Opening Statement to the Governing Council of IFAD by Minister Mantega

Mr President of IFAD
Governors
Ministers
Representatives of International Organizations
Delegates and Observers
Ladies and Gentlemen,

It is with great honour and extreme satisfaction that I take the chair at this Twenty-Seventh Session of the Governing Council of IFAD for a two-year period. I thank you for the vote of confidence placed in me, and I would like to take this opportunity to extend my congratulations to the other distinguished members of the Bureau upon their election.

I consider my election an honour not just for me, but especially for the country that I have the privilege of representing.

Mr President, allow me to begin by recalling that this year the world will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the World Food Conference, which was also held here in Rome and whose deliberations led to the foundation of IFAD.

At that time, over 100 countries signed the Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition, which states that “every man, women and child has the inalienable right to be free from hunger and malnutrition.”

One of the key outcomes of that Conference was the realization that the root causes of food insecurity and hunger were not attributable solely to problems in agricultural production, but rather to structural problems linked to poverty and to the fact that the poor in developing nations are concentrated in rural areas.

IFAD was founded subsequent to the World Food Conference, with the mission of combating rural poverty in developing countries. It has been fulfilling this role most adeptly and, in fact, is the only international organization devoted entirely to this objective.

Brazil feels very close to IFAD. The goals and objectives of President da Silva’s Government assign priority to the fight against hunger and social exclusion. We stand together in the challenge to overcome poverty, in our awareness of the need to listen to the voices of the underprivileged, and to strengthen them so that they may gradually enjoy suitable conditions in which to work and produce, with access to land, water, credit, information and technology; so they may progressively gain adequate access to markets in order to sell the fruit of their work at fair prices; and lastly, to achieve their own development with dignity and autonomy.

The programmes that Brazil has launched to meet these challenges have been publicized around the world, such as the Zero Hunger Programme, which seeks to guarantee steady and suitable access to food for all Brazilians; and the National Programme to Strengthen Family Agriculture (PRONAF), which is a key tool in the generation and maintenance of work in the rural milieu.

At the initiative of President da Silva, the Governments of Brazil, France and Chile – at a meeting with the Secretary-General of the United Nations – are proposing the creation of an international fund to combat hunger as a means of bringing fresh resources and renewed political weight to this issue.

Rural poverty cannot be reduced to simply an economic problem. It limits the exercise of citizenship by millions of rural residents, exacerbates the concentration of land ownership and hinders efforts to eradicate the hunger that plagues nearly one fourth of mankind.

Neither is it enough to distribute land. Funding must be provided to finance production by local families and provide them with technical assistance. This is a social programme with a high cost and it has been applied in a somewhat limited fashion, given the prevailing budgetary constraints in our countries. We need for the multilateral agencies to channel more funding towards these programmes.

The past two decades of economic stagnation in most Latin American countries have led to a burgeoning of the urban fringes, creating millions of homeless who, with proper technical and financial support and access to land, could ensure the survival of their families and produce surplus output that could be used to meet domestic demand.

However, Mr President, the drastic conditions of rural poverty are not solely ascribable to internal factors in each country. International trade conditions play a pivotal role in determining whether rural poverty will be overcome, will be maintained, or will be worsened.

For trade to work in the direction of social inclusion, we need to eliminate the distortions produced by the protectionism and farm subsidies applied by wealthy countries. Such measures depress prices for the output of many rural workers living in poverty and they limit the access of developing-country commodities into the main import markets. Such artifices are tantamount to a wet blanket thrown over the hopes for progress of rural poor workers.

We can no longer accept the coexistence of vast numbers of small farmers living in poverty while nearly USD 1 billion a day is being paid in farm subsidies in wealthy countries. As long as such distortions in international trade persist, much of our work, be it with IFAD or with other organizations active in agricultural development, will be futile.

Mr President, even with the serious fiscal constraints that Brazil has been facing in recent years, we have maintained our contribution to IFAD. This is a reflection of how important IFAD is to Brazil and of the role IFAD plays as a benchmark for issues associated with combating rural poverty and implementation of small-scale agricultural projects.

In this connection, I would be remiss in my duties if I failed to mention that, at the end of 2003, following a prolonged, complex negotiating process, a new performance-based allocation policy was approved. We hope that its implementation, beginning next year, will allow for objective and transparent allocation of resources, and that the timing of access to funds will take place in a balanced way for all countries having significant rural poor populations. On this point, I would like to underscore the importance of maintaining the current criterion of geographic distribution for the Fund’s resources.

To conclude, Mr President, I would like to quote President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, using his words that express so well the hopes and expectations of all those gathered here: “Let us create conditions so that everyone can eat a decent meal three times a day, every day, without needing donations from anyone. We can no longer live with so much inequality. We need to conquer hunger, poverty and social exclusion. Our war seeks not to kill anyone, but rather to save lives.”

Thank you.