Talking in Rome during a food security conference, Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva complained that the leaders of the First World give little attention to world hunger and accused those countries of sabotaging the agriculture of poor nations.
While there were about 60 countries represented in what was supposed to be a summit, leaders of the United States, Great Britain and France were absent. The conference had the ambitious goal of creating a new global way to fight hunger. A target hard to hit when the main sponsors of the effort do not show up.
In his speech, at FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), a branch of the UN, Lula lamented that the world leaders “seem to have lost their ability to get indignant at a suffering that’s so far from their reality and life experience.” He reminded people, however, that these same rich countries “did not hesitate to spend hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars to save bankrupt banks.”
“With less than half of these expenditures it would have been possible to eradicate hunger in the world. It is as if hunger were invisible.”
Lula pointed out that the US$ 20 billion that leaders of the G-8 (seven wealthier countries plus Russia) and the G-5 (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa and India) pledged for fighting hunger during the July summit in L’Aquila, is far from enough.
