The following statement was adopted by trade unions representing food workers from Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Fiji, Pakistan, India and Sweden at the IUF-Asia/Pacific Food & Beverages Sector Meeting, held on 15 October 2009, in Bangkok, Thailand. A statement released by the IUF on 16 October 2009 is also available.
The shock of sky-rocketing food prices in 2007 and 2008, which led to food riots around the world and in our region, exposes the failure of the current global food system. More than one billion people are now in the grip of hunger and the food crisis confirms that many of us are, in fact, food insecure.
Although food prices have fallen as a result of the October 2008 global financial meltdown and the current deep recession, the ranks of the hungry have not diminished and the underlying system requires immediate change.
However, the present crisis offers an opportunity for a fresh approach to policy making.
In March this year, the ILO at a Geneva tripartite workshop addressing the global food crisis, responded to IUF criticism regarding the long absence of labour in global policy making related to food security. The ILO tripartite workshop, among other things, recommended that unions to be involved in international and national plans to deliver food security for all. The workshop also recommended that that the ILO work in partnership with the UN High Level Task Force (UN HLTF) on the Food Security Crisis to ensure that decent work, and in particular decent work in agriculture, is treated as an integral part of the global response.
The IUF has also welcomed the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Professor Olivier de Schutter, who has recognised that labour rights are crucial for finding solutions to the food crisis, in particular for strengthening the purchasing power of the poor. He has correctly pointed out:
“we may not be able to legislate against hunger. But because hunger and malnutrition stem from discrimination and disempowerment of the poor, strengthening the legal entitlements of these victims is a first and vital step towards real change.”
We hold that universal recognition of the “Right to Food” is necessary but not enough. In 1996, the World Food Summit in Rome reaffirmed the right to food for all – yet this changed nothing. The situation is worse today.
Without a clear capacity for workers to access the right to food, there is little possibility of the global problem of hunger fundamentally changing.
This is why governments or companies that suppresses workers from organizing independent trade unions to protect their rights and interests, contribute to the entrenchment of world hunger.
The crucial link between unemployment, low wages, job insecurity, lack of bargaining rights and hunger must be recognised. Talk by donor agencies of simply increasing food production is utterly misdirected. We live in a global economic system where powerful corporations whose interests are profit-driven and self-serving determine how most of the world’s food is produced and consumed.
Trade liberalization in food commodities merely allows powerful transnational agri-food companies to destroy the livelihoods of millions.
The large-scale cross border land grabs of late, following the realization that “free trade” is not a reliable basis for food security, should be stopped as an unsustainable response which can only exacerbate the problem of hunger.
We consider the most critical observation and recommendation made by Professor Olivier de Schutter to be:
“the expansion of global supply chain only shall work in favor of human development if this does not pressure States to lower their social and environmental standards in order to become “competitive” states, attractive to foreign investors and buyers. All too often at the end of agri-food supply chain, agricultural workers do not receive a wage enabling them a decent livelihood. The ILO estimates that the waged work force in agriculture is made up of 700 million women and men producing the food we eat but who are often unable to afford it. This is unacceptable.”
We welcome his recommendation to the UN Commission on Sustainable Development that we need to regulate TNCs to ensure that they contribute to sustainable development.
Similarly, we need regulation to reverse the expansion of precarious forms of employment.
If a “contract worker” (employed through a labour hire agency) in a food factory in the developing world, owned by one of the world’s largest food companies, earns less than enough to feed a family two meals a day, how can there be any justice or possibility of food security for workers in agriculture? The expansion of contract work in the world today is creating millions of food insecure families.
IUF-A/P is committed to stepping up the campaign for Job Security and Food Rights for all in the region.
For members of the IUF in Asia/Pacific and for workers in IUF sectors generally, the problem of hunger is a daily reality stalking their lives.
Successfully achieving food security in the long term, ultimately, can only be done through food rights and food workers’ unions.