Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2000-05-03-Speech-3-151"
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"en.20000503.9.3-151"2
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"Mr President, I warmly welcome the extension and modification of the Food Aid Convention and thank the rapporteur for her work on this report.
The Commission proposal comes in for some criticism from the Budgets Committee in that there is no complete financial statement. I have to say, with the fluid nature of food aid it must be extremely difficult to project accurate financial figures. Now that the scope of aid has been widened, quite rightly in my opinion, from just cereals, this would be even more difficult.
I am particularly pleased to read in the new Convention that least-developed countries and low-income countries will be given priority when food aid is being allocated. I am also pleased to see stronger provisions for promoting local agricultural development and local purchases as this also assists local economies and encourages local agriculture. There are now many areas of sub-Saharan Africa where, unless there is a dramatic climate change for the better, it is unlikely that food will ever grow again. I am thinking particularly of areas where the desert is literally burying the productive land. We are now seeing in Ethiopia an even more desperate situation, where food aid is being provided but there is no water to cook with. This is an issue that will have to be addressed in the future. Water will become more valuable than oil in future in developing countries.
It is also good news that the new Convention covers transport costs and associated operational costs. Even if again this comes in for criticism from the Budgets Committee, it is not much good delivering food aid to a country’s ports if you cannot then distribute it to the remote areas by truck or by air to the people starving and in need.
There is no doubt that past programmes have had a beneficial effect where they can be carried out and the fact that sub-Saharan Africa has a steady and worryingly increasing problem probably reflects the instability in many of these countries caused by war. This has increased the number of refugees dramatically and worsened the problem of providing food aid. The continuous need for an international, legally binding framework which defines and provides the commitments and instruments for the delivery of food aid to the developing countries is obvious. The extension of the Convention and the new rules that have been introduced must therefore be warmly welcomed."@en1
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