FOOD ASSISTANCE CAUCUS

Mr. Anthony Hall, Chairman of the Congressional Hunger Center

I am a member of the United States Congress, I am here representing the food assistance caucus.

I want to congratulate all of you for your commitment to easing suffering and thank you for this opportunity to address you and I especially want to thank the group of NGOs that invited me to speak on their behalf. Their work and yours deserve the world's support and I am honoured to support it in the United States Congress. There is a proverb that laughter has no accent, that it sounds the same in every language and hunger shares this universal characteristic. People the world over understand hunger because each one of us has felt the pangs of hunger however strong or weak. Hunger is universal in a second way, it prays most fiercely on children whose wellbeing unites us and children are the ambassadors we send to a future we will not see. We agree on that even when we can agree on nothing else. It is precisely because hunger is universal that we can break this curse. Hunger is not predestined, hunger has a cure and this Summit is an opportunity to renew our determination to spread that cure to every corner of the world.

The Summit can also help us chart a course around three obstacles. One obstacle is an increasing fixation on trade, especially if it is the kind of trade that leaves the poor behind. Don't get me wrong, I have high hopes that a growing world economy could be the ticket out of poverty for individuals and nations alike. But like a ladder whose first rung is shoulder high, trade is nothing more than a cruel taunt to those too weak with hunger or lacking in education and other resources to grab hold. Our predecessors at the 1974 Summit learned that the Green Revolution in agriculture could not solve every problem. Neither should we expect to find a silver bullet, and certainly not in a greenback revolution. Another obstacle to beating hunger is the increasing tendency to use humanitarian aid as a weapon. I was stunned to learn that the United States did not instantly endorse the principle that food is not a weapon, but I was relieved to learn that in the end we stood with other civilized nations and held to our long-standing tradition.

Recent years have tested all nations resolve to keep humanitarian actions free from political calculations. Iraq and North Korea are two examples, but neither country is more despotic than Ethiopia once was. In approving assistance to the victims of that famine President Reagan said: "A hungry child knows no politics and the same should apply today." Saint Matthew taught early Christians to love your enemies and then he went on to say: "If you love only those who love you, what good is that, even scoundrels do that much". A third obstacle is the downward trend we have seen and the allocation of resources to fight hunger.

The Food Summit is not a pledging conference and there is much that can be done at the level of economic policy reforms and increases in agricultural productivity. However, the fact is that drastic cuts in food aid and development assistance to the poorest people and countries do have a direct and serious impact on hungry people. Make no mistake about it, resources alone can never be the whole solution, but if we are serious about ending hunger we will have to put our money where our mouths are. Without such investments the Summit's best intentions will ring hollow as more people go hungry in the short-term and fewer people get the help they need to escape poverty and hunger in the long-run. I also believe that we have a tremendous amount of work to do together long after the last speech has been made and we need to band together against our real foes, which are hunger and disease and apathy and cure-alls like trade that threaten to become hollow promises for all of our children. God's heart must break when he looks down upon this world and sees all of the hurting people. As a Christian and as I look at the Bible, whether it's the Old Testament or New Testament, there are over 2 500 verses that deal with the poor and the hurting. But every religion I know calls on all of us to help the poor. In the Old Testament, the Book of Proverbs says that "He who has mercy on the poor lends to the Lord". People have a right to food and helping to translate that right into a reality will take more than words and more than money. It will take determination of nations and individuals, it will take thoughtful strategies and a commitment to work together and it will take hard work in our cities and villages. We are blessed with all of these things and I hope that this Summit will be a well spring for ideas of how best to harness them. I wish all of you God speed this week and as you return to your work around our world.