Leticia Ramos Shahani
YOUTH AGAINST HUNGER
Speech of former Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani at the World Food Day 1999
FAO Regional Office, Bangkok, Thailand, 16 October 1999
I should like to thank most sincerely the FAO Regional Office, especially its Assistant Director General, Mr. Prem Nath, for its kind invitation for me to be the speaker this year on World Food Day with the special topic, "Youth Against Hunger." I consider it an honor to be associated with the FAO on this important occasion. At this time when hunger and malnutrition are on the rise, its mission becomes more precious and challenging. I also consider it a privilege to be able to visit Thailand again, one of the closest allies of my country, the Philippines, and whose leaders such as His Majesty, King Bumibhol and Her Royal Highness, Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who graces this occasion today, have given the development of agriculture the highest priority in this country, making Thailand a leading performer in agriculture. Thailand's example is an inspiration to all of us. In the Philippines, President Joseph Estrada has given food security great importance among his administration programs.
The FAO has made a strategic decision to focus again on youth in its fight against hunger with the overall aim to reduce of under-nourished people to half their present level no later than 2015. In the words of its Director General, Jacques Diouf: "People in the 15 to 24 age group who are defined as 'youth' now number around one billion or more than one-fifth of the world population . . . . . With better education and training as well as greater opportunities for productive employment, they could play a major role in building food security."
International Activities in the Youth Area
In the Asia and Pacific region, we should note with concern that sixty percent of the world youth inhabit our region, that is, around six hundred million young men and women. This number boggles the mind in terms of the potential human resources and the great contribution they can make to fight hunger. The appeal to utilize youth power in the United Nations, of course, is not new. In 1985, the United Nations launched the International Youth Year (IYY) to call attention to the potential of the world's youth resources. Incidentally, it was the United Nations' Centre for Social Development and Humanitarian Affairs of which I was the Assistant Secretary General at that time, which was the focal point of the world-wide activities of the UN International Youth Year (IYY). Since 1985, the FAO has held two Expert Consultations on Rural Youth, demonstrating its concern for this age group. This year, on World Food Day, the FAO has reiterated its call to mobilize the rural youth. Over the past years, the circumstances for rural youth have changed - in their demographic increase in developing countries, shrinking land resources, the rapid spread of the scourge of HIV-AIDS, the adverse impact of globalization on agriculture. It is worth noting that the approach to the participation of youth is becoming more integrative, systematic and specific in relation to sustainable development. We are discerning a pattern moving out of marginalization to advocacy to integration and specificity. This trend should be supported.
Youth received a high profile at the World Food Summit where an International Youth Forum simultaneously met and submitted its own Declaration to the Summit. In that Declaration the youth called on "civil authorities and policymakers to develop strong commitments to the promotion and emphasis of an agricultural policy alongside industrial development." "This can be achieved," according to the Declaration, "through effective education and communication means as well as infrastructure in development areas." This paragraph contains a cri du coeur (a cry from the heart) of the young. In effect, they are saying that if young men and women are to remain and be happy in agriculture and not to migrate to the cities, government and private industry must invest in agriculture, modernize it and make it profitable enough to attract the young to go for it. Attention must be given to this crying need because the worldwide trend is for the youth to abandon agriculture.
I was the co-head of the Philippine delegation to the 1996 World Food Summit, in my capacity as Chairperson of the Senate Committee on Agriculture and Food. The Declaration and the World Food Summit Plan of Action, adopted at the Conference, are, indeed, comprehensive and wide-ranging; they remain timely up to the present. Through these documents we have now understood what remains to be done in agriculture to make it a more productive and profitable sector; that in adequate; basic legislation; agrarian reform; gender equality; rural industrialization; support for nutrition programs; support for the small farmer; the importance of high value crops; the need for a fair and market-oriented trade system. Name it and the right recommendation have been articulated in the Plan of Action. But a purely technical, scientific and legal approach to said Plan will not automatically translate implement the said program into reality, especially at the grassroots level where the majority of the youth live. What is needed are the moral force and the spiritual energy to achieve concrete results. These non-material forces do not cost money. They are free - like sunshine and rain. Let us now elaborate on this issue.
Youth
In discussing the youth and food security, we are dealing with two entities, youth and food, which are complex, multi-faceted and interrelated with other issues. In utilizing youth power to increase food security it is not only their agricultural skills we want to improve. The youth also need health care, including care for sexually transmitted diseases, good nutrition, sound recreation and cultural activities, value formation; and especially important, employment. These requirements are not luxuries; they are basic needs and can be realized if the political will, effective policies and transparent management are in place.
My career as a Senator forced me to become a farmer because I wanted to better understand the living and working conditions of my constituents, the majority of whom were farmers. It is an experience I have not regretted and I am proud to have joined the ranks of practicing farmers. I enjoy living in the village at least three days in the week but in the evenings there are no recreational or cultural activities especially for the restless young. As a result they go into drugs or join anti-social activities. Empowering the youth for food security at the grassroots level would require the coordinated assistance of authorities, public and private, responsible for health, education, local government and private business. However, the youth must be supported for their own sake and not be used as mere pawns in the hands of manipulative politicians. The youth should be regarded as both the agents and beneficiaries of change. A fatal flaw in many government youth programs is the tendency to use the youth for short-term political ends. This is a grave mistake. The human rights of the youth must be respected and their role as the emerging leaders of the future must be fully accepted by their elders. Policy guidelines and budget from above should be balanced by a bottoms-up approach from below.
Let us remember that the young full of idealism, passion and a burning desire to improve the world. They are looking for a worthwhile goal in life and are ready to sacrifice much to attain their goals. But in many countries, agriculture is not an attractive career path. On the contrary, the majority of our youth, including young women, want to flee from the misery and boredom of rural life. It is no wonder that the average age of the farmer in the Philippines is 52 years old. Even a degree from an agricultural school is not sufficient to attract young people back to the land. Hence, Governments must invest in agriculture if they wish the youth to help in the fight against hunger in a sustainable and effective manner. But youth programs should not be government gimmicks of government - such programs instead, should be deeply committed to human development and respect for basic human rights. It is significant that the main cause of death, illness and disability among the young worldwide is - depression - the disorder of the spirit, the mind and the emotions - which signals the frustration, helplessness and loss of direction among the young.
Food
Let us now turn to food: Food is one of the most basic needs and one of the most sacred necessities of life. I am sure that many of us who have dealt with food have almost a religious attitude towards it because of its life-giving qualities. After all, we are what we eat. I believe young people from early childhood must learn how to value food, how not to waste it and how to share it with others. The universal ritual of giving thanks to God before we eat is symbolic of the spiritual origin of food. Unfortunately, we have lost this mystic bond with food in our pre-occupation with the manufacture and sale of junk food or fast food and the mere desire to quickly satisfy our physical hunger for tasty but harmful processed foods and drinks. Food is not only an issue of agriculture; food affects our health, our social relationships, our entire culture. What I am trying to say is: in mobilizing the youth to participate in the fight against hunger, we need to develop a holistic approach to the needs of the young as well as an integrated approach to the meaning of food. In saying this, I am not envisioning additional budget or another world conference to achieve this goal. Government budgets are shrinking and it does not help to join the cry for more money, some of which is siphoned off, anyway, to the pockets of corrupt people. What we need is to better integrate programs at the grassroots level relating to youth and food security and to implement these programs with moral integrity and a transparency which will inspire the young to join, support and remain in these programs. Good management, inspiring leadership and a culture based on values are important for success. Without these, such programs will be short-lived and could be a waste of time, energy and money. I believe we should look at hunger not only as physical hunger but also as spiritual hunger, that longing for a human culture based on justice, love and honesty. Let the youth also struggle for food security through a life of truth, decency and democratic values. This is what the Buddha admonished in practicing the Eight-Fold Path of Righteousness.
Values
In 1987, I launched the Moral Recovery Program, not as a lay preacher of a particular religion but as a Senator who believed and still believes that values are indispensable for building communities and a nation. In launching the program, "Youth Against Hunger," it is my fervent hope that the values of self-reliance, cooperation, discipline, the dignity of labor, the love for the land and the balance between rights and responsibilities, will be fostered among the young. In a period of dwindling budgetary resources, continuing violence and instability in many countries, we are, at the national and international levels, forced to look within ourselves to look for alternative solutions and discover our moral strength and spiritual energy. Even at the United Nations and the World Bank the need for values to attain sustainable development is, at last, being recognized. The empowerment of people, a fundamental theme of the 1995 Social Summit must be utilized to attain social progress and political stability. In the Philippines, we used "People Power" to topple a dictatorship and it was achieved not by military might or violence but by faith, courage and prayers. In this same way, the youth can topple the dictatorship of hunger and malnutrition through a combination of material, technical support and the mobilization of moral and spiritual forces.
The Girl-Youth
Before concluding, I should like to make a pitch for the girl youth and her role in the fight against hunger. The need to protect the girl child was raised in the 1990 World Summit for Children and was dramatically articulated in the 1995 Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing. It was realized at Beijing that much of the discrimination suffered by adult women have their roots in infancy and childhood. In utilizing the youth to fight against hunger, there must be a focus on the girl youth in agriculture. Why? Women are the majority of the world's agricultural producers in farming, fisheries and forestry. They also provide and prepare food for their families, quite often being the last to eat in the household, in accordance with Asian tradition. In many ways women have more to do with food on a daily basis, than men. Yet there are far more illiterate young women than young men. There is no better way to make the girl youth a more effective producer and provider of food and to reduce her prospects of future poverty (since seventy percent of all poor are women) than to prepare her in her youth for her roles in adult life. Unfortunately, when we say "youth" we really mean male youth. Now that the role of women in food security is beginning to be recognized by the ministries of agriculture, although too slowly, the right education, training and health care should now be given to the girl youth.
Capacity to Buy Food
During the food crisis in Indonesia, I joined an international NGO to visit to that neighboring Asean country to study the food crisis, with the mandate for me to examine the gender issue. We found out that the question was not so much as insufficient the food production but the mal-distribution of food and the low purchasing power of the rupiah. Women were desperate for they could not buy food for their children because they had no money to buy basic staples neither had they benefited from any training to undertake livelihood projects nor did they have any access to low interest credit for the businesses they wanted to undertake.
The traditional approach then of simply providing food supply in the market place, although a necessary condition for food security, is not a sufficient strategy to ensure that the poor become food secure. The poor who spend more than 50% of their income on food must be "targeted" at a more dis-aggregated level, by income class, by occupation, by age and by gender. Corollary to food supply availability is the provision of effective purchasing power among the poor to access food. Therefore, food production programs must be accompanied by corresponding income - generating activities to empower women and youth, to buy food.
Finally, we should ask food security for whom? Freedom from hunger for whom? I hope it will be food security not only for the elite and rich, or for big-business cartels, government statisticians, or for bureaucrats and politicians; rather, it should be food security for all people, infants and children, youth, women, men and the elderly, especially the poor who do not have enough to eat. Indeed, freedom from hunger for all living things on our planet including animals and plants. If this is the goal of food security, let us strive to assist the youth in our common cause to fight against hunger and achieve food security for all.