Findcate

The new hunger has triggered riots from Haiti to Egypt to Ethiopia, threatening political stability; it has conjured up a raft of protectionist policies, threatening globalization. And yet the response to this crisis from governments the world over has been lackadaisical or worse.

Start with the lunatic story of rice stockpiles in Japan. A new paper from the Center for Global Development describes how Japan’s government imports rice in order to comply with its global trade commitments but withholds most of that rice from consumers lest they decide they prefer it to the local sort. Japanese traditionalists view the consumption of sticky, short-grained rice as a patriotic duty. So rather than letting Mrs. Watanabe corrupt her children’s dietary habits, Japan stores much of its imported rice until it has become unfit for human consumption, whereupon it is sold to feed livestock.

From the perspective of Japan, stockpiling rice is a costly exercise in chauvinism, but Japan can afford that. From the world’s perspective, the stockpiling is more serious. More than 3 billion people depend on rice as their daily staple, and half of them are very poor. Japan could save many of them from hunger if it released its stocks.

The scandal is not just Japanese, however. In order for Japan to sell its rice outside its borders, it needs permission from the countries that supplied it — the United States, Thailand and Vietnam. A bit of U.S. leadership could deliver that permission easily, but the Bush administration is apparently worried about a backlash from American rice growers who see no downside in high prices, thank you very much. Not for the first time in Washington do the fat welfare queens of the farm lobby trample on the poorest people in the world.

Speaking of welfare queens, Congress passed a farm bill last week with thunderous bipartisan support. The bill includes reasonable subsidies for low-income Americans hit by high food prices, but it also sprays money at farmers who already earn more than the average taxpayer and contains shockingly little for the world’s poor. Congress is considering a separate bill that would boost international food aid more substantially. But that measure has been met with shameful indifference by lawmakers and consequently has stalled.

Congress won’t even act on a common-sense proposal from the Bush administration that food aid be reformed. If the United States bought some of the food that it donates from other countries, it could get aid to the needy faster and more cheaply. But that would upset American farmers and shipping interests, as a new Council on Foreign Relations paper emphasizes. The president’s proposal has few takers on the Hill.

The Europeans, for their part, have their own way of entrenching hunger. Just as Japan is wedded to its rice culture, Europe is irrationally hostile to genetically modified food. Study after study has found no danger in seeds that have been manipulated to grow better, withstand insects or survive in arid soil. But the Europeans still feel squeamish, and their hang-up deters Africans from taking advantage of crop science lest their exports be barred from European markets. Again, a peccadillo that to Europeans is affordable starves people in the poor world.

Finally, poor countries themselves have made things worse. Panicked at the prospect of food riots, countries with crop surpluses have forbidden exports in an attempt to bottle up supply and keep prices down. More than 40 countries have imposed some kind of export restraint, with the result that countries suffering food deficits have seen prices hit the roof. This nationalized hoarding is frustrating international relief efforts. The World Food Program has sought to buy food from countries with surpluses, such as Pakistan, to ship to desperate neighbors such as Afghanistan. But Pakistan drags its feet about selling.

Tags: american rice, backlash, bipartisan support, bush administration, chauvinism, costly exercise, dietary habits, europe, farm bill, Food, food crisis, food price, food prices, food riots, ford, global trade, grained rice, hoarding, human consumption, international food aid, patriotic duty, political stability, protectionist policies, rbi, rice growers, stockpiles, traditionalists, ups, watanabe, welfare queens

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Everyday concerns of the population rarely reach the negotiating table, in part because the economic and social problems in conflict-ridden societies are extremely complex, involve many actors and can only be resolved in the long term.

So what happens when people are driven to kill one another for food? It’s a critical question to ask as the world faces a sudden and unexpected food price crisis that is threatening to plunge millions back into poverty.

The sharp spike in food prices this year has already generated violence. Food riots in parts of Africa and the Caribbean have created social and political instability. In rice-growing countries like India, Vietnam and Thailand, hoarding has begun with export bans already in place, creating inter-state friction.

Burma’s rice-growing capacity has been devastated by Cyclone Nargis, which will add to price pressures in the coming months.

This is largely a crisis born of inflation and other market factors rather than fundamental shortages. Prices for the benchmark Thai variety of rice, a food staple across much of Asia, have increased threefold in a year, reports the Asian Development Bank. Meat prices have risen by 60% in Bangladesh in the year ending in March, and by 45% in Cambodia and 30% in the Philippines.

With this sharp increase in the price of basic staples, people are already hoarding, stealing and fighting over scarce supplies. The World Food Programme calls it a “silent tsunami.”

The threat of conflict is real, both within societies where the numbers impoverished by higher grain prices is already high, and also between states as the trend towards commercial liberalisation and conglomeration is suddenly reversed and replaced by subsidies, price-fixing cartels and export curbs.

In Indonesia, retired general recently warned: “If students demonstrate it’s not a worry, but if hungry people take to the streets, now that’s dangerous.”

Hunger causes conflict when people feel they have nothing to lose and are willing to kill their neighbours over scarce resources. The peasant wars of the late 20th century in Central and South America and the wars that sprung from famine in Nigeria, Ethiopia and Sudan, are grim reminders of man’s most basic instinct, which is to fight to survive.

The trouble is that in terms of resolving conflict, we have come to rely less on material remedies and more on political artifice. Many of the internal conflicts that have been peacefully resolved in recent years only superficially addressed the material seeds of conflict. Peace agreements have been elite affairs where leaders of armed groups and governments reached an understanding on how to share power within a common state.

This approach is a sensible first step toward conflict resolution: by convincing the people inciting violence to lay down their arms, it becomes possible to start designing a wider range of policies addressing socio-economic issues.

However, typically, the socio-economic changes and the economic reconstruction and development the public was expecting trickled down slowly, if at all. Aceh remains one of the poorest parts of Indonesia, as does Mindanao in the southern Philippines - two areas of Southeast Asia where peace has been negotiated.

When hunger drives people into conflict, we might presume that peace-making will simply be a question of providing food. We would be mistaken. In fact, the experience of humanitarian aid agencies in the 1970s and ’80s in Africa was that food aid tends to fuel conflict, as the combatants seek to harness the supply of nutrition to the goals of war.

Experts tell us that farmers will eventually adjust the supply of food to cope with higher demand so that prices stabilise. More encouragingly, there are signs that decades of improving cooperation between states is stimulating a collective urge to resolve the crisis. The sharing of technology is key, says Kofi Annan, the former UN secretary-general. He believes that farmers in Africa could double food output in five to 10 years if rich countries partner them in a “Green Revolution” for a long-term solution to the continent’s food crisis.

But realistically, trade agreements and technological advances are slow-moving transformations.

In the meantime, officials in India warn that the food price crisis could plunge millions of people into poverty in a country that is already battling an internal Marxist insurgency that draws support from impoverished and landless peasants.

In Bangladesh, where the soaring cost price of staples has forced the marginally poor to give up meat and rice, there is a significantly increased risk of conflict in an already fractured polity.

The immediate challenge, therefore, is to prevent and resolve conflict arising from the food crisis. This places a significant burden on the international community to swiftly respond to outbreaks of violence.

But if people driven to war by hunger are less inclined to compromise, this makes the task of peace-making rather more challenging.

For one thing, conflict fuelled by hunger will be more widespread, exerting strain on international agencies involved in peace-keeping and humanitarian work. Food security is already fragile in many African countries and a protracted conflict tends to drift across borders, as we have seen in Sudan and Congo.

Peace-makers need to be more aware of, and recognise, the socio-economic roots of conflict. They should incorporate in peace agreements remedies for the population’s grievances and to enlist the international community’s support behind their implementation.

Such remedies should include pledges by leaders to address in a meaningful manner contentious issues such as land distribution, job creation, and racial and ethnic discrimination leading to socio-economic inequality.

The ethnic and religious wars of the last half of the 20th century have perhaps lulled us into a false sense of security.

We have grown accustomed to resolving conflict by forging political accommodation and compromise in situations where protagonists had much to lose materially if they kept on fighting.

But in a world where environmental and market pressures can treble the price of staple commodities in a matter of a few months, it is harder to find the grounds for compromise.

This calls for more effective negotiating skills, both domestically and internationally, bilaterally as well as multilaterally, to resolve these crises.

Markets must be kept open to assist with the flow of goods to crisis situations, and in affected countries solutions must be found that address both elite and popular grievances.

Tags: asian development bank, critical question, decades, everyday concerns, export curbs, Food, food crisis, food price, food prices, food riots, food staple, grain prices, hoarding, inter state, job, market factors, meat prices, nargis, price crisis, price pressures, retired general, signs, ups, variety of rice, world food programme

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The political grapevine buzzed with the names of possible replacements for Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis, who was fired on Saturday in a vote by 16 opposition senators who said he had not done enough to ramp up food production and reduce the cost of living.
By tradition, Alexis was likely to remain in office until a new government leader and cabinet were chosen. President Rene Preval will propose a candidate to parliament, which must ratify the selection.
%26quot;The new prime minister needs to be someone who can unify. He should not be partisan,%26quot; said Anthony Barbier, a sociology professor at Haiti%26#39;s University of Notre Dame and a member of the Fusion political party.
%26quot;It should be someone with great sensitivity toward the poor so that he can look for solidarity in favor of those less privileged,%26quot; he said.
Haiti, the poorest country in the Americas and one ravaged by political upheaval, dictatorship and military rule since a slave revolt threw off French rule 200 years ago, has struggled to install stable democratic institutions since the end of the Duvalier family reign in 1986.
The latest upheaval follows a week of rioting by Haitians enraged at the soaring cost of rice, beans, cooking oil and other staples.
Preval, who also served as president from 1996 to 2001, is the only elected leader to serve a full term and successfully pass power to a democratic successor.
But he is no stranger to a protracted search for a new prime minister.
In his first term, it took him 21 months to put a new government in place after then-Prime Minister Rosny Smarth resigned in June 1997.
A stalemate with parliament then left the government virtually paralyzed and hampered negotiations with international donors. Preval nominated two candidates who were rejected by lawmakers before settling on Alexis, who was installed by decree after the legislature was dissolved.
One of Preval%26#39;s rejected candidates in 1997 is among the names being floated for prime minister by political analysts and radio show hosts now — Ericq Pierre, a senior adviser with the Inter-American Development Bank.
Analysts were also suggesting longtime politician Paul Denis as a possible candidate.
A former senator with the opposition party Organisation for People in the Struggle (OPL), Denis ran unsuccessfully for president against Preval in 2006 and headed a commission of inquiry that in 2005 accused ex-President Jean-Bertrand Aristide of misusing $50 million in public money.
He now serves as an adviser to Preval, as does Evans %26quot;Dady%26quot; Lescouflair, an OPL member and former secretary of state for youth and sports whose name has also been floated.
Of the three, political analyst Aviol Fleurant, a law professor at the State University of Haiti, said only Pierre had the requisite independence.
%26quot;He is not known to be part of any political sector. He is a technician and he should be able to put everybody together because no one has a prejudice against him,%26quot; Fleurant said.
%26quot;Paul Denis would be problematic because he is fundamentally anti-Lavalas,%26quot; said Fleurant, speaking of the Lavalas political movement started by Aristide, who was ousted in a bloody rebellion in 2004.
Although out of power, the movement still holds great sway with Haiti%26#39;s poor masses.
Preval gave few hints on the leadership search on Saturday just before the Senate vote against Alexis. He did say, however, that he would make his choice in consultation with the leaders of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies.
%26quot;What matters to me is stability,%26quot; he said at a news conference, revealing a glimpse of frustration over yet another failed government with the ouster of an ally and friend.
%26quot;I told them we had to work together to put in place a common programme … but it didn%26#39;t happen.%26quot;

Tags: cooking oil, Food, food riots, rbi

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In a letter signed by 16 of Haiti%26#39;s 27 senators, the opposition demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis after a week of violent demonstrations over the rising cost of living in which at least five people died.
The riots, which began in the south of the poorest country in the Americas and spread to Port-au-Prince on Monday, pitted tear gas- and rubber bullet-firing UN peacekeepers against thousands of hungry Haitians enraged over the high price of rice, beans and other food staples.
Barricades of burning tires and wrecked cars that had paralyzed the capital were dismantled, sporadic looting eased and crowds around the National Palace dispersed after President Rene Preval ordered the rioting to stop on Wednesday.
Preval promised to boost national production of food to reduce the Caribbean country%26#39;s dependence on imports, but many protesters said they wanted action now and were disappointed he had not cut taxes on foodstuffs.
%26quot;The proposals of the president, as good as they may be for the future of the country, do not solve the immediate problems of the population,%26quot; said the letter, signed by Youri Latortue, a nephew of a former prime minister, and members of a host of opposition parties. No one from Preval%26#39;s Lespwa party signed.
%26quot;Too little, too late. That%26#39;s the feeling that your proposals have provoked. It is obvious that the majority of the people don%26#39;t believe any more in the capacity of your government to take courageous measures to ease the misery that the population is facing daily,%26quot; the senators wrote.
Haitians, who mostly live on less than $2 per day and whose country has been haunted by decades of dictatorship, oppression and economic mayhem, remained worried.
%26quot;This is all I will have today to feed my children,%26quot; said Banave Suprien, 40, holding up a loaf of sliced bread in a plastic bag that he had bought for eight children %26ndash; his own four and another four of a sister killed recently.
High fuel prices, which have made transportation more expensive, rising demand in Asia, the use of farmland and crops for biofuels, a long drought in Australia and speculation on futures markets have combined to push up food prices worldwide. There have been outbreaks of unrest in several poor countries.
Shortly after midnight, three UN peacekeepers from Sri Lanka were wounded by gunfire while on patrol in Port-au-Prince, said Sophie Boutaud-de-la-Combe, a UN spokeswoman in Haiti. The peacekeepers did not return fire because they could not identify a target, she said, and their wounds were not serious.
In addition, Jordanian peacekeepers were sent to reinforce a UN base in Carrefour, near the capital, in the morning after a hostile crowd threatened it, she said. The Jordanians helped to evacuate employees from the base and fired rubber bullets in the air to deter the crowd.
Otherwise, Preval%26#39;s appeal for an end to the mayhem was followed by an uneasy calm in the rock- and glass-strewn streets of Port-au-Prince, a sprawling and chaotic city of uncertain millions.
Colourful pick-up truck %26quot;tap-tap%26quot; taxis circulated again.
Street vendors, who had disappeared while demonstrators hurled rocks at UN peacekeepers and Haitian police, returned to curbsides to sell fried plantains and pork, and shopkeepers opened stalls in the main market to sell oranges and papayas.
UN peacekeepers rolled up barbed wire they had placed around the opulent National Palace when they had to fend off thousands of protesters trying to storm Preval%26#39;s office.
The UN troops also took off their blue helmets as they sat casually in armoured personnel carriers lining major roads and intersections. Security remained heavy.
Some demonstrators warned protests could break out again.
%26quot;I think that Alexis should resign. We Haitians cannot feed our children. We are living like animals and he is not solving the problems,%26quot; said shoemaker Jonas Glezil, 30.
%26quot;We don%26#39;t ask Preval to resign but are waiting to see what he is going to do. If he doesn%26#39;t act there could be trouble in the future.%26quot;

Tags: cars, decades, endor, Food, food price, food prices, food riots, food staple, spokeswoman, target

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