RIO DE JANEIRO: Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on Wednesday urged world leaders to work together and find solutions to hunger as he announced an initiative to tackle “the most degrading of human deprivations.”
Lula has made hunger a key priority of Brazil’s presidency of the G20, along with taxing the super-rich, which will top the agenda when finance ministers meet Thursday and Friday.
“In the 21st century, nothing is more absurd and unacceptable than the persistence of hunger and poverty,” Lula said in a speech laying out his Global Alliance Against Hunger.
A UN report published Wednesday said 733 million people had suffered from hunger last year — nine percent of the world’s population.
“We need sustainable solutions and we must think about them and act together,” Lula urged.
With tears in his eyes at the end of his speech, the former metalworker born into a poor family in northeastern Brazil said: “I am moved because I know that hunger is not a natural thing,” but “linked to political decisions.”
Lula’s anti-hunger initiative will be officially launched in November, when G20 heads of state meet in Rio. It aims to find common financial resources to fight hunger and to replicate initiatives that have worked in some countries.
“Hunger is the most degrading of human deprivations, an attack on life, an assault on freedom,” said Lula.
Social programs implemented during Lula’s first two terms (2003-2010) helped lift millions of people out of poverty.
The United Nations in 2015 adopted plans to end world hunger by 2030.
“We can solve this crisis, and finance is the key,” UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a video message during the presentation of the report.
“Hunger has no place in the 21st century.”
Lula assured that “the fight against inequality will be part of this effort,” deploring that “the super-rich pay proportionally less tax than workers.”
Another key priority of Brazil while holding the rotating presidency of the G20 is to make billionaires pay their taxes.
The topic will be front and center when finance ministers meet in one of the final events of the lead-up to the G20 summit in Rio on November 18 and 19.
At a previous meeting in Sao Paulo in February, finance ministers tackled ways to tax the ultra-wealthy and prevent billionaires from dodging tax systems.
The initiative is backed by France, Spain, South Africa, Colombia and the African Union.
However, talks have been highly contentious, and progress is far from guaranteed.
Brazil’s Economy Minister Fernando Haddad said ministers had hit a “dead end” in February.
“There is no consensus as things stand,” the German Finance Ministry said Tuesday.
US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opposed international negotiations of the subject during a G7 finance meeting held in May in Italy.
“We think that probably the most effective and impactful tax solutions in this space will almost certainly vary fairly widely across jurisdictions,” a senior US Treasury official said.
The meeting will also try to make progress on the taxation of multinational corporations nearly three years after an agreement was signed by nearly 140 countries.
Brazil hopes to publish three texts after the meeting, said Tatiana Rosito, a senior official at the economy ministry.
Aside from a joint final communique, this would include a document on “international cooperation in tax matters” and a separate communique from Brazil on geopolitical crises.
Founded in 1999, the Group of 20 assembles 19 of the world’s largest economic powers, as well as the European Union and the African Union.
The organization was originally focused on global economic issues but has increasingly taken on other pressing challenges — even though member states do not always agree on what should be on the agenda.
Brazil’s presidency said in a statement that some members of the G20 had “shared their perspectives” on the situation in Ukraine and Gaza during discussions on the hunger initiative.
“Some consider that these issues have an impact on the global economy and should be addressed at the G20, while others believe that the G20 is not the place to discuss these issues.”
