Worthington on the Food Summit- Final Day

InterAction President and CEO Sam Worthington wrote this post on the final day of last week’s FAO emergency food crisis summit in Rome.

I leave the Summit with some stark facts.

It will cost the world $60 billion dollars more to purchase as much fertilizer as last year; growing our way out of the food crisis in parts of the developing world won’t happen easily.

100 million people have less food and may be hungrier than a year ago. And sadly, it’s a rural child who is most likely to starve.

Most affected families are now adopting coping mechanisms to deal with the crisis: eating one less meal each day; looking for food in the bush; getting help from extended family or neighbors. These are coping mechanism they would generally only use in a disaster, but are forced to use today in this slowly unfolding emergency.

Even as the conference was ending negotiations were taking place behind closed doors on consensus language for the conference’s outcome document. I learned that at one point there were hundreds of bracketed words and phrases – denoting that that particular nations disagreed with their inclusion in the document – and those words are now absent from the final declaration. Unfortunately for those who are currently going hungry, politics often overshadowed the important task at hand.

We shall see what they came up with, and more importantly, get a better sense of whether the political will exists to take meaningful actions to address this crisis. In the meantime, aid agencies will continue to fill the gap.

Sam Worthington is the President and CEO of InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international NGOs focused on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. More information about InterAction’s response to the food crisis can be found at: http://interaction.org/foodcrisis

Worthington on the Food Summit- Day 2

InterAction President and CEO Sam Worthington wrote this post on the second day of the FAO emergency food crisis summit in Rome.

FAO officials are seeking to improve the effectiveness of their organization, and hope constructive dialogue this week will lead to the implementation of new joint efforts with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). But you wouldn’t know that by the NGO welcome.

I wandered the maze-like building yesterday, looking for the main conference area before being told by police that NGOs don’t have full access. I saw no signs, no directions, no “Welcome…” It was a far cry from the red carpet welcome that heads of state received on the other side of the building.

There is a clear class system at UN summits. As the representative of the largest alliance of U.S.-based NGOs, I received a special pass that lets me into the conference area. Unfortunately, most of the hundred or so other NGOs here will make it no further than the institutional hallways.

Even so, it’s clear to me that the informal side meetings with representatives from civil society and FAO staff make this trip worthwhile.

In the NGO Forum at the conference, I was selected to make the first statement from the floor (see InterAction policy statement here). InterAction’s recommendations focus on the poor—the small farmer, and the subsistence farming family. They stress the role of nutrition in keeping children alive and the key role of women in feeding poor families.

Pragmatic action is needed, and the world needs to double its investment in agriculture. It’s important that the FAO reach out to a broader segment of civil society, including NGOs that are comfortable working with the UN, corporations, and governments. The good news is that FAO staff welcomed new ideas for practical advocacy and joint programs with NGOs.

You have to remain an optimist in this business, and I’m hopeful that some new efforts focused on the world’s poor will actually come out of this summit.

Sam Worthington is the President and CEO of InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international NGOs focused on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. More information about InterAction’s response to the food crisis can be found at: http://interaction.org/foodcrisis

Worthington Weighs in on Rome Summit

InterAction President and CEO Sam Worthington wrote this post from the first day of the FAO emergency summit in Rome on the food crisis.

The concern is the current global food crisis, affecting millions of people in both developed and developing countries all over the world. The scene is the FAO Food Security Summit in Rome.

After more than fifteen speeches on the food crisis by various heads of state, the themes begin to blur. Some talk about the need for a new North-South partnership based on solidarity between the world’s rich and poor. The idea that poor African countries, rich in water and arable land, would unite with rich dry countries in a partnership to address this food price crisis is interesting. If it had been proposed by a Gulf state, rather than the President of Benin, maybe it would become something more than another paper speech sitting outside the plenary room.

Some speeches were sadly very disconnected from reality. To hear President Mugabe talk about how his policies have contributed to food security reflected a significant cognitive disconnect. Western NGOs, he said, are causing all the political discontent in Zimbabwe.

Overall the speeches were quite good and reflected the world’s widespread recognition of the urgency of the food crisis and the timeliness of the high-level conference. They acknowledged that limited progress has been made since the 1996 World Food Summit, and that the world can’t continue business as usual. There is widespread recognition that issues with food distribution, price, access, and production could slow or even reverse our progress towards achieving the first Millennium Development Goal.

Behind all the words, there is a sense of overall commitment to address this crisis and to doing it in a way that is sustainable. Unfortunately, such a solution still eludes us. The fall of the government in Haiti, caused by food riots, left a void that concerns many conference attendees.

-Sam Worthington

Sam Worthington is the President and CEO of InterAction, the largest coalition of U.S.-based international NGOs focused on the world’s poorest and most vulnerable people. More information about InterAction’’s response to the food crisis is available at: http://interaction.org/foodcrisis

Sam Worthington Is Heading to Darfur

(InterAction President & CEO Sam Worthington is visiting humanitarian workers in Sudan.)

The trip to Khartoum was a typical flight to Europe followed by another seven hours in the air, landing just south of the Sahara. A few key strokes of the customs agent’s computer and my American passport, with its appropriate visa, had a new stamp. Welcome to Sudan. Khartoum is a new city for me, as dusty as Cairo, but without the tight concentration around the Nile.  Oil wealth, with the occasional building built by Khadafi and new high rise residences, is slowly changing the cityscape of low, brown buildings, plenty of empty space, and the ever present minarets.  I am traveling with Judith, on loan from another U.S. relief organization. The goal is to spend time in Khartoum to register our presence and get government permission to travel to El Fasher, in Darfur.  It’s a time to meet with NGO country directors and get acquainted with the realities they manage. As humanitarians, with the invitation of a legitimate NGO operating in Darfur, in this case InterAction member Relief International, a “yes, you can travel” from the Sudanese government, is still thankfully routine. We shall see.  If all works out well, I’ll be on the first UN flight out to Darfur on Monday.
 
I am traveling to Darfur with a simple mission in mind: to bring attention to the well-being of humanitarian workers living in Darfur, and to increase my understanding of the work performed by InterAction members.
 
-Sam Worthington, InterAction President & CEO

(Read more of his posts, photos and responses to readers’ questions at www.InterAction.org/SudanDiary.)

InterAction interaction

Todd Shelton, Suzanne Kindervatter, Cherri Waters and Laia Grino, from the umbrella organization InterAction, just came by the ONE DC office to host a brown bag about their new Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) Report.

The report looks at the U.S.’s current contribution toward meeting the MDGs. The entire assessment is worth reading, but one item that really stands out to me is on page 62.

That page lists the 20 countries that received the most U.S. aid in 2006 and then goes on to list the 20 poorest countries in the world in 2006. Critically, only four of these countries overlap: Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda and Uganda.

(The full lists are below. All stats are from the U.S. State Department.)

20 Top Recipients of U.S. Aid in 2006 (US$ millions)

20 Poorest Countries - each listed with the amount of U.S. aid received in 2006 in US$ millions.

You can download the whole report, including a color-coded world map of the above, here.

UPDATE: See the map below.

Key
Red=Top Recipient of U.S. aid
Yellow= Poorest country (by GNI capita)
Blue= Poorest countries that are also top recipients of U.S. aid