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human-right-to-food

Haiti: Nutritional value of World Food Program rice in question

By: Haiti Support Group | December 15, 2008

The British solidarity organization, the Haiti Support Group, today wrote to Josette Sheeran, the Executive Director of the United Nations World Food Program (WFP), requesting information about the type of rice that the organization is distributing in Haiti.
The Haiti Support Group is concerned about the nutritional content of the rice that the WFP is distributing to hundreds of thousands of hungry and starving Haitians. In particular, the organization is seeking reassurance that the WFP is not distributing imported rice that has undergone the usual commercial milling process, thereby considerably reducing the rice's mineral, vitamin, and fibre content.
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Confronting the Global Food Challenge

By: Carol Schachet | November 20, 2008

A group of civil society organizations, including Grassroots International, will participate in a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, entitled "Confronting the Global Food Challenge: Finding New Approaches to Trade and Investment that Support the Right to Food." The conference-convened by Grassroots' allies the Institute for Agriculture & Trade Policy, the Ecumenical Advocacy Alliance and FoodFirst Information & Action Network-will meet November 24-26 to explore the impact of trade and investment on the right to food and to develop new approaches that have human rights at the core.
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Update on Gaza’s Blockade

By: Carol Schachet | November 14, 2008

Gaza is once again in a heightened state of emergency and panic as UN food aid has been unilaterally blocked by the Israeli authorities. According to UN and other sources, more than 80% of Gaza's 1.5 million residents are dependent on food aid. The Gaza Strip is completely sealed off from the outside world by the strictly manned borders with Israel and Egypt, and the Mediterranean waters patrolled by Israeli gun boats. Palestinian civilians are once again facing the threat of military incursions. On the other side of the border, some Palestinian rockets are reaching as far as the city of Ashkelon, terrifying the Israeli population as the cycle of violence intensifies.
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Grassroots International Joins with U.S. Allies to Tell the Candidates: “Reform food policy and end the food crisis”

By: Grassroots International | October 31, 2008

Global food prices have almost doubled in recent years, in large part due to U.S. policies, and now nearly 1 billion people worldwide - including 50 million here in the U.S. - are facing hunger. Keep reading to find out how you can take action for change.

The food crisis is not a crisis in the availability of food. In fact, there is more than enough food to feed everyone in the world. Over the last 20 years, world food production has risen steadily at over 2% a year, while the rate of global population growth has dropped to 1.14% a year.
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Announcing: A New Popular Education Tool!

By: Carol Schachet | October 16, 2008

Grassroots International and the National Family Farm Coalition announce the release of a new popular education tool that can help you understand and fix the world food crisis: Food for Thought and Action: A Food Sovereignty Curriculum.
It's been said that "you are what you eat." In the face of a global food crisis, it's clear that we've been forced to swallow far more than what's on our plates. Our global food system is broken, with nearly a billion hungry people around the world and millions more forced from their failed farms as industrial agriculture privatizes and despoils our water, soil and biodiversity.
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Haiti is going from Catastrophe to Catastrophe

By: Carol Schachet | October 10, 2008

As Haitian waters recede - at least for now - aid and relief efforts are also diminishing for the nearly one million people who are in desperate need of emergency food. The wounds of this reality are particularly raw in the countryside where the majority is struggling to survive.
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Ecuadorians’ New Constitution Guarantees Resource Rights & Makes Food Sovereignty a Right

By: Grassroots International | October 2, 2008

On September 28, 2009, Ecuadorians approved a new constitution that includes an article granting nature the right to "exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution." The new constitution recognizes the right of all Ecuadorians to have access to sufficient resources to feed themselves in a sustainable manner with respect to cultural differences between people and communities. A priority is local food production, recognizing implicitly that the right to adequate food represents, among many things, the right of the small food producers, harvesters and fisherpeople to acquire appropriate resources and the right to rely on the laws, measures and programs that assist them in providing food.
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The Via Campesina to Hold 5th International Conference

By: Carol Schachet | October 1, 2008

More than 500 men and women farmers and leaders from 70 countries will gather in Mozambique from October 16 to 23, 2008 to attend the 5th International Conference of the Via Campesina. Grassroots International is providing support for its partners, including members from Brazil, Haiti, Central America and Mexico, as well as a delegation from Indonesia, to participate in the international event. Two staff members from Grassroots International will also attend part of the conference, which will focus on Food Sovereignty and the current agricultural crisis. The Via Campesina's press release outlines more details of the conference.
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Playing the Blame Game: Who is Behind the Food Crisis?

By: Carol Schachet | July 25, 2008

Research presented in the Oakland Institute's recent publication "The Blame Game: Who is behind the World Food Crisis?" pokes holes through the myth that the "economic prosperity" experienced by an emerging minority in India has been a major contributor to the dramatic increase in global food prices.
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Livelihood Rights: The Right to Exist

By: Saulo Araujo | July 11, 2008

Members of Grassroots International's partner La Via Campesina -- an international network of peasants, indigenous peoples, fishers, pastoralists, women, and youth -- gathered in late June in Jakarta, Indonesia to defend their right to exist, and called for a UN Convention on the Rights of Peasants. (Below, see their final declaration)
Under intense threat from the expansion of agro-fuels in South America and Indonesia, militarization in Colombia and South Korea, and increasing food prices, rural families are voicing a predicament that affects all communities.
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The Hidden Face of the Global Food Crisis

By: Carol Schachet | June 25, 2008

About 1000 small farmers of the International movement Via Campesina, men and women from 25 different countries and 12 Indonesian provinces gathered today in Jakarta to claim the right to farm their land, the right to eat and to feed their families and communities.
They opened a five-day International Conference on Peasant Rights aiming at attracting world attention to the fate of small producers. Peasants represent almost half of the world population and are the backbone of the food system. However, their rights are systematically violated.
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Empty Policies for Empty Plates

By: Grassroots International | June 12, 2008

International representatives of small farmers, fisherfolks, indigenous peoples, pastoralists and Non Governmental Organisations (NGO) have expressed their disappointment with the poor outcome of the High Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome. "The final declaration will not fill any plate. The recommendations for more liberalisation would lead to more violations of the right to food", criticised Maryam Rahmanian from the Iranian organisation CENESTA. During the official conference, the social movements held their own Forum "Terra Preta" ("black earth") to voice their demands to realize food sovereignty and the right to food of the millions of hungry people.
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A Crisis of Empty Promises

By: Saulo Araujo | June 6, 2008

Our partners in Guatemala have told us: the current food crisis will continue unless we guarantee the land, water and seeds rights of communities necessary to grow food. The same message is being echoed in Brazil, Mexico and many neighborhoods in the U.S.
In two separate statements, Guatemala's National Peasant and Indigenous Coordination (CONIC) and Brazil's Small Producers Movement (MPA) put forth food sovereignty as a solution to the crisis: the right of communities to produce food for local markets and for consumers to have access to local healthy foods. Both organizations denounce the expansion of industrial agriculture and growing control of agribusinesses for contributing to the hunger of urban and rural communities.
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Speculators and Traders Gambling on Food

By: Carol Schachet | June 5, 2008

There's a scary betting game going on. Here's how it goes: Speculators bet that food prices go up (and drive them up in the process). If they're right, they reap a profit. If they're right, the price of food for families skyrockets.
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Open Letter to the High-Level Conference On World Food Security

By: Grassroots International | June 5, 2008

To the conference organizers (FAO, CGIAR, IFAD, WFP); the Heads of States; the General Secretary of the United Nations: bear responsibility to protect the Palestinian people who are exposed to poverty and hunger by the Israeli occupying forces.
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The World Food Crisis in the Palestinian Context: Rising Prices under Occupation and a Call to Action

By: Carol Schachet | June 5, 2008

As the heads of states meet with the Secretary General in Rome this week to discuss world food security in the light of climate change and bioenergy, Palestinians are experiencing a different dimension of the food crisis. Food is of the most basic of all human rights, and in much of the Palestinian context, is being systematically denied to civilians.
Our partners in the West Bank and Gaza recently released a call to action, which we have reproduced here. We have also posted a copy of the open letter to the conference organizers referenced below.
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Farmers bringing message to the Food Crisis Summit in Rome expelled

By: Nikhil Aziz | June 4, 2008

Rome, Italy, 3 June 2008
Watch the video of the action in Rome!
Farmer and civil society leaders carrying out a peaceful action today in Rome, Italy at the FAO Summit on the Food Crisis were forcefully removed from the premises. At around 1:30pm farmers and representatives of civil society organisations staged an action at the press room to deliver a message that millions of additional people are joining the ranks of the hungry as the corporations that control the global food system are making record profits.
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Civil Society forum calls for Rethinking of the Global Food System

By: Nikhil Aziz | June 3, 2008

Rome, June 1, 2008.
On the eve of the High Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome, farmers, fisherfolk, indigenous peoples and nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) have declared a People's State of Emergency.
"Governments and intergovernmental organisations must immediately stop any policies, which lead to violations of the human right to food", says Maryam Rahmanian of CENESTA, Iran. "Free trade policies have seriously damaged the food system over time, leading to the food crisis that we're facing today". Parallel to the official conference, civil society organisations are holding a five day Forum to voice their demands on how to overcome the crisis.
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Food Riots, Food Rights, a Fast, and a Corporate Agribusiness Campaign: A Global People’s State of Emergency Declared!

By: Maria Aguiar | May 24, 2008

Food Riots and a Fast
I have had the privilege of accompanying some of the largest and most dynamic social movements in Latin America over the course of my work at Grassroots International. In early 2001, we struggled with how to share the news of the agrarian reform and land rights struggles of our partners in Brazil and other Latin American and Caribbean countries in ways that would resonate with folks here in the United States. What we came up with back then was to connect land rights with food rights.
More recently the right to food has been the daily bread of the news media as the sharp increase in food prices have resulted in food riots in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In the US, the working poor are suffering hunger in silent resignation.
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FUNAGUAS Protests the Bunge Corporation

By: Judson Barros of FUNAGUAS | May 24, 2008

The following is an English translation of a statement made by Judson Barros, the president of FUNAGUAS, as he protested the Bunge Corporation outside its annual stockholders' meeting in New York.
Bunge Food Inc. has been in the public eye over the last two months in many media outlets in Brazil (magazines, websites and newspapers) for two reasons:
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Food Riots and a Fast