The Cape High Court landed the final nail in the coffin of vitamin salesman Matthias Rath’s South African operations and delivered a blow to organisations peddling untested remedies when it ruled that the German doctor’s clinical trials were unlawful.

An outbreak of polio has hit northern Nigeria again and started spreading into neighbouring countries, the United Nations health agency says, warning of a potential international outbreak on the scale of the one that struck 20 countries between 2003 and 2006.

The Africa Progress Panel, chaired by Kofi Annan, is demanding international action to deal with the urgent threat of world food prices, while also calling for G8 leaders to take immediate steps to get their commitments to Africa back on target. The Africa Progress Panel’s report, being launched today by Kofi Annan, Michel Camdessus and Tidjane Thiam in London, states that the world food crisis ”threatens to destroy years, if not decades, of economic progress” as “100 million people are being pushed back into absolute poverty”.

The International Conference on Gender-based Violence and Sexual and Reproductive Health To be held February 15-18, 2009 in Mumbai India invites researchers, activists and practitioners to attend and present at an international conference dedicated to providing insight into the how gender-based violence is compromising the sexual and reproductive health of women, men and adolescents.

http://www.pambazuka.org/images/articles/383/48881fruit.jpgA proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers, writes Yash Tandon. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.A proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers, writes Yash Tandon. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.
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Global food prices have been rising steadily since 2002 and since January this year by 65%. Global hot spots of unrest caused by spiraling food prices in the last few months include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Egypt, Haiti, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Mauritania, Mozambique and Senegal.

The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, reported in March this year that despite real growth in some countries of the South overall there has been little progress in reducing the number of victims of hunger and malnutrition. Hunger has increased every year since 1996, reaching an estimated 854 million people despite commitments made at the 2000 Millennium Summit and the 2002 World Food Summit to halve it. Every five seconds, a child under 10 dies from hunger and malnutrition-related diseases. The situation, he said, is alarming.

Among the most popular suggested causes of the food crisis are:

- Global warming that has disrupted the balance of natural systems of air, water and weather patterns essential for food productioN;

- Rising fuel prices pushing up cost of e.g. fertilizers, transport, etc.;

- Conversion of food land to Biofuels;

- Increased consumption by rising middle classes in e.g. India and China;

- Dismantling of agricultural infrastructure in countries in the South that during 1980s and 1990s followed the Structural Adjustment Policies of the Bretton Woods Institutions;

- WTO Doha negotiations that could reduce applied tariffs on food products by further up to 36% increasing the vulnerabilities of many countries in the South;

- US farm policy;

- US and EU subsidies -- including the practice of “shifting boxes” in order to maintain subsidies, and EU CAP reform;

- Financial Speculation in the food sector

Before anybody goes deeper into an analysis of any of the above, it is necessary to tread the jungle of “probable causes” warily, for one could tread on sensitive toes. The issue is not only “hot on the streets”, it is also “hot in the board rooms.” Jacques Diouf, the Director-General of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), was treading carefully through this jungle when in describing the spiraling food prices as an "emergency", he blamed both the developing and the developed countries as the sources of the crisis. In the developing countries, he said, it was, among other factors, the steady migration of rural populations to the cities, adverse weather conditions such as an unexpectedly severe cold spell in China, droughts in Australia and Kazakhstan and floods in India and Bangladesh. And in the developed countries it was, also the diversion of farmland to produce biofuels, and speculation in the futures markets.

So, how do we traverse this jungle? Like all forest dwellers, it is important to equip ourselves with a set of simple guidelines before setting on the journey. In our view, there are five basic guidelines, or principles, that must form the basis of any food policy. These are:

1. The Principle of food sovereignty. This is not the same as “food security”. A country can have food security through food imports. Dependence on food imports is precarious and prone to multiple risks -- from price risks, to supply risks, to conditionality risks (policy conditions that come with food imports). Food sovereignty, on the other hand, implies ensuring domestic production and supply of food. It means that the nationals of the country (or at the very least nationals within the region) must primarily be responsible for ensuring that the nation and the region are first and foremost dependent on their own efforts and resources to grow their basic foods.

2. The Principle of priority of food over export crops produced by small farms sustained by state provision of the necessary infrastructure of financial credit, water, energy, extension service, transport, storage, marketing, and insurance against crop failures due to climate changes or other unforeseen circumstances.

3. The Principle of self-reliance and national ownership and control over the main resources for food production. These are land, seeds, water, energy, essential fertilizers and technology and equipment (for production, harvesting, storage and transport).

4. The Principle of food safety reserves. Each nation must maintain, through primarily domestic production and storage systems (including village storage as well as national silos) sufficient stocks of “reserve foods” to provide for emergencies.

5. The Principle of a fair and equitable distribution of “reserve foods” among the population during emergencies.

Sadly, and with dire consequences, the above quite commonsensical and, we believe, reasonable principles have not been followed by many governments in the South. They have been grossly violated through five main reasons, among other minor ones:

1. Distorted state policies on production and trade (e.g. removal of tariffs that made local producers vulnerable to imported food from rich countries that subsidized their own food production and exports).

2. Land grab by the rich commercial farmers, thus disempowering small producers and rendering them vulnerable to “market attacks.”

3. Effective loss of control over resources of food production, including land (even where nationals “owned” land) because of imported seeds, imported fertilizers, imported machinery, imported technical assistance, and imported banks, and also loss of control over water and energy through surrendering these to foreign corporations attracted by the lure of so-called FDIs (foreign direct investments).

4. Donor aid dependence, and bad advice that came with it from donors including the World Bank and the IMF during the heyday of the “Washington Consensus” (1975-2005).

5. Disruption of the infrastructure of food production (as described above) that came as a consequence of the above four factors.

Many countries have, as a result, lost their food sovereignty (even as they talked of “food security”), became food importers and “cash crop” or mineral exporters, lost control over the resources needed for production (land, water, seeds, energy, technology, etc), and became hostage to foreign supplies of food not only during periods of emergencies but also during “normal” times.

HERE ARE A FEW EXAMPLES OF THE ABOVE “EXISTENTIAL TRUTH” OF OUR TIMES

It is estimated that up to 15 million Mexican farmers and their families (in particular indigenous peoples) may have been displaced from their livelihoods as a result of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and competition with subsidized American maize.

Just 10 corporations, including Aventis, Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, control one third of the $23 billion commercial seed market and 80% of the $28 billion global pesticide market. Another 10 corporations, including Cargill, control 57% of the total sales of the world's leading 30 retailers and account for 37% of the revenues earned by the world's top 100 food and beverage companies.

In an increasingly liberalizing (globalizing) world, Transnational Corporations (TNCs) have increased their control over the supply of water, especially in the South. In many cases, private sector participation in water services has been one of the “aid conditionalities” of the so-called “donor assistance” (ODAs) from donor countries and the IMF and the World Bank. Just three companies, Veolia Environnement (formerly Vivendi Environnement), Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux and Bechtel (USA), control a majority of private water concessions globally..

The biofuels industry is inherently predatory on land and resources, especially if it is generated out of food such as maize and Soya beans. It is estimated that to produce 50 litres of biofuels to run a car for one day’s long trip or three days city-run, it would consume about 200 kg of maize -- enough to feed one person for one year. This does not even take into account the cost of energy, water and other resources that go into biofuels production.

The Social Enterprise Development (SEND) Foundation in Ghana have criticised multi-national companies that are trying, using the “opportunity” of “food crisis”, to capture African agriculture through the so-called “Green Revolution” for Africa. FoodFirst Information and Action Network (FIAN) said that peasants have been evicted in several African countries so that palm oil can be produced from forests.

The heavy production and export subsidies that OECD countries grant their farmers - more than $349 billion in 2006 or almost $1 billion per day - mean that subsidized European fruit, vegetables lower grade meat, and chicken wings can be found in markets all over West Africa at lower prices than local produce.

CONCLUSION

A proper analysis of the food crisis is a matter that cannot be left with trade negotiators, investment experts, or agricultural engineers. It is essentially a matter of political economy. A crisis for some is an opportunity for others. Any analysis of the present food crisis carries with it its own prescription, and these prescriptions have the potential to bring benefits for some and losses for others.

The analytical jungle needs to be carefully traversed. But in this jungle, watch out for animals that have sharp claws and powerful teeth. We thought “imperialism” was a “dirty word” not to be uttered in polite company. But under the title “Food Investment, not Imperialism”, an editorial in the London Financial Times of May 13, 2008 advocated foreign investments as a solution to the problem of food crisis. However, having expounded the virtue of what it called “cross-border farm investment” (read, FDIs), it goes on with what we cannot but agree. It says:

“The only exception is if investment in agriculture turns into imperialism. That is a practice with a long and unpleasant history, from the plantation agriculture of the European empires to the 1954 coup in Guatemala, assisted by the US Central Intelligence Agency, at least in part for the benefit of the United Fruit Company. A developing country can suffer if capital intensive cash crops are produced at the expense of labour intensive food.”

Bravo! There is sometimes wisdom that comes through looking at history from hindsight. Sadly, history is often forgotten by those who are in a hurry to sign free trade agreements (FTAs), Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs), donor aid loans and grants, and Bilateral Investment Treaties (BITs). The lure of money to balance the budget or to finance food imports is too powerful against the lessons of history. Only if our policy makers were able to exercise some foresight!

*Yash Tandon is the Executive Director of the South Centre, an Intergovernmental think tank of the developing countries.

*Please send comments to or comment online at http://www.pambazuka.org/

The presence of large quantities of ineffective or counterfeit anti-malarial drugs on the Kenyan market is hampering efforts to fight the disease, according to health officials. "Some of the counterfeit drugs are substandard and usually do not have the active ingredients required to treat malaria," according to Dorothy Otieno, an officer in the Ministry of Medical Services' malarial control division.

Children who live in communities with an HIV prevalence rate of 10 percent or more have half a year of schooling less than children in other communities. In this way the negative consequences of HIV/AIDS are felt beyond the families that are directly affected. These facts were presented at a World Bank conference in South Africa by Robert Greener, senior economic adviser at the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS).

Seven years after effectively being dismissed by the Mpumalanga health department for supporting the dispensing of anti-retrovirals for rape survivors, Dr Malcolm Naude is fighting for the rights of all public service doctors and nurses to follow their conscience when treating patients.

For the better part of two decades, Guinea’s forest region has absorbed massive influxes of displaced people. Several hundred thousand refugees crossed into the area during civil war and unrest in Liberia, Sierra Leone and Côte d’Ivoire. At the peak of the influx, refugees comprised half of the population in the area surrounding N’zérékoré, according to the United Nations Joint Programme. Host communities do not always welcome the presence of refugees, and conflict has occasionally erupted. But the departure of refugees is not always wholly beneficial either.

Zimbabwe's suspension of aid work before a presidential run-off will especially hurt HIV patients in the country, which has been hard hit by AIDS, a national association of NGOs said Sunday. "One cruel direct impact of the ban will be that people living with HIV/AIDS will increasingly die since many NGOs provide assistance in form of home-based care and anti-retroviral medication to them," said the National Association of Non-Governmental Organisations (NANGO).

More than 400,000 HIV-positive South Africans have begun antiretroviral treatment (ART) since the government launched its programme in 2004. But this impressive-sounding figure still only represents one third of the estimated number of people in need of treatment, and that number is expanding by an additional half a million people every year.

While public health experts in South Africa spent much of the last decade focusing on controlling infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and eradicating malnutrition, the growth of another public health crisis has gone almost unnoticed. High obesity levels, which have given rise to a virtual epidemic of non-communicable diseases like diabetes and hypertension, are finally grabbing attention.

After years of dragging their feet over HIV/AIDS in their ranks, African armies are slowly making strides in curbing the spread of the pandemic, senior military officers at the fourth HIV Implementer's meeting in Kampala, Uganda, admitted this week. Since its formation in the mid-1980s, and all through the 1990s, the Uganda People's Defence Force (UPDF) lost thousands of soldiers to HIV. President Yoweri Museveni declared HIV a threat to national security as early as 1987.

An estimated 3 million HIV-positive patients in low- and middle-income countries were receiving antiretroviral therapy at the end of 2007, according to a report released today. Although this is being praised as a “remarkable” public health achievement it means that less than a third of the 9 million-plus patients in need of anti-HIV drugs in the world’s poorer countries are actually being treated with them.

Just over half of a sample of Nigerian patients on failing antiretroviral therapy had extensive cross-resistance to all nucleoside analogues, including tenofovir, according to findings from Nigeria’s national treatment programme presented on Wednesday at the 2008 HIV Implementers’ meeting in Kampala, Uganda.

Three gay, lesbian and transgender individuals have been arrested in Uganda after peacefully protesting about an announcement from the Ugandan AIDS Commission that no resources would be directed to HIV programmes targeting gay men and other men who have sex with men. The arrests happened at the HIV/AIDS Implementers’ Meeting which is currently taking place in Uganda.

The three-day world summit called by the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation to respond to the food crisis ended with plans and pledges – and a new push to liberalisation. The plan of action, agreed by some 183 countries at the end of the meeting Thursday, does not seek any binding commitment from governments. Its formulation is similar to some declarations on food security issued by the United Nations over the last ten years.

The government should immediately reverse its decision to ban aid agencies from distributing food to hundreds of thousands of hungry people in rural areas, Human Rights Watch has said. On May 29, 2008, Zimbabwe’s Minister of Social Welfare, Nicolas Goche, issued a directive prohibiting a major international aid agency from distributing food in Masvingo province.

The United Nations General Assembly should reverse its decision to exclude three human rights and sexual health nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) from its June 10 high-level meeting on HIV/AIDS, a coalition of human rights groups and international AIDS organizations has said.

As the world food summit wraps up in Rome, civil society organisations call on policy makers to investigate the role of “commodity speculators in causing the current food price crisis and stop them profiting from hunger”. Speculative investment in commodity futures has “made prices more volatile and divorced prices from what is actually being produced on the ground”. In fact, the African Union (AU) and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (Nepad) recently concluded a workshop to “identify food price induced needs and propose practical solutions to the crisis”. Under the framework of the Comprehensive Africa Agriculture Development Programme the workshop aimed to strengthen coordinated African agriculture and a food and nutrition security response. The AU and Nepad urged states “to honour their commitment to the Maputo Declaration of allocating 10% of their national budgets to agricultural and rural development”. The workshop also proposed concrete short and long-term responses to the food crisis and follow up actions for various stakeholders, which the AU is charged with monitoring. In addition, the African Development Bank (AfDB) has underlined the threat posed by the rise in food prices on Africa’s economic growth rate. With increases in prices of basic food and fertilisers, the AfDB is implementing measures, such as the African Fertiliser Financing Scheme, to ensure agricultural productivity. AfDB has also proposed that Africa entice and support private financing of agriculture, strengthen ministries of agriculture and implement policies that favour women.

Similarly, at a Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) meeting of Ministers of Agriculture, Trade and Finance, it was agreed that the ECOWAS Bank for Investment and Development will provide 100 million dollars annually to support agricultural productivity in the region and invest four billion dollars over two years to boost agricultural productivity, mostly in the form of input support for small family farms. “The ministers said the elimination of existing obstacles to intra-regional movement of persons and goods would also contribute towards easing the prevailing spiralling cost of foodstuffs by ensuring easier access of Community citizens to commodities produced in the region”. This sentiment echoed that of the ECOWAS Council of Ministers, meeting earlier in the week, which called on states to effectively implement the Protocol relating to the Free Movement of Persons, Right of Residence and Establishment.

Also in West Africa, a pay dispute within the Guinean army escalated into violence, claiming at least three lives. The AU Commission (AUC) called on Guinean military personnel to “refrain from the use of arms” and urged state institutions to immediately initiate dialogue and consultation with all the stakeholders, while President Blaise Compaoré of Burkina Faso, the Chairman of ECOWAS, held consultations on the situation on the margins of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD). “The meeting expressed great concern about reported unrest by elements of the Armed Forces of Guinea which put at risk the safety and security of the civilian population and poses a grave threat to the fragile peace in the entire Mano River Union area.”

As African leaders return from the TICAD this week, the Group of African Ambassadors in Russia called for more development oriented policies during a series of high level meetings with Russian government officials and suggested that Moscow hold an international conference to discuss ways of enhancing economic partnership and cooperation. Regarding this global courting of Africa, Ken Kamoche recognizes Africa’s strategic global position, but notes that despite the fact that “Africa is more powerful than it realises” “it lacks vision and political instability remains a stumbling block” to effectively use this position for its own benefit. Further noting that the lack of unity in Africa has created a situation where, despite Africa’s potential political power, African leaders are opening their economies for promises of aid that recreate a disempowering asymmetry between the continent and the rest of the world. Muthoni Wanyeki adds “I almost no longer care about the G8’s side of the bargain — to address historical and structural problems with development financing for Africa not just through ODA, but also through debt, investment and trade. What I do care about, however, is our own side of the bargain — to address our governance problems.” Taking examples from Kenya, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe and others, she notes that the recent gains in civil and political rights are fraying as African leaders attempt to compensate for limitations on basic freedoms with increased economic growth – a situation Pheroze Nowrojee has described as Africans being primed for fascism.

Finally, the United Nations special representative on the human rights of internally displaced persons (IDPs) commended the AU this week for the draft convention for the protection and assistance of IDPs. While the xenophobic violence that has engulfed South Africa prompt Gwen Lister to question the viability of a union government which she claims “would be meaningless unless Africans are able to treat one another with the respect and dignity they deserve, especially when it comes to refugee communities”.