IIMSAM Official Dr. Naseer Homoud hopes that World Summit on Food Security would craft new dimension

Dr. Naseer Homoud Goodwill Ambassador and Director of Middle East office for the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina against Malnutrition (IIMSAM), the Permanent Observer to the United Nations Economic and Social Council while sending cables on congratulations to the United Nations and FAO for organizing the World Summit On Food Security scheduled to held from November 16- 18, 2009 in Rome asserted “ world community is building high hopes on this proposed summit which is organized to draw immediate attention of governments and related organizations on alarming rates of hunger amid shortage of food supplies for our fellow human beings. As we all are aware that food security is multifaceted in character and therefore necessitates concerted action by stakeholders at all levels”.

The FAO World Summit on Food Security will discuss putting into place a more coherent and effective system of food security, including rules and mechanisms to ensure adequate incomes for farmers, mobilizing investments into agricultural infrastructure and access to inputs, and a mechanism for early reaction to food crises. The Summit agenda will also include roundtables on: financial and economic crisis and food security; global governance of food security; agriculture and the Copenhagen conference on climate change; support measures for farmers; and an early reaction fund for food security.

Heads of state and government will be asked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to reach a broad consensus on the total and rapid elimination of hunger when they gather for the World Summit on Food Security in November. Dr. Naseer supported the demand of FAO to agree to increase agriculture’s share of official development assistance to 17 per cent, the level it was in 1980, from the current 5 per cent. Poor countries need the development, economic and policy tools required to boost their agricultural production and productivity. Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome hunger and poverty and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth. The gravity of the current food crisis is the result of 20 years of under-investment in agriculture and neglect of the sector. Directly or indirectly, agriculture provides the livelihood for 70 percent of the world's poor.

With the world sticking their eyes on global financial turmoil another aspect of this is being continuously overlooked and that remain hunger- which is killing a child every six second and affecting millions. To this context Dr. Naseer said “at a time when the world’s attention is driven by the financial crisis and governments are keen to overcome from this menace, it is urgently needed to focus today on the global hunger crisis, which is a daily crunch for families across the globe.“The current issues of food security demonstrate that agriculture needs more attention on the development agenda. For too long, the world has forgotten that if we equip farmers in the developing world with the inputs and knowledge they need, they can grow more," said Dr. Naseer. “World Summit on Food Security is an important time to refocus the discussion of food security on the engine that drives that production - the farmer. “He further added.

The key challenges which would be addressed in the proposed summit are of grave importance. The agenda of the summit as underlined by FAO needs to be addressed with due diligence and governments must come forward to renew their pledge for fighting hunger. “Eradicating hunger from the world is the utmost challenge and to cope with it we need to ensure sufficient food production and governments must start brainstorming on how to feed the world by 2050” Dr. Naseer added. The Summit has three interlinked aims namely reverse the downward trend of investments in agriculture by returning them to the 17% of Official Development Assistance (ODA) achieved in 1980; to insure this investment works to remove hunger which is now considered to be a daily experience for more than one billion people and to ensure double food production for a world population set to reach nine billion in 2050.
Reaffirming his faith of UN strategy in fighting hunger related issues Dr. Naseer said ““we need that political will and delivery on financial commitments by governments as agreed in several conferences and submits while brainstorming on how to feed the world by 2050”. He further goes on saying “there is hope in every crisis, and I am firm that the proposed summit would come out with a definite plan and strategy to deal with the situation.”

The agenda of the summit is underlining its call for a more effective and logical form of governance of the food security which should be done at all levels including national and international as well. Dr. Naseer urged the governments and delegates who are set to attend the proposed summit to make sure that under developed and developing countries are being provided with fair chance to compete in commodity market and to trace that agricultural policies are combined to sustainable development.

Dr. Naseer further said “the present catastrophic situation is the directly attributed to completely neglecting agriculture in developmental polices both at national and international levels. Due to our wrong policies in past the most important and fundamental right of all people to have food is now stake and it is need of the hour to address the situation and I am hopeful that proposed summit would come up with an unified and planned strategy to tackle the menace which is compounding day by day- causing severe threat to existence of humanity.”

While calling support for IIMSAM which is working on eradication of malnutrition- which is also technically attributed to hunger, Dr. Naseer urged the governments and organizations to some forward to support IIMSAM in pursuit of its aims and objectives to make this world free from hunger and malnutrition. Dr, Nasser appreciated the task being carried on by IIMSAM team in fighting world hunger and malnutrition through spreading Spirulina. He hoped that under guidance of His Excellency Ambassador Remigio M. Maradona Director General of the IIMSAM, the organization would reach to its target in fighting these menaces of contemporary world and thus spreading peace, stability and development in the world.

IIMSAM believes that promise in the Millennium Development Goal to reduce hunger and poverty by half by the year 2015 can only be redeemed by serious thinking, planning and action. Dr. Naseer further added “when we look the other side, there are impending challenges for the mankind. The global challenge of climate change has to be kept in mind while formulating policies for countering the menace of global food crisis”. The nature of crisis asks for global and concerted efforts on the part of world bodies, governments and civil society groups to tackle it. This World Summit on Food Security must be taken as an opportunity to address the lurking crisis of climate change keeping in consideration the global needs of food to usher in the era of global food security regime.