UN Hunger Summit vows ‘urgent action’

Urged for new funds:

ITALY: The UN Hunger Summit on Monday vowed “urgent action” to combat food shortages but drew fire for failing to pledge new funds or set a timetable to beat the scourge affecting more than one billion people.

As Pope Benedict XVI slammed the “greed” of grain speculators, participants at the summit in Rome declared hunger was “an unacceptable blight on the lives, livelihoods and dignity of one-sixth of the world’s population.”

Their joint final declaration which was rolled out on the first day of the three-day summit also outlined five “principles” including “direct action” to help the most vulnerable.

But no new financial commitments were contained in the document, which calls on wealthy nations to honour pledges of 20 billion dollars (13.3 billion euros) in aid over the next three years made at a Group of Eight summit in July.

The final declaration also omitted any mention of a UN 2025 deadline for the eradication of world hunger, prompting an angry response from campaigners.

Matt Grainger of the humanitarian group Oxfam slammed the declaration as “completely uncosted, unfunded and unaccountable.”

“They really had a chance here to come up with some really concrete,” Grainger told AFP, calling the three-day summit a “massive wasted opportunity.”

Some 60 heads of state and government are attending the World Summit on Food Security at the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Rome headquarters, but leaders of the world’s wealthiest countries are conspicuous by their absence.

The summit delegates said they “commit to substantially increase” the percentage of development aid spent on agriculture and food security. ROME, Friday, AFP