headlines the way it did a few weeks ago. The problem remains acute. Prices remain far above what they were six months ago. They are still too high for much of the world’s people, especially the poorest.”
She pointed out that this “man-made problem” is a product of “neglect and our own ineffectuality. We need to rethink the failed policies of the past. We need new strategies for development that works.”
Among the new strategies, she mentioned technical and financial assistance so that small farmers can afford the agricultural inputs they need, fertilizers and high-yield seeds tailored to local growing conditions.
She warned that the international progress towards achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by the target date of 2015 “will be virtually wiped out.”
Deprivation, she further warned, “breeds violence. We have seen it already in Asia, Africa and Latin America. And this may be only the beginning.”
The meeting, which was attended by a number of ministers and addressed by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown via video link, discussed a range of policies relevant at the national and international levels to minimize negative impacts of the current food crisis.