Put food on the table: Shabana Azmi tells UN

Bollywood star Shabana Azmi joined ActionAid’s HungerFREE campaign outside the UN as questions were raised over US President, George Bush’s opening speech.

Hollywood actor Tim Meadows and Hilda Dokubo from Nollywood (Nigerian cinema) also joined in to call on the UN to honour its commitment to halve world hunger by 2015.

"Put food on the table – this is our only chant for the UN leaders. We are here in New York to make sure that they are not allowed to ignore this promise," said Shabana Azmi.

“Food is the most basic need in a human being. I want this to become an emotive issue for all. I want them to stop thinking about it in cold statistics and understand how they would feel if it was their child, their spouse, their parent who had to go hungry,” she added.

Inside the UN building US president George Bush told delegates that they were not doing their “duty” in the world.

“When millions of children starve to death or perish from a mosquito bite, we aren't doing our duty in the world. When whole societies are cut off from the prosperity of the global economy, we're all worse off,” said Bush.

But ActionAid challenged the president’s rhetoric, demanding actions rather than mere words.

“President Bush is rightly giving priority to hunger as a global issue. Now, the US must put its money where its mouth is by ratifying the UN resolution on the right to food. It is currently the only country in the world which has failed to do so,” said ActionAid’s Campaign Director Colm O Cuanachain.

ActionAid also demands that any US policy on hunger also needs to address the issue of corporate abuse.

Regulations must be set in place to ensure that smallholder farmers are not driven into destitution through unfair trade, corporate land grabs, and the diversion of natural resources, such as water.

 “The US needs to adjust its trade and foreign aid policy so that it doesn’t put small family farms out of business,” says Karen Hansen-Kuhn, ActionAid food and hunger policy analyst. 

“Family farms are the drivers behind food production in the global south, and appropriate policies must be set in place so that their interests are protected.”

Photo credit: Charles Eckert/ActionAid