Speech by President of the Republic Tarja Halonen at the Hunger and Globalization discussion arranged by FinnChurchAid on 8 September 2004

The international community has made many commitments to eradicating poverty and hunger from the world. The most significant of these is the UN Millennium Declaration, which is given its most concrete form in the Millennium Development Goals.

The Millennium Declaration is the international community's commitment to joint values: justice, freedom, equality and shared responsibility. The Millennium Declaration underlines the connection between security and poverty and justice. Security cannot be achieved without justice and the eradication of poverty, and poverty cannot be defeated without security. The world's problems should be approached as a whole, in which each one's acts affect everyone and everyone's acts affect each one.

The Millennium Declaration's first and best-known development goal, to halve worldwide poverty, shows us the way to defeat the world's biggest scourge. Poverty is often hunger and thirst, but it is also the lack of other things such as education. These are problems and challenges that can be overcome.

The development goals in the Millennium Declaration place obligations on the developing countries as well as the industrialized countries. The developing countries have the primary right and responsibility for their own development and they are committed to significant measures to reduce poverty as well as concrete goals to improve the position of children and women, among other things.

The industrialized countries in turn are committed to supporting the developing countries' efforts to achieve goals. This includes increasing the amount of development aid, debt relief, developing the international trading system so that it pays better attention to the developing countries' needs, access to medicines and so forth.

The Millennium Declaration Goals are ambitious, and so they should be if change is to be accomplished. The international community has made enough political commitments. The challenge now is to implement commitments, and everyone is needed for this. Finland should serve as an example and show what real commitment means.

Achieving goals requires economic resources. Finland should finally - as a responsible member of the EU and Nordic country - meet the UN goal of 0.7% of GDP in our development cooperation work. I support the Government's efforts to achieve this objective by 2010. This objective and the efficient and effective use of growing appropriations must not be endangered. We can and must be ready to examine financial channels, but the key thing is that money is needed.

Secondly we need the kind of economic and business policy that reduces poverty.

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Food is the first necessity of human life. The world's population is growing and so is the demand for food. By 2050 the demand for food is expected to double. Where and how can the necessary food be obtained?

It is paradoxical that the industrialized countries could in principle produce the necessary food. This would only increase the developing countries' dependence, however. Now the developing countries are part of a system in which food is produced using industrial methods on the one hand while a large part of the developing countries' population subsists on its own meagre production, whose social and production conditions the industrialized countries' agriculture and trade policies do not often take into consideration.

It is not just about producing enough food; it is also about who can afford to eat it. The FAO's position is that gene technology is not needed to overcome hunger, but that the issue is how to make food available. Producing food near consumers is an ecologically, socially and culturally sustainable alternative that many Finns also appreciate.

In international trade talks the big question is how the developing countries' need for food and need to develop their own agriculture and rural areas can be facilitated and ensured. The liberalization of agricultural trade has different consequences for people living in different situations in both the developing countries and the industrialized countries. Simply dismantling aid systems is not enough: a broader reform is necessary.

The possibilities of the poorest people in rural parts of the developing countries to take advantage of the liberalization of agricultural trade is limited by the fact that these countries cannot even produce enough food to meet their own needs at present. The industrialized countries' more efficient agricultural production makes it possible to export and sell products at lower prices than local production. With poorly implemented liberalization, the income of poor people in rural areas could fall further, and they could not even afford to buy cheaper imported food.

While trade talks drag on, food production is being concentrated in fewer hands in the world economy. Food distribution in the industrialized countries takes place increasingly through international supermarket chains. Large-scale production and large distribution systems go hand in hand. They efficiently take care of the industrialized countries' food supply, but they do not care about the poor and those who lack purchasing power. At the same time the risks facing food production have been shifted more and more to small-scale producers in the developing countries, whose production conditions are difficult and who have to compete with international giants or act as their subcontractors according to terms that are dictated in practice by the company.

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Hunger is a difficult opponent. Many things besides food are tied up in the problem of hunger, from war to the weakness of health care and from erosion to the fair distribution of income among people and nations. The poorest and hungriest people in the developing countries are also the sickest and most marginalized.

But are world hunger and poverty our business? The answer is YES. The attitude we take to hunger and poverty is a moral issue. Everyone has the right to overcome hunger and lead a decent life. This is not about being nice but about justice and self-respect. We often forget that hunger and poverty are also an economic and security issue. One country's poverty and hunger weakens other countries' welfare and security. We all live in the same world.

Hunger is undernourishment and starvation, which rob people of the chance to lead a normal life, one after another. Sickness, weakness, disability and the incapacity to take care of oneself and children leave their mark on life. Malnutrition is a leading cause of death, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa. Women and children suffer the most from hunger.

In the most horrible cases hunger and starvation are used as a political weapon in international and internal crises.

Eradicating poverty requires doing something about the background causes of hunger. Supporting agriculture in the developing countries is important, but it is not enough to eradicate hunger and poverty. Doing something about the background causes means promoting economic and social development, investing in education and job creation, improving human rights, democracy and good governance, and increasing the fairness of the international system.

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Development aid accounts for only a small part of the money going to the developing countries. Emigrants send to their former home countries at least one and a half times the amount of official development aid, for example. Poverty and hunger cannot be eradicated simply by increasing development aid. Much broader measures are needed - measures that will not always be easy.

Even significant development efforts can be ineffective if countries - including Finland - undo them by acting irresponsibly in other areas. With regard to poverty and hunger, the industrialized countries' agricultural, fishing, migration and trade policy decisions can have a decisive influence on the developing countries' situation.

Policies must be examined as a whole. We must see how national or EU decisions in agriculture or in trade policy affect the achievement of our other commitments and objectives.

We are presently considering in Finland, and with good reason, how we can best succeed in today's and tomorrow's globalization. Our success is our own responsibility and we must take care of it. At the same time, however, we must also consider how we can make globalization fairer.

These considerations and measures are not - at least over the longer term - mutually exclusive but are necessary conditions for each other. We cannot succeed and promote our own welfare if the majority of the world's people live in poverty and are hungry.

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Two years as co-chair of the ILO's World Commission on the Social Dimension of Globalization together with President Benjamin Mkapa of Tanzania provided me a good chance to study the faces of globalization around the world.

The commission was assembled in an unusual way. Generally people or groups who agree with one another try to achieve something. In this case people who were sure to have different and even opposing opinions on globalization were selected for the group. The commission included quite different people, from north, south, east and west, from industrialized countries and developing countries and so forth. Many people said it was an achievement just for the commission to agree on a final report.

Our commission's work was proof of the power of discussion and listening. Although our points of departure are different and our interests are different, we can agree on many things and help to promote positive change. I can also assure you that the members of the commission are just as genuine representatives of their own groups as before. They are used to hearing opposite opinions, but this is by no means a bad thing. In this respect the process could be recommended to others.

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Finally we come to the fundamental question: do these matters concern us and what can we do?

The Government has its own tasks, which I have already talked about at length. As President I am doing my best both for Finland and for the world - and I encourage the Government and Parliament to do the same. Companies have an obligation to act responsibly around the world.

The church has influence and so do the media. Thank you for arranging this discussion series.

Through our own private purchasing decisions we can have an influence by favouring products that are produced in a way that is socially and economically sustainable.

Finns' support for work on behalf of a fairer world is strong and tangible. This is visible daily in the work and objectives of individual citizens, civic movements, interest organizations, companies and authorities. Finns are well aware of people's increasing interdependence, whether this concerns jobs and production or the threats created by poverty in other parts of the world.

Finland is generally regarded as one of the biggest beneficiaries of globalization. So it is particularly remarkable that Finns want our country to work harder for a better world. This is also indicated by opinion surveys. Citizens' will is the driving force by which the matters that we are discussing today can be changed in a fairer direction, which will benefit everyone.

Other people's poverty and hunger are our business. Our morals and ethics do not allow us to stand by while others suffer. Defeating poverty and hunger is also in our own interests.