REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A FOOD SECURITY SEMINAR “HUNGER IN THE 21ST CENTURY…”
REMARKS BY PRESIDENT McALEESE AT A FOOD SECURITY SEMINAR “HUNGER IN THE 21ST CENTURY: IRELAND AND THE FIGHT AGAINST FAMINE”
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a great pleasure to join you this afternoon for this seminar with its focus on the scandal of hunger in the 21st Century and Ireland’s contribution to the global fight against famine. Along with our hosts the Consulate General of Ireland, here in New York today are two indomitable champions of the world’s poor, Concern Worldwide and Self Help Africa. Between them they know more than a thing or two about food security. As the President of a country which experienced appalling famine and its aftermath first hand, I feel privileged to be part of these proceedings and I am particularly pleased to be in the company of an old friend, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, Helen Clark who now heads up the United Nations Development Programme.
Those with even the slightest knowledge of Irish history will know the central role played by the issue of hunger and food security in our historical narrative. This week we are remembering the Ireland of the Great Famine when almost a quarter of our population either died of starvation or emigrated to avoid death by starvation. The failure of the potato crop in mid-nineteenth century Ireland was not the cause of the widespread poverty or suffering which was the lot of the vast majority at that time. Long before the potatoes were blighted, the people were blighted by an elitist colonial system which had little regard for the day to day welfare of its subjects. So when we speak of famine in Ireland, we understand from bitter experience that the analysis of the problem does not begin and end with food, nor do the solutions.
For literally hundreds of thousands of Irish men, women and children, it was their arrival off famine ships here in New York that marked the start of new lives and fresh hope. I do not want to characterise their arrival in romantic terms, for in truth there was no easy path to survival ahead of them, but there was a struggle which with the benefit of a century and a half of hindsight we can see led to transcendence. Given the connection between this city and Ireland’s famine victims, it is appropriate that we gather here along with international experts in the field to look at how we in our time can help the world’s hungry to transcend their complex problems and know the relief of having regular, decent food for their children and hope rather than despair in their hearts.
The discussion today is timely, for New York will later this year host the UN Millennium Development Goals Summit, where there will be a review of progress towards achievement of the eight Millennium Development Goals that the international community has set itself. The first, the most basic and urgent of those goals was and remains, to reduce by half the number of people going hungry by 2015.
Surrounded here as we are by full shops, full stomachs and limitless choice, it is hard to comprehend the other reality that is faced each day by 1 billion people who go hungry, who do not have enough to eat. One in six of the world’s citizens lives that life and their hunger is our responsibility and our call to action. The Millennium Development Goals said as much and promised results. Achieving those goals is dependent on improving the food security of the poor and vulnerable, particularly of women of child-bearing age and children under two years in the developing world where the mortality figures are the stuff of nightmares that used also once to haunt the developed world but which have thanks to progress been successfully consigned to history. This goal is achievable. It is not easy but it is achievable.
Ireland’s terrible experience of famine ruptured Irish history, imprinted itself on our psyche and left us with not simply an empathy with those who are poor and hungry, but a burning sense of outrage at the complex of injustices which consign so many people to endemic, cyclical hunger. We have a long history of ethical leadership in the field of Development Aid with a strong record of effective and practical help, as well as advocacy from generations of ecclesial and secular NGOs, among them Concern Worldwide and Self Help Africa. Their work is made possible by the generosity of the Irish people both through the very substantial Government Development Aid Programme and the considerable private funds raised by and through the efforts of the Irish people themselves.
The fight against global hunger is a priority of Ireland’s foreign policy with a commitment to spend 20% of the Irish Aid budget on actions related to hunger by the year 2012. Our Government appointed Special Envoy, Kevin Farrell is tasked with advising on how Ireland can most effectively combat global hunger and meet its commitments in this area. Kevin is here today and I am sure the distilled wisdom from his illustrious days with the World Food Programme and in the NGO sector will make his contribution very insightful.
At the forthcoming Millennium Development Goal Summit, the US Government and the Government of Ireland will co-host a special meeting dedicated to combating hunger and malnutrition. This is an important initiative and one which will demonstrate the commitment of both countries to work together and with our international partners towards gathering real momentum behind addressing this great human tragedy. Ireland for its part will continue to argue that a comprehensive approach to global hunger will drive progress on the other major development challenges being addressed at the summit including infant and child mortality, HIV and AIDS, gender equality and education. A hungry child is too weak to learn. An uneducated child does not know how to make the right choices and has no clear idea who makes the choices that affect his or her life. They are vulnerable to human exploitation and the vagaries of nature. They bear the brunt not just of local hardship but of a lack of global solidarity and responsibility for their plight, including a slowness to tackle the human causes of global warming which impact so cruelly on the poor.
It was encouraging this morning to meet teachers and schoolchildren in New York who are focussing in their school curriculum on the Irish famine and its impact on American history. I look forward to a time when Irish and American schoolchildren read with pride how their forebears together succeeded in eliminating hunger from every doorstep in the world. One hundred and fifty years on from our own Great Famine we see the progress, successes and achievements which have come to us, through our emigrants lives and the lives of the survivors. We can only wonder about the lost lives and the dreadful waste of human potential which the famine visited upon us. Where there is hunger in our world, that loss and waste continue unabated until we intervene emphatically and effectively to change the course of history. In this wealthy and technologically advanced century even the achievement of the Millennium Goals will only be half the work, but as the Irish proverb says – a good start is half the work. It is the other half that will be the true test of us and the true source of hope for the hungry.
I know you are here because you want success not failure, because you know the badge of shame hanging over the international community will be as nothing compared with the desolation of those who wait and wait and wait. I hope today’s discussion will help us intuit and take the right steps to success. And I thank you for making this work your vocation. Go raibh míle maith agaibh go léir.