Begging for "food sovereignty' in Africa? Nice. But no nation will never have 'food sovereignty' in a world that is irreversibly connected, interdependent, and vulnerable. What's missing is ‘We the People’ mentioned in the Preamble of the US Constitution and the UN Charter demanding that our current global governance system (freedom of nations to do as they please without accountability for starting wars, committing genocide, allowing corruption, and violating any of the inalienable rights of their own citizens) codify the protection of all human rights and the environment -above the protection of every government's 'national sovereignty', which the UN system now does.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) remains a
comprehensive list of humanities inalienable rights. But the UN was never given
the power to enforce them. Now all we do, is inspire the capacity to buy
most of them.... by funding the UN’s 17 Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs).
In the late 1970’s I enrolled in “The Hunger Project” in Seattle.
I marked the box “I will create my own form participation”. By 1981
I was on staff at the THP...verifying all the information in “Ending Hunger: An
Idea whose time has come”. By the year 2000 I was elected to chair the
United Nations Council of Organizations...and the major thing I learned during
that inspired journey... was that those really in power of NGOs don’t listen to
what was really need. Working together would create miracles.
The key to ending hunger was offered by three esteemed
sources. The Brandt Commission, the National Academy of Sciences, and
Carter’s 1980 bi-partisan Presidential Commission on World Hunger. They
EACH concluded that the ONLY things missing was the "Political
Will". After leaving THP's primary commitment to education, I joined
RESULTS which had creating Political will as one of two its primary
goals. But its leadership refused to follow the THPs "Shift in the
Wind" interview with a congressman, who later became a Senator, Paul
Simon. He said, “If there were just 10 people in every Congressional
District...who really pushed on the issue of hunger...we could literally change
the world”.
It was my personal experience in organizing health professionals
with the Alliance for Child Survival that it might only take 5 people per
congressional district. A decade later Marshal Sanders, another THP
volunteer had created the Citizens Climate Lobby and within a few years it had
ten times the number of RESULTS stye groups – at least one in each of our
nation’s 435 Congressional Districts.
If THP is now seriously committed to ending hunger (which we
failed to achieve by the year 2000) you would promote funding the Sustainable
Development Goals. And do so within the context of human, national, and global
security, The SDGs can purchase most of the rights listed in UDHR, but only if
businesses step up -- like Bank of America has. It’s Chair and CEO
recently urged businesses “like the oil” industry to do this because indebted
nations and charities can’t provide the $6 trillion annually to achieve them.
I’m now a Rotary volunteer in Rockville MD and inviting a local
college to host an event on Dec. 10th this year...the 75th anniversary of the
UDHR. This should really be an event in
Washington DC - and hosted by dozens of US based NGOs. It’s the
perfect time to create the political will necessary to meet the SDG goal by
2030 -- but there is no urgency and their needs to be!
The world is now halfway to 2030 ...but as with the 1990
World Summit for Children goals and then the Millennium Development Goals,
organizational leaders were not listening when progress was off track in
achieving their target dates (2000 and 2015). That’s where humanity is now
with the SDGs. And it should be self-evident if one is keeping up with
the news...that the trajectory of chaos on this miracle plant is
accelerating. And we will likely not get another chance to set any
achievable global humanitarian and environmental goals...if we miss our
deadline.
Every day 15,000 parents experience the most horrific of all human
experiences. The loss of a child. That’s far less than the 40,000
daily deaths when THP started. But with even the fear of losing a child,
the most terrifying of all human experiences. Deaths from preventable
malnutrition, starvation, and related infectious diseases are still the primary
driver of global chaos. And will increasingly be on the receiving end of
that chaos unless all progressive movements come together as a “Movement of
Movements” (MoM0 like Naomi Klien called for at the 2014 global ‘Climate March’
in NYC.
Yet still, no organization has taken the leadership role in
creating this MoM. THP...what’s stopping you.
This is an issue of human, National, and global Security.
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