At the end of the World Food Summit in 1996, the CSOs and NGOs present adopted a declaration on"Profit for Few or Food for All". This Declaration stated that the measures and activities envisaged in the Plan of Action would not be enough to achieve major steps towards reducing the number of the hungry worldwide. Unfortunately, the civil society analysis was correct. To date, only a very small reduction of the number of hungry persons, and perhaps not even that, has been achieved. Indeed, in a huge number of poor countries the number of hungry people has increased.

Six years after the World Food Summit and eight years after the agricultural Agreements of the Uruguay Round, the promises and commitments made to satisfy the food and nutritional needs of all are far from being fulfilled. The reality is that the economic, agricultural, fishing and trade policies of most Governments, which are often influenced or imposed by the World Bank, the IMF and the WTO, and are promoted by transnational corporations, have widened the gap between the wealthy and poor countries and have accentuated the unequal distribution of earnings within countries. They have worsened the conditions of food production and access to healthy and sufficient nutrition for the majority of the world's people, even in the so-called developed countries. As a consequence, the most basic human right of all, the right to food and nutritional well-being, enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is not guaranteed to the majority of the world's peoples. The continuation of the unacceptable debt burden for developing countries is continuously aggravating the situation.

The FAO should concede that the implementation process of the Plan of Action is slow and that the World is far from reaching the already modest objective of the 1996 World Food Summit to halve the number of the hungry and undernourished worldwide by 2015. In the current analysis presented to the Committee on World Food Security, FAO has identified the two main obstacles for improved implementation: (1) lack of political will and (2) lack of sufficient financial means. While both observations are correct descriptions of missing elements for successful implementation, we do not believe that more resources invested in the same model of agricultural development within the current global trade context will fulfill the WFS objective. Particular ImportanceSpecific importance has to be given to the measures directed towards rural areas, as more than 70 percent of the hungry live in rural areas. Decreasing neglect of rural areas by Governments is critical in this regard.

Three central themes have been identified by the CSOs and NGOs in the preparation of the World Food Summit: five years later and during the NGO forum.

(1) We need a rights based approach to hunger and malnutrition issues. The aim should be to put the right to adequate food at the center of any activity for the implementation of the World Food Summit objectives by holding states accountable to the people living within their borders and by addressing the responsibilities of actors other than Governments, such as intergovernmental organsiations or transnational corporations. For this purpose the NGO community has been demanding for several years the development of a Code of Conduct on the Right to Adequate Food. The decision taken at this Summit to develop guidelines to assist Member Nations to implement the right to adequate food is a good step in this direction. For the NGOs and CSOs present here in Rome, it will be a central demand that these guidelines will be adopted finally in two years in the form of a FAO Code of Conduct. Moreover, we demand that the FAO and the Member Nationss start adopting a right approach towards their food, nutrition and agricultural policies, which includes inter alia guaranteeing access to productive resources, especially to land through genuine agrarian reform processes. A rights approach must also respect, protect and fulfill the rights of agricultural workers and indigenous peoples.

(2) The rights-based approach must include and recognize the right of communities and peoples to define their own agricultural policies. Define their own policies and strategies for sustainable production, distribution and consumption of food, guarantees the right to food for the entire population. Subsidized exports, artificially-low prices, and WTO-legalized dumping of food are elements characterizing the current model of agricultural trade. This type of trade has a tremendous negative impact on the majority of people living in rural areas, traditional family farms and indigenous communities. It is important to recognize the need to guarantee farmer-led food sovereignty, which offers farmers the possibility of earning a decent income, while limiting corporate monopolization of the food system.

(3) The current model of industrialized agriculture, intensive animal husbandry methods, and overfishing are destroying traditional farming and fishing patterns and the variety of eco-systems that sustain production on this planet. Agroecological models of agriculture should become the dominant production model to help sustain the cultural and biological diversity of our planet, as well as to create sustainable use of the eco-systems-terrestrial and aquatic-marine. Genetic resources for food and agriculture are available as a result of thousands of years of careful breeding and development by small-scale holder farmers, pastoralists and indigenous communities. Therefore, the genetic resources must be seen as patrimony of all of humanity. Access to genetic resources is essential for guaranteeing food security. All forms of patent protection and other intellectual property rights that restrict access severely hinder marginal groups' control over this first link in the food chain. Agricultural research at international and national levels should reduce its orientation towards industrial agriculture and technologies. Research often neglects the development of agricultural techniques that reduce the inputs needed and that are within farmers' control. The current system of public internationally-funded research institutions is also not paying enough attention to changing its research agenda to farmer-led, agro-ecological technologies. CSOs and NGOs call for agricultural research to be kept in the public domain, and it must recognize the rights of farmers and other food producers.

Any progress to be achieved in the coming years will require a strong and vibrant civil society sector, to work with Governments and to hold Governments accountable for their actions. The CSOs and NGOs preparing for the World Food Summit: five years later, note with alarm the lack of legal and political space of citizens and public in many parts of the world to associate, organize, articulate and affirm their rights as the defined under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. There is clearly a lack of opportunity and mechanisms for civil society institutions to participate in the processes of national governance, which is a necessary condition for ensuring food rights and sovereignty. Furthermore, war, occupation and conflict seriously threaten the ability of the poor to exercise the right to food security. We also condemn the use of food as a weapon of oppression and an instrument of political pressure.