- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debate on 26 and 27 April 1982 (1st and 2nd Sittings) (see Doc. 4870, report of the Committee on Agriculture). Text adopted by the Assembly on 27 April 1982 (2nd Sitting).
- Thesaurus
The Assembly,
1. Aware that at least 500 million people suffer at present from hunger ;
2. Conscious that the world's population, at present at 4 400 million, is likely to increase to about 6 000 million by the end of the century and possibly reach 8 000 million during the first decades of the twenty-first century ;
3. Mindful that huge areas around the world are continuously lost to agriculture through the spread of deserts and due to urban and industrial expansion ;
4. Regretting the fact that a number of developing countries still devote an unduly large proportion of their resources to the excessive increase of their military potential, to the detriment of the struggle against hunger, misery and under-development ;
5. Noting that per capita production in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia has fallen steadily in the last decade, and that these countries- at a time of world recession- are increasingly unable to pay for food imports or products necessary for their own agriculture ;
6. Observing that occasional good overall harvests, such as that in 1981, do not significantly alter the long-term negative trend caused by the above developments- especially when considering that the major gains in production have been obtained in only a few areas, such as the United States, Canada and Western Europe ;
7. Welcoming the fact that the International Emergency Food Reserve has now reached a record level of 620 000 tonnes of grain, as against the previous target of 500 000 tonnes, due to considerably increased contributions by major donor nations ;
8. Noting with satisfaction that the target of 7.6 million tonnes in world reserves of grain, set out in the International Food Aid Convention of 1980, has now been met,
9. Calls upon its members to urge national parliaments and their governments :
9.1 to increase contributions under the International Food Aid Convention of 1980, so as to allow food aid in grain to rise to the 10 million tonnes target called for by the 1974 World Food Conference ;
9.2 to increase their assistance to agencies primarily involved in helping refugees and the victims of natural disasters, such as the World Food Programme of the United Nations, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, and the International Monetary Fund, which has recently begun to help finance the grain imports of a number of less-developed countries ;
9.3 to encourage FAO to pursue its efforts to devote more of its resources to direct assistance in the field ;
9.4 to take steps to improve the arrangements for distributing food to people in need ;
9.5 to resume negotiations for an international grain agreement between producers and consuming nations, in order to further stabilise the grain market and facilitate the access thereto by the countries most in need ;
9.6 to work, within bodies such as FAO, for radical land reform in developing countries- allowing those who work the land to benefit more from its produce and permitting production primarily to cover domestic rather than export needs ;
9.7 to help developing countries build up an aquaculture industry as an alternative source of food ;
9.8 to pursue their efforts at international level to bring about a slower rate of increase in the world's population by the end of the century.
