Hunger deaths on rise, starvation eradication seems facade

United Nations, Oct 27 (UNI) Despite repeated promises to eradicate hunger, the number of people dying of starvation is rising with a child dying every five seconds from hunger-related causes, according to an independent UN expert.

The number of hungry people in the world currently stands at about 852 million.

''It is a shame on humanity,'' UN's Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food Jean Ziegler told a news conference here yesterday. Mr Ziegler pointed out that the situation was deplorable as the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation claimed the world could feed twice its current population of 6 billion if right food distribution methods were adopted.

He blamed the fact that half of the famished live on already degraded land, spreading desertification, the ''massive underfunding'' of UN feeding programmes, especially in Africa, and continued ''dumping'' of food produced in Europe and the United States with 349 billion dollars in annual subsidies.

''African agriculture is objectively ruined by agricultural dumping by OECD countries,'' said Mr Ziegler, a Swiss university professor, referring to the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development, which comprises some 70 developed countries.

''It is a shame on humanity that in a world that is richer than ever before, 6 million children should die of malnutrition and related illnesses before they reach the age of five,'' he said, noting that last year there were 11 million famished than in the previous year.

Because starvation is primarily a rural problem - about 80 per cent of the famished live in the countryside, he said there needs to be a massive investment in these areas.

''Without adequate investment in small-scale irrigation and small-scale agriculture, there is little hope of eradicating hunger,''he told the UN General Assembly's Third Committee on Wednesday.

He also called for ''international protection'' of the growing number of people forced to flee their lands for environmental reasons but lamented that such protection of ''ecological refugees'' or ''environmental migrants'' was currently as inadequate as the low level of investment addressing the root-cause of environmental migration.

During his trip to Lebanon last month, Mr Ziegler said he found that Israel had caused ''horrible'' damage to the country's infrastructure, agriculture and fisheries that will have long-term effects on food, water and livelihoods for more than a million Lebanese.

He recommended that Israel be held responsible under international law for any violation of the right to food and that it comply with its obligations to pay reparations and compensation for ongoing losses due to the disruption of livelihoods.

It has been estimated it will take at least seven years to clear the 1.2 million unexploded Israeli cluster bombs that litter the southern Lebanese countryside, he noted.

The Lebanese government has said it plans to take Israel to the International Court of Justice and possibly to other world courts.

In his report to the Third Committee, Mr Ziegler also said central to the protection of the right to food was that there be access to justice when this right was violated.

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