Session IV: Strategy Of Asia for "FAO World Summit on Food"

- Focus on Sustainable Food Production, Food Security and Population -


[14:00 - 16:30, February 13, 1996]


MR.SHIV KHARE (AFPPD):

No, this session should be finished so that we can go to the closing.

Friends, as you see from the program, this is a special session which we are going to do today to discuss food security and the strategy which we are going to adopt in coming one year in Asia. As you, most of you may know that the World Food Organization is going to organize a World Food Summit in Rome in Demantat, Manambat, This World Food Summit will bring the heads of state to Rome to discuss issues related to poverty, hunger, malnutrition and the achievements of food security. And they are going to adopt policies in this relation and also actions at global, regional and national level. You may also note that the United Nations had declared 1996 as the year for poverty elimination. So, this is the correct year where the parliamentarians and the Asian Forum of Parliamentarians, especially, would like to take the initiative in mobilizing parliamentarian support in the field of poverty elimination, food security and related issues like poverty and mal-nutrition.

The Asian Forum, as you all know, has taken initiatives in the past of organizing international conferences of parliamentarians on issues such as population. We organized the International Conference of Parliamentarians on Population and Development in Cairo in 1994. Then, we organized the International Meeting of Parliamentarians on Social Development and Population in Copenhagen to coincide with the Social Summit in Copenhagen. And then last year, we organized an International Meeting of Parliamentarians on Gender Population and Development in preparation for the Women's Conference in Beijing. The Tokyo conference was very useful because of all the women parliamentarians who attended, there were nearly 90 from nearly 60 countries. and they all went from Tokyo to Beijing, and they were really country-rooted towards the achievement of the goals of the Beijing Conferences.

With this encouragement, again, the Asian Forum is planning, discussing and thinking about taking an initiative to organize an International Conference of Parliamentarians on Food Security and Population to coincide with the World Food Summit in Rome.

In preparation to that, we will also like to organize several national, sub-regional and regional meetings of parliamentarians to open their views on this topic. And our partners in different other continents like the Inter-American Parliamentarian Group in Latin America and North America, the Forum of African and Middle East and Parliamentarians in Africa and the Parliamentarians in Europe are also going to do the same and will organize the international conference. If it is approved, then in cooperation with our partner organization like the African Parliamentarian Group, Inter-American Parliamentarian Group, International Medical Parliamentarian Group and the Global Committee of Parliamentarians, we would like to organize in their cooperation.

In today's session, we would like to start this, we would like to initiate the whole food security campaign of parliamentarians and we have today three eminent people with us. We have with us on my left, Mr. Chadha who is the joint Secretary in the Ministry of