So at the end of November, just as most Americans were preparing the gargantuan feasts they have every year on “Thanksgiving”, the US representative in the UN’s Third Committee was the only representative there to vote against a resolution on the “Right to Food” under which the UN General Assembly,
- would “consider it intolerable” that more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday, and that the number of undernourished people had grown to about 923 million worldwide, at the same time that the planet could produce enough food to feed 12 billion people, or twice the world’s present population.
The vote on that resolution was 180 to 1. Only the US voted against it. (HT: B of Moon of Alabama.)
As a US citizen, I consider that vote a disgrace.
The UN record of the vote and discussion, linked to above, tells us that,
- After the vote, the representative of the United States said he was unable to support the text because he believed the attainment of the right to adequate food was a goal that should be realized progressively. In his view, the draft contained inaccurate textual descriptions of underlying rights…
So according to this representative of the Bush administration (and still, tragically, of all of us who are US citizens), it is quite alright that “more than 6 million children still died every year from hunger-related illness before their fifth birthday”… because his, completely over-lawyered “reading” of the international declarations on this subject somehow make it okay?
This is a travesty of humanity.
It is also yet another international political disaster for the US.
It’s not enough that the US has felt in recent years that it has the “right” to invade other countries unilaterally, and quite in contravention of the UN’s norms on resolution of international differences?
It’s not enough that the US has felt it has the “right” to export a major destruction of agricultural livelihoods worldwide through its maintenance of of hefty subsidies to US Big Ag, while using the IMF to ensure that poor countries don’t subsidize their farming systems at all?
It’s not enough that the US has felt it had the “right” to export its completely toxic financial flim-flam “products” to other countries, forcing them to open their financial systems to receive said products??
… But now, the Bush administration– alone of all the other governments around the world– tells us it’s quite okay that six million children die each year from hunger-related illnesses… And this at a time when, yes, there is still enough basic food in the international system to feed everyone quite adequately, if it were distributed more fairly…
Why does the figure “six million” seem familiar?
That was the number of Jewish people who– along with smaller numbers of Romas and gay and disabled people– ended up dead because of the deliberate policy of the Third Reich to exterminate them.
But that was during the entirety of the European Holocaust.
What the UN Third Committee is talking about six million children being condemned to death each year by an international “system” in which the US is still by far the most powerful actor.
How can this be, for a single moment, acceptable?
Back on December 10, I noted the gross anomaly that the US government, which has presented itself as a strong “advocate” for human rights around the world, has still not ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, in which the right to “adequate food, clothing and housing” is explicitly spelled out.
I also spelled out that this language has strong relevance to the current situation inside the US, as well as in other countries.
Our country’s longstanding refusal to join the ICESCR makes it something of a “rogue state” on these issues, since 159 other nations have all signed and ratified it.
It is in the ICESCR, which entered into force in 1976, that the reference to the “progressive realization” of the listed rights can be found.
But since the US government hasn’t even fully joined the ICESCR, it is quite hypocritical that the US representative on the Third Committee was using that language about “progressive realization” to try to justify his vote that, essentially, allowed the killing of six million innocents each year to go ahead into the future, as heretofore.
Anyway, back in 1976, maybe some people thought it would take a few more years to get to the stage where it would, indeed, be possible to feed all of the world’s people.
That was 32 years ago. Nowadays, there is plenty of food to go around… if it is properly distributed.
But Washington now tells the world No, that needn’t happen.
And people in other countries are supposed to like and admire our country???
Here’s a strong plea to President-elect Obama and the incoming US Congress: Please have our country rejoin the world by ratifying the ICESCR as speedily as possible. And then do everything possible to ensure that everyone in the US and around the world can have access to healthy, assured food supplies, including by the restoration of agricultural systems inb low-income countries that have been wiped out by US food subsidies.
And let’s embed the rights spelled out in the ICESCR into all of the programs designed to save our own country’s economy and society from the ravages of the current crisis.