Twenty-Fifth Session of the
IFAD Governing Council Meeting

(Rome, 19 February 2003)

Your Excellency Carlo Azeglio Ciampi, President of the Italian Republic,
Your Excellency, Chairperson of the IFAD Governing Council,
Your Excellency Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Secretary of State of the Holy See,
Your Excellency Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations,
Mr Lennart Båge, President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development,
Mr James Morris, Executive Director of the World Food Programme,
Mr. Walter Veltroni, Mayor of Rome,
Distinguished Delegates
Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen

It gives me great pleasure to be here today at this historical 25th Session of the Governing Council of the International Fund for Agricultural Development. I consider it an honour to join you in celebrating the occasion of this 25th Anniversary of a sister agency and valued neighbour in the United Nations system. It is also a great opportunity to recognize the immense contribution that IFAD has made over the last 25 years to championing the voice of the poor. I would like to congratulate the staff of the organization for their achievements during this period, and for their dedication and commitment.

In 1974, the World Food Conference recognized that economic growth alone was not enough to ensure the elimination of poverty and the achievement of food security for all. It also underlined that many vulnerable groups were being left behind, especially those in rural areas. IFAD, founded largely as a response to that realization, was mandated to focus investment resources on the rural poor. Over the last quarter of a century it has developed and refined a new and innovative vision of rural investment. It has demonstrated the crucial role played by the poor and very poor; not just as recipients of aid, but also as key players in economic and social development. Today, such a conclusion may appear obvious, but it is a tribute to IFAD’s achievements that this is so. Of particular importance, I believe, has been IFAD’s willingness to explore and test new approaches to poverty reduction, a role that its size and flexibility make it uniquely equipped to play.

The need to empower the poor of the developing world to participate actively in ensuring sustainable and equitable economic growth is now more important than ever. Considerable progress has been made over the last 25 years, but conflict, natural disasters, and rapidly changing world markets have all enormously increased the challenges facing the poorest in their struggle for survival. Thus the need for technical and financial support to many parts of the developing world is now more pressing than ever.

Mr Chairperson, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
Resolving these immediate crises, although vitally important, should not detract us from our ultimate goal of attaining the fundamental hunger and poverty reduction targets outlined at the World Food Summit in 1996 and further developed in the context of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals. Reducing hunger and poverty through improved food security and economic growth that truly benefits the poor will be our best guarantee against the recurrence of these crises in the future.

Despite a number of important initiatives focused on the goal of halving hunger and poverty by 2015, such as the Special Programme for Food Security, the initiative for Highly Indebted Poor Countries, and the Poverty Reduction Strategy and Programme, overall progress has so far been disappointingly slow.

At the present rate of reduction in the number of people suffering undernourishment, currently some 2.5 million per year, the target of 2015 will not be reached until 2150. The consequences of this human suffering will be enormous and the opportunity cost to the global economy tremendous, as achieving the goal of the 1996 World Food Summit, would bring a gain of US$120 billion per annum.

To revitalize the fight against hunger and poverty, two elements are essential. We must work together to reaffirm and strengthen the political commitment of the global community to the fundamental importance of reducing hunger and poverty. We must also channel adequate additional investment to the rural sector. In both of these areas IFAD and FAO, often in collaboration with WFP, are already playing, and will continue to play a major role.

In strengthening the international political commitment to meet the World Food Summit and Millennium Development Goals, I am pleased to underline the joint and close collaboration of the three Rome-based agencies at such important events as the International Conference on Financing for Development and the World Food Summit: five years later. Other work, such as our collaboration in the Popular Coalition to Eradicate Hunger and Poverty, and the United Nations system on Rural Development and Food Security, also testify to the wide-ranging cooperation that has evolved between the Rome-based agencies, and which is described in a joint publication “Working Together”.

I am particularly pleased that IFAD and WFP have joined FAO in supporting the International Alliance Against Hunger, unanimously approved by all the countries attending the World Food Summit: five years later in June 2002. This alliance aims to mobilize political will, technical expertise and financial resources in support of the international community’s goals in reducing hunger.

Mr Chairperson, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen
I would like to reiterate the enormous value that FAO places on the work that IFAD undertakes and on the long-standing and close cooperation of the Rome-based agencies in the continuing fight against hunger and poverty. In addition to our complementary political and technical efforts here in Rome, our joint work in the field has reached an estimated nine million people during the last three years, involving 75 joint IFAD/FAO initiatives alone. I am confident that this cooperation can only increase in the years ahead as the fight against rural poverty intensifies, and I look forward to an ever more important role for IFAD over the next twenty five years.