About 800 million people in the world are persistently hungry and most of them are hungry because they are poor. Throughout the world, poverty afflicts 1.1 billion people, one-fifth of humanity. Poverty is a condition that causes more sickness, suffering and death than any disease on Earth. Last year alone, hunger and diseases related to malnutrition - direct consequences of poverty - silently claimed the lives of 10 to 12 million children under the age of five.

While putting an end to hunger has been a worldwide concern for decades, there has been a great deal of change in the way in which hunger is now understood by the international community, and the steps taken to combat it.

It has gradually become clear that hunger and poverty are closely linked. Poverty is the root cause of hunger. Paradoxically, hunger is most widespread where food is produced - in rural areas, the home of the vast majority of the world's poor.

The poor are hungry because they do not have the assets to produce enough food, or do not earn enough to buy the food they need. And this points to the solution: to fight hunger, we have to enable the poor to produce food or empower them to buy food. This not only ends hunger, it also allows the poor to contribute to their local and national economies. And as many now understand, if we succeed in reducing rural poverty, we can also curb urban poverty.

The most disadvantaged and poorest groups - women, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples, small and marginal farmers, refugees and the displaced - can boost their countries' economies, if empowered to do so. They have the capacity and the will; they need the opportunity and the means.

There is now also a clearer appreciation of the complex interactions between population growth, environment, productivity, poverty and social conflicts. Civil strife and mass displacements of people are often the result of the dangerous convergence of poverty and diminishing natural resources. Rural hunger engenders migration toward cities and, in turn, urban hunger induces violence and social tension. Poverty fuels environmental degradation, and environmental degradation fuels poverty in a downward spiral of deprivation - deprivation that can instigate political unrest. The point is clear: the fight against hunger and poverty would be lacking, and possibly dangerous, without simultaneously working to protect and nurture scarce natural resources. It is evident that conventional solutions tried in the past often became part of the problem.

In summary: much has been learned about the whys of hunger, the hows of ending hunger, and the interlinkages between hunger, poverty and environmental degradation. However, in a world in which every fifth person is poor, and resources are limited, the challenge must centre on action - decisive action to fight and eradicate hunger. National and international institutions with the mandate to fight hunger sometimes lack the necessary focus. Priorities are not clearly spelled out, and when they are, often they are not rigorously pursued. Too many good ideas and programmes remain too isolated, their features never replicated, their inspiration never spread throughout the world. As a result, most people do not know that there are solutions to hunger and poverty - that, indeed, there have been achievements. Hence, the sense of fatalism, frustration and aid fatigue that looms large in the public conscience.

Furthermore, the global agenda for fighting hunger and poverty is often perceived to be confined to the public sector and multilateral process - far from the reach of civil society. Yet civil society is deeply concerned with the problems of poverty, hunger and the environment; but without access to the official development agenda, its actions have to be pursued separately. As a result, there are two agendas, parallel, but not linked.

It is time to bring civil society into the process of setting the global development agenda, time to give civil society institutional space. The time has come to merge the common missions of the public sector, multilaterals and civil society into one strategy for fighting hunger and poverty. The results of this synthesis will be synergy - combined efforts will produce outcomes which will exceed the sum total of their parts.

Conference on Hunger and Poverty

In response to this challenge, IFAD, together with a number of its development partners, is establishing a process of dynamic consultation, including a three-day Workshop, culminating in a Conference to forge a popular coalition for action to combat hunger and poverty.

The Conference will not be yet another "tour d'horizon" of existing literature on hunger, nor a debate on general theories of development. Rather, the main thrust of the event is action - it is about what has worked and how to do more and better. The Conference, and the process leading up to it, aims at: (i) defining "Priority Areas of Action" and to determine which actions will best fight hunger and poverty; (ii) identifying the most effective programmes, policies and modalities to achieve the objectives within the Priority Areas of Action; (iii) building a consensus and forging strategic coalitions around these programmes, policies and modalities; (iv) mobilizing the popular will to attack hunger and poverty, focusing on the Priority Areas of Action; and (v) increasing public awareness of the magnitude, causes and consequences of hunger and poverty, letting the public know that solutions do exist and are indeed attainable.

The ultimate goal of the Conference is to promote, through its participants, a network within nations and communities, between public and private institutions, that will mobilize the popular will to fight hunger and poverty in the developing world. For this network to be effective, all partners in development, including civil society, must be linked to information on proven programmes to overcome hunger and poverty. Thus, a central feature of the Conference will be to identify and implement a system to replicate successful programmes at the grass roots level. There are hundreds of outstanding programmes throughout the world that help in moving hundreds of thousands of people from deprivation to productivity. But there has not been sufficient effort to analyze and replicate these effective programmes and initiatives, and apply them on a larger scale to other impoverished areas. There are thousands of people’s initiatives which release the creativity and productive capacity of millions. Such initiatives, especially those undertaken by NGOs and civil society at large, will be a key component of the Conference.

PRIORITY AREAS OF ACTION

Overcoming hunger and poverty requires a range of complex actions, including the promotion of sustainable and equitable economic growth, equity in the distribution of goods and services and the promotion of fairer terms of trade with and among developing countries. It is just as important to complement these efforts with targeted actions that more directly benefit the poor. In order for the Conference to achieve concrete results, a few specific and tangible interventions must be selected for action. Accordingly, the Conference Advisory Committee - composed of a wide spectrum of representatives from civil society (in particular NGOs), research institutions and a select number of international financial and development institutions, has agreed upon the following Priority Areas of Action:

• Empowerment of the poor through: (i) ensuring their access to productive assets to enable them to produce food and increase earnings; and (ii) furthering their participation in the development process by reforms in national institutions, enhancement of local governance, and the creation or strengthening of grass roots organizations and producers and consumers associations. Within this context, particular attention will be given to women and ethnic minorities as well as to finding the best means of influencing national policies to further these goals.
• Enhancing technology generation and diffusion through the full involvement of poor farmers, in particular women, in (i) the identification of the research agenda at local, national and regional levels; (ii) the innovation process; and (iii) improving the diffusion of innovative techniques and methodologies to users.
• Combating environmental degradation with particular reference to land degradation in fragile ecosystems (arid and semi-arid zones and mountainous and hilly areas) which threatens the welfare, even the survival, of more than 900 million people throughout the world. In this regard, the Conference expects to be a catalyst for the implementation of the Convention to Combat Desertification, especially the accompanying resolution for Urgent Action in Africa.
• Preventing disaster and reducing its impact on the poor by defining and promoting measures that would enhance the ability of poor households and communities to contribute to the prevention of both natural and man-made disasters, as well as to respond to such happenings through timely crisis responses, recovery and rehabilitation efforts and long-term participatory development.

The Conference in Perspective

The Conference on Hunger and Poverty should provide a concrete follow-up to the World Summit on Social Development and its urgent call for action to attack hunger, unemployment and social exclusion. It should build upon the Fourth World Conference on Women, and is expected to complement other forthcoming initiatives such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) Food Summit.

The Advisory Committee is entrusted with the following tasks: (i) to advise on the content, format and agenda of the Conference, (ii) to nominate speakers and participants, and (iii) to propose names of resource persons who will prepare issue and discussion papers, including the main background paper for the Conference.

A Three-Day Workshop with approximately 110 participants, representing the spectrum of those to be invited to the Conference, will be organized immediately prior to the Conference. The aim of the Workshop will be to discuss issues identified by the Advisory Committee, with a view to defining the broad framework for a Programme of Action. The Workshop, which will be divided into several working groups, will be moderated by members of the Advisory Committee, and will provide the Conference with recommendations on the appropriate coalition to be formed to carry out the initiatives emanating from the Programme of Action.

The Conference will be the culminating event resulting from the Workshop and the various Advisory Committee meetings. It is scheduled to take place on 20 and 21 November 1995 (one and a half days) in Brussels, Belgium, in the form of a Public Hearing. The participants will include representatives from the following:

Revised 5 September 1995