‘Hunger results from political decisions,’ Lula says at G20 meeting

Brasil de Fato

On Wednesday (24), Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) took part in the opening session of the Ministerial Meeting of the Task Force to Establish a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. The activity took place in Rio de Janeiro, in the warehouse where the Ação da Cidadania project, created by sociologist and activist Herbert de Souza, popularly known as Betinho, operates.

The Global Alliance Against Hunger is Brazil’s main project at the presidency of G20, which will last until November this year, and aims to meet one of the main goals of the UN 2030 Agenda: the elimination of poverty and hunger in the world.

In a speech, President Lula emphasized the growth of food insecurity and hunger in the world after 2019 and said that hunger results from political decisions. “Hunger is the most degrading of human deprivations. It is an attack on life, an assault on freedom. As the great Brazilian social scientist Josué de Castro said, hunger is the biological expression of social evils,” he said.

“Hunger is not the result of external factors. It is, above all, the result of political choices. Today, the world produces more than enough food to eradicate [hunger]. What is missing is creating the conditions for access to food,” said the president.

The president said that although the alliance was born within the G20, it should serve the world as an instrument to guarantee the fulfillment of the commitments made to eradicate hunger. He also criticized the Neoliberal economies that have led to increased inequality worldwide. “In recent decades, Neoliberal globalization has aggravated this situation. Never before have so many people had so little and so few concentrated so much wealth,” said Lula, noting that “women and girls are the majority of hungry people in the world.”

Haddad defends taxing the richest to fight hunger 

At the same meeting, Brazil’s Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad (Workers’ Party), defended taxing the super-rich as a way of financing the fight against hunger worldwide. According to the minister, a 2% tax on wealth could raise between 200 and 250 billion dollars a year, equivalent to “five times the amount that the ten-biggest multilateral banks have allocated to fight hunger and poverty in 2022,” he said.

“Another way to mobilize resources to fight hunger and poverty is to make the super-rich pay their fair contributions and taxes. Around the world, the super-rich use a series of tricks to evade tax systems, which makes that, at the top of the pyramid, the system be regressive, not progressive,” he said.

The minister also criticized multilateral fund providers, who have reportedly disbursed less than a quarter of the funds they promised to fight hunger, and called for greater efficiency in the use of resources.

In his speech, President Lula also mentioned this issue. “The super-rich pay proportionally much less tax than the working class. To correct this anomaly, Brazil has invested in international cooperation to develop minimum global tax standards, strengthen existing initiatives and include billionaires [in the taxation system],” said the president.

Ministerial meeting for the pre-launch of the Global Alliance Against Hunger, held at the Ação da Cidadania warehouse in Rio de Janeiro. / Ricardo Stuckert / PR

Divergences over Ukraine and Palestine 

The situations in Ukraine and the Gaza Strip were also debated during Wednesday’s meeting. According to the G20 Presidency, “some members and other participants consider that these issues have an impact on the global economy and should be dealt with at the group’s summit, while others do not believe that the G20 is the [right] forum to discuss them”.

The Presidency said the issue will continue to be debated by the member countries until the Leaders’ Summit in November, which is expected to issue a joint communiqué on various issues affecting the world economy.

During his speech at Wednesday’s ministerial meeting, President Lula mentioned armed conflicts that subject populations to famine and criticized the war industry. “Armed conflicts interrupt the production and distribution of food and supplies, contributing to soaring prices,” he said. “Meanwhile, arms spending rose 7% last year, reaching US$2.4 trillion. Reversing this logic is a moral imperative of social justice and is essential for the sustainable development we seek,” said Lula.

Hunger Map 2024

On Wednesday (22), there was also the launching of the United Nations Report on the State of Food Insecurity in the World (Sofi 2024) in Rio de Janeiro, developed by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO).

The document shows that severe food insecurity fell by 33% in Brazil in the three years from 2021 to 2023. Compared to the previous edition of the survey, the number went from 21 million (9.9%) in the 2020-2022 triennium to 14 million (6.6%), that is, a reduction of 7 million people.

The FAO considers food insecurity severe when a person spends a whole day or more without eating due to a lack of access to food, a situation that, regularly, can negatively affect health, especially the development of children.

In his speech on Wednesday, President Lula addressed the president of the FAO, Qu Dongyu, and promised that Brazil will make all the needed efforts to get off the Hunger Map.

“My friend the Director-General of the FAO, comrade Qu: get ready to declare, soon, while I’m still in office, that Brazil is once again off the Hunger Map,” said Lula.

Hunger in the world

According to Sofi 2024, 733 million people in the world suffered from hunger in 2023, almost the same number as in 2022. The African continent continues to be the region with the highest proportion of people in this situation. However, Asia is the region home to more than half of the people facing hunger worldwide, in absolute numbers.

If the report’s projections are maintained, the goal of eradicating hunger by 2030 will not be achieved, and there could be more than half a billion people facing severe food insecurity by the beginning of the next decade.

“After falling consistently in the world for decades, extreme poverty has increased again since 2019 and is not resuming its downward trajectory. In 2022, 712 million people lived in extreme poverty, when considering income; and one billion people faced multidimensional extreme poverty, half of them children,” lamented the Minister of Development and Social Assistance, Family and Fight against Hunger, Wellington Dias (Workers’ Party).

“Inequality within countries has been growing steadily. Since 2020, inequality between countries has begun to increase as well, reversing the progress of an entire generation,” he warned.

Haddad defends taxing the richest to fight hunger 

The Minister of Finance, Fernando Haddad (Workers’ Party), defended taxing the richest as a way of financing the fight against hunger in the world during the Ministerial Meeting of the Task Force for the Establishment of a Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, which took place in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday (24). 

According to the minister, a 2% tax on fortunes, which are currently exempt from taxation, could raise between US$200 billion and US$250 billion a year, which is equivalent to “five times the amount that the ten largest multilateral banks have dedicated to tackling hunger and poverty in 2022.”  

The minister also criticized the multilateral financing providers, which are said to have disbursed less than a quarter of the resources promised to fight hunger, and advocated greater efficiency in the use of resources.