No more “millions” of hungry people: Caritas’ food campaign
Can we really end widespread hunger in the next decade? Martina Liebsch, head of advocacy for Caritas Internationalis, describes Caritas’ “Food for All” campaign and what it means.
Can you talk about the goals of the ‘Food for All’ campaign?
The latest statistics say we have over 800 million people who go to bed hungry every day. We think it’s a scandal that so many people are hungry when others have so much to eat. We have the means to change that. The goal is to eradicate hunger by 2025.
That seems difficult—even utopian.
If you want to reach far, you need an ambitious vision. There may still be a low percentage of people suffering from hunger. But in terms of widespread hunger, we don’t want to see the word “millions” applied to hungry people.
How can regular people get involved?
It’s about changing your mindset, your way of thinking about food. What does food mean to you? How much do you eat? How much do you think about who produces that food? Where do you buy it? What are your responsibilities?
I always remember my grandmother saying to me, when I was a child, “You shouldn’t throw away food.” Back then, I said, “It doesn’t really change the lives of other people if I throw away food.” But now that I’m older, I think there’s a moral call to all of us that we be more aware of food and where it comes from, who works for it. We need to honour and respect this product as we respect other people’s work.
What can people do on a local level?
In a parish you could have discussions, raising awareness about this issue, the problem of people going hungry. You can do projects, hopefully involving young people, to search out the hungry–are there any hungry people where you live? What can you do about it?
And it’s not just giving out food, it’s asking why. Why is this person going hungry? What can we do about the root causes of hunger?
It’s also about reconnecting with food issues. Many children nowadays, because they grow up in cities, they don’t have any idea how food is grown. They think it comes from a factory somewhere.
When there are community gardens or school gardens, people learn to grow food and learn to see the work that’s connected to this. Education is crucial. It would be fantastic if children were educated on food issues and if universities took it up as an important issue.
What are some ways that Caritas and others are fighting hunger in poor countries?
An example was when Kenya was hit by severe drought. Caritas did a project distributing seeds to people, and projects to contain water. They trained people on how to cope with the situation, in some cases getting back to traditional knowledge.
I was speaking to a Franciscan father who said they’ve started to cultivate a tree in Senegal that needs little water, but whose fruits are very nutritious and healthy. It’s a kind of cherry tree. It’s about these initiatives, knowing you can do something.
Caritas also does advocacy. How does that advance the campaign?
There’s something called the “right to food.” It’s from a United Nations covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted in 1966 saying everyone has the right to be free from hunger. Many countries have adhered to these declarations. So it’s their responsibility to ensure this.
What about someone critical of the United Nations who says “why should we follow them?”
Even if you don’t like the United Nations, everyone can understand that to have food is a fundamental issue. If you come from a religious background, it’s very much in tune with all the biblical stories. It’s about sharing food. For the campaign, we’ve chosen the story of feeding the five thousand, John 6:1-13. Jesus told the apostles to find food and share it among the crowd of 5000. This was 5000 men—women were not counted, so it must have been more. They were able to share the food, were able to feed everyone. Everyone was satisfied. There were even leftovers. One of the verses I like most is that nothing was wasted.
Caritas’ ‘Food for All’ campaign also refers to guidelines from the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Can you talk about what these guidelines are meant to do?
The guidelines are a roadmap to end hunger. They’re meant to help countries achieve the right to food, so people have access to nutritious and healthy food. There are 19 guidelines in all–for example, guidelines on food, on water, on vulnerable people. They’ve been adopted by a significant number of countries.
Some countries, such as Kenya and Mozambique, have the right to food in their legislation—Kenya even has it in their constitution.
Does that mean no one in Kenya is hungry?
No, certainly not, but it means it’s something a country is committed to and people can hold their government accountable.
The guidelines are saying, if you’re serious about ending hunger and you want to get there, you have to deal with trade, with land, with water. Once I met a lady from a Catholic women’s organisation in Mali who said, “Can you do something for widows in Mali? Widows here have no rights.” They don’t have rights to land. If they don’t have a husband, if the husband had land, they are not entitled to inherit that. They’re at the mercy of their husband’s family.
If you don’t have at least a little plot of land where you can grow your own food, it might be difficult to survive. In certain parts of the world, this is the difference between life and death.
Interview by Laura Sheahen