Do international conferences solve world problems?
Do international declarations change the course of history?
Do international conferences overlap in their purposes?
Do international conferences bring out the best in the process of their preparation?
Where are we left after ICN?
*: Phrase attributed to an Indian delegate to the Conference.
Ecol. Of Food and Nutrition, Vol.32, 1994.
CLAUDIO SCHUFTAN
schuftan@gmail.com
With hindsight and while reflecting on the International Conference on Nutrition in Rome, six major questions came to my mind. Taking them one at a time, these were the best answers I could come up with as a contribution to this special issue devoted to the ICN.
Do international conferences solve world problems?
World conferences are being organized on about every one of the many serious problems facing mankind today. The question is: do they help? This, I think, is the first question one has to ask oneself in writing a critique, because the response to this question defines one’s expectations when weighed against the steep costs of organizing such conferences.
International conferences are generally characterized by high expectations and poor outcomes. This makes many wonder if there is, at the end, a real willingness of the powers-that-be to change and improve things. Henry Kissinger, in the World Food Conference in 1974 already said: “We pledge that no child will go to bed hungry in 1990” … At the core of this riddle is the relationship between science, humanitarian concerns and politics. This remains a stubbornly uneasy relationship since scientific facts and human rights issues are always passed through a political strainer and are ultimately validated by bureaucracies (i.e. official delegations) in the name of “higher interests” which are usually unnamed. Foreseeing this validation process, official UN conference documents are already written in a lukewarm language trying not to hurt anybody’s feelings thus failing to denounce loudly the real villains in the drama at the center of discussions. There are always words to justify anything …
Does this mean that, to break the impasse, scientists will have to jump into the political arena against the prevailing feeling that “politics is dirty and unscientific”? They will certainly have to, in order to better control situations at decision-making levels. It is not that scientists are always on the right political side in these matters. Ideological confrontations in international fora are unavoidable, however, and need to be dealt with by whoever has a genuine interest in the outcomes: this can only be done by taking sides, one would hope the side of the poor. Fear of politicizing the issues in the hope of consensus is wrong, because consensus, then, has no “teeth”. Is consensus necessary then in these international conferences? Since there has been so little to show for it in the past, it seems that the answer is no: as was said anonymously … “better divided and militant than a lukewarm consensus”. It should also be noted that consensus keeps the press uninvolved.
Corporate interests are always indirectly represented in these conferences and they usually move faster than does policy implementation. Time is thus a precious element in our battle against malnutrition. Closer cooperation between scientists and politicians (neither with ties to corporate interests) is, therefore, imperative since increasingly, we are trying to arrive at global strategies. That is why laymen organized in people’s NGOs, also have such an important role to play in solving world crises. Nevertheless, they are in dire need to develop more direct channels both to the scientists (and become their strategic allies) as well as to the power structures so that they can act as persistent pressure groups.
Do international declarations change the course of history?
The second element to keep in mind in this critique of the ICN Declaration is that in the light of a continued lack of fulfilment of international obligations entered into (and even signed into international conventions) in past declarations, there is a lock of credibility for the whole process.
One would like to think that the contents of the declaration would make a difference. Perhaps they do, in the case of the ICN Declaration, however, one cannot but have the feeling that a set of principles were patched together (… in the name of consensus …) and named the “1992 World Declaration on Nutrition”. To me, it reads like a half empty vessel, and readers are left to imply what they want from it.
The Declaration does not spell out national or international obligations, and states no specific goals. No accountability can thus be expected and this is appreciated by political signatories. The Declaration contains neither new concepts nor does it forcefully propose major changes in strategies. Mention is made of a need for trade liberalization as if it would automatically benefit the poor and hungry. Poverty is duly recognized as the root cause of hunger and malnutrition – but that is certainly not enough. People ore recognized as main actors in the process – but what that means is left in limbo … In short, one wonders if, behind all the nice words, the main factors which actually determine whether people have enough to eat were really tackled in this distilled summary piece of the ICN.
A reference, or the defining of a shared conceptual framework, to analyze the problems of malnutrition in society and particularly the causes of malnutrition is missing; if such a framework is not globally shared, how can nations agree on actions required?
There certainly was an attempt, This was far from perfect but in my opinion was superior to that arrived at in the final approved Declaration. The over 20 francophone and Portuguese speaking countries meeting in Dakar in preparation of the ICN In February 1992 approved and proposed to the ICN Secretariat an alternative text. It was not accepted. The more salient paragraphs of the Dakar-proposed ICN Declaration stated:
“Freedom from hunger is at the very base of democracy. The fact that access to food and in health are indeed human rights is here unequivocally reaffirmed. Malnourished people will feed themselves adequately if given the chance! The appeal here launched transcends reaching an ethical consensus on ending hunger and all forms of malnutrition, because the latter approach has proven not to be enough, mainly because it leads to a naïf pursuit of goals too often out of context with tough world realities and is thus not too different from the charity approach.
A political consensus and commitment is necessary, genuinely based on bottom-up-expressed needs and demands that lead to greater social justice – both nationally and internationally. These demands mostly coming from the poor and/or the South, have been either ignored or swept aside by the bodies that have the power to act upon them.
Food is being produced in sufficient amounts. Hunger, malnutrition and ill-health unnecessarily continue to make the lives of millions and to affect the very existence of millions more: malnutrition handicaps, decreases human physical performance, burdens underfunded health systems and thus ultimately affects the economy and the chances of lifting countries out of underdevelopment.
The circumstances that do not allow the poor to feed themselves differ: some are imposed on the poor from outside – the debt crisis, unfair terms of trade leading to North/South wealth maldistribution, chronic negative balances of payment and structural adjustment. Some are imposed from the inside such as national wealth maldistribution, landlessness, environmental degradation, civil strife, unemployment, uneven access to the means of production and mismanagement.
We cannot, in the name of an ultimately meaningless international consensus, continue to skip these issues at the base of the framework that explains hunger and malnutrition in the world. More of the same patch-work solutions will simply not do! A quantum leap is needed.
The ICN calls for a commitment to follow up on national plans. The moral and political authority for national plans of action is to ultimately come from mandates received from the grassroots, from organized communities. This seeking of a mandate from the grassroots is no longer to be regarded as only an empty slogan.
If anything, countries need to de-professionalize, de-intellectualize, de-bureaucratize, de-centralize, humanize and democratize the search for solutions and need to let the people, grounded, in the everyday harsh realities of hunger, malnutrition and ill-health, have a say on what is to come next. This is the quantum leap and thus the challenge. How to get these grassroots mandates and how to translate them into concrete actions is our organizational challenge for the 1990’s. People suffering from hunger do not see their problems in a sectoral manner, but they express them as very concrete felt needs. More often than not, they point their finger to unpostponable priorities regardless of their being in agriculture, health or any other sector. It is around priorities, so defined, that final, local plans of action will have to revolve.
We have learned from our past mistakes and from our few successes. The opportunity is there for us to grasp. In the name of the needy of the world, we declare our intention to mobilize all our efforts and resources in the pursuit of the ICN’s stated objectives,
We invite all interested parties – governments, citizens, NGO’s, professional associations, the public sector, the private sector and international organizations – to unite to implement national plans of action, to follow them up and to evaluate their impact. The dividends or world peace should afford us the means to help those countries most in need, starting with Africa. We have the determination. We solemnly engage ourselves to act accordingly”.
Again, international declarations do not change the course of history. But this draft al least attempted to conceptualize a framework that more decisively pointed to the basic (root) causes of malnutrition in the world. The hope was to seek a consensus so as to agree on the more structural actions required to revert the problem.
Do international conferences overlap in their purposes?
What does the ICN Declaration duplicate (or reinforce)? As pertains hunger and malnutrition, certainly UNICEFs Declaration of the World Summit for Children (New York) and the Declaration of the Conference on Hidden Hunger (Montreal). These had an advantage in that they quantified the goals, while covering a number of the same issues. Are they all to be considered parallel or convergent efforts or duplications? Since those are only scarce human resources in the Third World available for implementing mandates emanating from these conferences, attention should be paid to preventing parallel, duplicated implementation processes.
ICN’s Plan of Action covers more than the above-mentioned overlapping conferences. True. Nevertheless, I feel it reads like a catalog of largely predictable proposals inherent to a consensus document. Is it enough that it was approved in Rome by 160 countries? One wonders. The Plan of Action is not a framework for action as such giving countries guidance on options of what to do next: it includes no targeted goals, and these are needed for countries to use as frames of reference to plan and to cost their own individual plans.
Do international conferences bring out the best in the process of their preparation?
If ICN is to be used as an example, much squabbling between UN agencies went on behind the scenes before and during the Conference. The NGO’s official representation to ICN was also marred by a lack of discrimination between people’s NGOs and food industry’s representatives; both appeared to nave the same status of accreditation for the Conference.
Although developed countries’ problems needed recognition, the underlying main objectives of the ICN were to solve problems in the Third World. Whether this was achieved, is for the international community to judge in the coming years. A follow up of ICN’s Plan of Action thus remains more important than the conference itself.
The process of putting together national papers and submitting them to the ICN Secretariat for the Conference is to be seen as the linchpin for processes to come in the future. These should, more forcefully, further participation, accountability and transparency with respect to decision-making and action. The number of people from different sectors (government and non-governmental) that were involved in the process is, by itself, unprecedented in the field of nutrition. In this sense, there has indeed been a reawakening. Countries have actually learned a lot about themselves in the process. It is this consultative process that somehow needs to be kept alive, not by establishing new bureaucracies, but by involving society at large in resolving these multifaceted problems. Despite this, most of the follow-up action will initially revert back to the individual governments. Yet there may be a contradiction right there, because the real action will have to be at the national/decentralized and, hopefully, more participative/democratized level.
National plans are only a basis; they are the foundation for drawing up national strategies. One can thus actually build on these reports. The process to carry out these strategies will nevertheless be as important as the final outcomes expected. That is why these reports should be updated now and reviewed and challenged annually. Donors should be prepared to come up with objective and critical appraisals of these reports (and perhaps funding for these yearly exercises). People’s NGOs have already been constructively and forcefully critical of some country reports; one can hope they keep at it. Finally, one may want to set up follow-up units to monitor progress; but the question remains who will do it and with what authority or power?
Where are we left after ICN?
If one can paraphrase the two Director’s General of WHO and FAO in their speeches, the ICN was to represent “the crowning achievement of all our past efforts”; on that count, I think the achievement was poor. If the ICN was to represent a planetary pact for nutritional wellbeing – I think the pact was weak. If the ICN was to open a new area for dialogue and concerted action – I think the dialogue was there, the concerted action remains to be seen. If the ICN allowed us to take a new look at the fundamental issues of food and nutrition – I think the look was definitely not new. If the answer to the food and nutrition problems can only be found through profound reflection and unfailing determination – I think the reflection remained rather shallow and the determination, so far, is mostly only on paper.
It is easy “to be a general after the battle”, and for that I take full blame. The period leading towards ICN had an air of low expectations that I felt very strongly in my involvement in the early preparatory stages in Africa. UNCEN’s euphoria was difficult to beat, granted. But ICN could have done better.
Claudio Schuftan
Saigon, Vietnam.