Reply to the 7th biennial report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO)
- Author(s):
- Parliamentary Assembly
- Origin
- Assembly debate on 22 January 1973 (19th Sitting) (see Doc. 3232,Doc. 3232, report of the Committee on Agriculture). Text adopted by the Assembly on 22 January 1973 (19th Sitting).
The Assembly,
1. Having taken note of the 7th report presented to the Council of Europe by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) ;
2. Recalling its
Resolution 481 (1971), and in particular paragraph 3 thereof which expresses its will to work energetically to secure recognition of the fundamental right of every human being to sufficient nourishment ;
3. Considering that, not only is this goal far from being attained, but the prospects for the poorest people in the world are today less promising than at the beginning of the Second Development Decade (1970) ;
4. Considering that the report of its Committee on Agriculture on the Second World Food Congress (Doc, 3073) did not meet with the desired response when it called on the peoples of Europe to make a greater effort in regard to development assistance and the freedom from hunger campaign ;
5. Considering that the developed countries have no valid argument for refusing to make the modest effort involved in devoting not less than 0.70% of their GNP to official development assistance,
6. Calls on all its members to mobilise their national parliaments and their governments with a view to greater efforts being made to promote development of the developing countries' agriculture and to making the right of every human being to eat his fill a reality ;
7. Calls on FAO :
a to concentrate all its efforts on a restricted number of priority activities and to avoid dispersing its limited resources ;
b to integrate its efforts in the field of the environment with specific agricultural development projects and programmes in developing countries ;
c to take steps to ensure that the introduction of high-yield varieties in the developing countries benefits the poorest peoples in the world first ;
d to make at the same time stronger efforts for the creation of employment in the over-populated rural areas of the third world ;
8. Again denounces the growing indifference of public opinion and of the European governments to the economic inequalities, cause of social injustice and hunger in the world ;
9. Expresses the hope that the European nations will eventually rouse themselves and require their competent authorities to shoulder their responsibilities in regard to the feeding of the population of our world which wishes to be just and brotherly, and not to flinch from the modest sacrifices the international community is asking of them within the framework of the United Nations' system.
