GLOBAL FOOD CRISIS

August 5, 2008—The rapid rise in food prices has been a burden on the poor in developing countries, who spend roughly half of their household incomes on food. Soaring prices for staples such as rice, maize, and wheat have been compounded by rising prices at the gas pumps—leading to requests for emergency food aid in many countries around the world.
“How we respond to this double jeopardy of soaring food and fuel prices is a test of the global system’s commitment to help the most vulnerable,” said World Bank President Robert B. Zoellick, speaking on the sidelines of the recent G8 Summit in Japan. “It is a test we cannot afford to fail.”
In May 2008, the World Bank approved a new $1.2 billion rapid financing facility to address immediate needs arising from the food crisis. The Global Food Response Program (GFRP)aims to strike a balance between short-term food stabilization and measures to ensure countries are able to cope better in the medium term.
Under the program, countries can select from a menu of actions and investments most relevant to their individual situations, including programs to address price policies, social protection and nutrition, and the supply of seeds and fertilizers.
To date, the Bank has approved and begun disbursing $54 million in six countries. Programs totaling $69 million in eight additional countries are pending approval. An additional $440 million in grants is being earmarked for programs in another 16 countries.See the GFRP Project Statustable for details.

UNDERSTANDING THE CRISIS:

Soaring prices have been blamed on lower agricultural production, weather shocks, more meat consumption, and shifts to biofuel crops.
Wheat prices are up 120%.
Rice prices are up 75%.
Poor families spend up to 80% of their budget on food.

IMPACT:

Most countries in South Asia are net food importers and have suffered severe trade shocks.
A 2 kg bag of rice now costs half the daily income of a poor family in Bangladesh
In Indonesia, a 10% rise in rice prices means 2 million more people will be plunged into poverty, according to a recent assessment.

OVERCOMING THE CRISIS: 10 POINT PLAN

The Food Crisis: a Man-Made ProblemHigh fuel costs have resulted in higher agriculture costs, falling food stocks, and land shifted out of food production to produce biofuels. The international community should help those in danger today and ensure the poor don’t suffer this tragedy again.The task is clear, but not simple.

1. World Food Programme
Fully fund the World Food Programme's emergency needs
Support its drive to buy food aid locally
Ensure the unhampered movement of humanitarian assistance

2. Safety Nets Support safety nets, such as distributing food in schools or offering food for work, to quickly help those in severe distress.

3. Seeds and FertilizerGet seeds and fertilizer for the coming planting season to farmers in poor countries. The key is not just financing, but fast delivery systems.

4. Agricultural ResearchDouble spending on agricultural research and development to $800 million over the next 5 years through the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research.

5. AgribusinessInvest more in agribusiness to tap into the private sector's ability to work across the value chain.

6. Risk ManagementDevelop innovative risk management tools and crop insurance to protect poor farmers and help build food security

7. BiofuelsEase subsidies, mandates and tariffs on biofuels derived from corn and oilseeds. Policymakers should consider "safety valves" that ease these policies when prices are high. The choice does not have to be food or fuel.

8. Export BansRemove export bans that have led to even higher world prices.28 countries have imposed such controls. Removing these bans could have a dramatic effect.

9. TradeConclude the Doha WTO trade deal to remove agricultural subsidies and tariffs and create a more efficient and fair global food trade. The need for multilateral rules has never been stronger.

10. Collective Action Work together to counter global risks. The challenges of energy, food and water will be drivers of the world economy and security. The time to act is now.

Community Based Performance Monitoring (CBPM)

Community Based Performance Monitoring (CBPM) was developed in The Gambia with support from the World Bank as one element in its promotion of social accountability in poverty reduction programs. Building on earlier work by CARE International in Malawi, CBPM combines elements of familiar participatory tools such as social audits and participatory rural appraisal. It has been scaled up nationally to monitor implementation of The Gambia’s Poverty Reduction Strategy, and has been introduced to a number of other African countries. CBPM enables local communities to negotiate reforms in the delivery of services such as primary education or village dispensaries. Information on the quality of service provision is generated through the use of structured focus group interactions with user groups as well as with service providers. Feedback from user groups to service providers is almost immediate, and changes are arrived at through mutual dialogue during an interface meeting. The community also tracks inputs by comparing actual facility assets and supplies against entitlements. The primary aim of the approach is community empowerment. Secondarily, CBPM can be used as an advocacy tool by aggregating community-generated data across multiple CBPM “community gatherings”. The paper (accompanied by an illustrated slide presentation) first outlines the origins and attributes of the CBPM approach. The CBPM process and outputs, and the experiences to date with variants of the CBPM approach in several African countries, are described. Finally, the paper reviews a number of ongoing strategic and operational challenges, and the potential for adaptation and scaling-up of the CBPM approach.
http://www.engagingcommunities2005.org/abstracts/S96-forster-r.html

CONVENTION ON CHILD RIGHTS TOOLS

Handling information for children's rightsThe importance of accessing relevant information and the necessity of an efficient system for handling it was recognized as a crucial component of its activities by the Committee on the Rights of the Child, the treaty body responsible for monitoring the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, since its first meeting in 1991.In this spirit, UNICEF IRC has developed and published, since many years, internationally agreed information-handling tools that can strengthen access to data and effective information exchange.
CRC Clusters
In its Guidelines for Initial Reports and Periodic Reports, the Committee on the Rights of the Child has grouped the provisions of the Convention in clusters: "This approach reflects the Convention's holistic perspective of children's rights: that they are indivisible and interrelated, and that equal importance should be attached to each and every right recognized therein" (CRC/C/58, para.9). Clicking on the CRC Articles, the text of the Convention on the Rights of the Child is parsed according to the CRC Glossary terms.
I General measures of implementationArticle 4: implementation obligations Article 41: respect for existing standards Article 42: making Convention widely known Article 44(6): making reports widely available
II Definition of a childArticle 1:
III General principlesArticle 2: non-discrimination Article 3(1): best interest to be a primary consideration Article 3(2): State's obligations to ensure necessary care and protection Article 3(3): standards for institutions services and facilities Article 6: the right to life, survival and development (see also: VI Basic health and welfare) Article 12: respect for the views of the child
IV Civil rights and freedomsArticle 7: right to name, nationality and to know and be cared for by parents Article 8: preservation of child's identity Article 13: freedom of expression Article 14: freedom of thought, conscience and religion Article 15: freedom of association and peaceful assembly Article16: protection of privacy Article 17: child's access to information, and role of mass media Article 37(a): right not to be subjected to torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment
V Family environment and alternative careArticle 5: parental guidance and child's evolving capacities Article 18(1) and (2): parental responsibilities and State's assistance Article 9: separation from parents Article 10: family reunification Article 11: illicit transfer and non-return Article 27(4): recovery of maintenance for the child Article 20: children deprived of their family environment Article 21: adoption Article 25: periodic review of placemnet and treatment Article19: protection from all forms of violence Article 39: rehabilitation and reintegration of victims of violence (see also: VIII - Special protection measures)
VI Basic health and welfareArticle 6: right to life, survival and development (see also: III - General principles) Article 18(3): support for working parents Article 23: rights of disabled children Article 24: right to health and health services Article 26: right to social security Article 27(1)-(3): right to adequate standard of living
VII Education, leisure and cultural activitiesArticle 28: right to education Article 29: aims of education Article 31: right to leisure, play and participation in cultural and artictic activities
VIII Special protection measuresA - Children in situations of emergency Article 22: refugee children Article 38: children and armed conflict Article 39: rehabilitation of child victims (see also: V Family environment and alternative care) B - Children involved with the system of administration of juvenile justice Article 40: administration of juvenile justice Article 37(a): prohibition of capital punishment and life imprisonment Article 37(b)-(d): restriction of liberty Article 39: rehabilitation and reintegration of child victims (see also: V Family environment and alternative care) C - Children in situations of exploitation Article 32: child labour Article 33: drug abuse Article 34: sexual exploitation Article 35: sale, trafficking and abduction Article 36: other forms of exploitation D - Children belonging to a minority or an indigenous group Article 30: (UNICEF)

CHILD RIGHTS

Child Rights are fundamental freedoms and the inherent rights of all human beings below the age of 18. These rights apply to every child, irrespective of the child's, parent's / legal guardian's race, colour, sex, creed or other status.The essential message is equality of opportunity. Girls should be given the same opportunities as boys. ALL children should have the same rights and should be given the same opportunity to enjoy an adequate standard of living.Why are child rights important?Children are innocent, trusting and full of hope. Their childhood should be happy and loving. Their lives should mature gradually, as they gain new experiences. But for many children, the reality of childhood is altogether different. 2 million Indian babies will die before they celebrate their first birthday. More girl children will be killed at birth than in any previous year. At least 35 million children aged 6 – 14 years (if you believe the official statistics) will not be in school. 17 million children in India work.Right through history, children have been abused and exploited. They suffer from hunger and homelessness, work in harmful conditions, high infant mortality, deficient health care and limited opportunities for basic education. A child need not live such a life. Childhood can and must be preserved. Children have the right to survive, develop, be protected and participate in decisions that impact their lives.What are child rights? We focus on the 4 basic rights of children. In 1992, India ratified the United Nations Convention on Rights of the Child. The Charter of Child Rights (CRC) is built on the principle that "ALL children are born with fundamental freedoms and ALL human beings have some inherent rights". The Charter confers the following basic rights on all children across the world:
the right to survival - to life, health, nutrition, name and nationality
the right to development - to education, care, leisure, recreation
the right to protection - from exploitation, abuse, neglect
the right to participation - to expression, information, thought and religion

How to get 100 million children in India reading in three years

How do you go from a rural India in 2006 in which:- close to half the children in grade 1 could not recognize numbers or letters- almost half the children in grade 2 could not read a grade 1-level text fluently or do a 2-digit subtraction problem confidently- about half the children in grade 5 could not read a grade 2-level text easily or do a simple division problem
to a situation by 2009 in which:- all grade 1 children know at least the alphabet and numbers- all grade 2 children can read at least simple words and do simple sums- all grades 3-5 children can at least read simple texts fluently and solve arithmetic problems confidently
And do it for a target population of almost a 100 million children?
To find out the answer, I recently took a trip to Meerut District in Uttar Pradesh with Ashish Sharma and Nuzhat Mallik of the education NGO, Pratham. It is a bright, hot August day. As we turn the corner between narrow rows of small, roughly built houses, we are immediately sucked into a symphony of singing and movement. Some 40 children are following the lead of a young man who is calling out the words of a Hindi song about an elephant and acting out its actions. The faces of the children are radiant; the energy is palpable. Not the sort of thing I would associate with government schools. This is Pratham’s Read India campaign at work.

Pratham has launched the campaign Nai Disha (meaning New Directions) and reached 2.1 million children between November 2006 and May 2007 in 20 UP districts. In these districts, Pratham’s random testing showed that grade 1 children who could read nothing had gone down from 59 percent to 18 percent and grade 2 children who could not recognize the numbers from 1 to 20 had gone down from 56 percent to 18 percent.
These are dramatic results, and have been replicated elsewhere, giving Pratham the confidence that they can organize the rapid, large-scale action needed to reach the goals of this initiative. The way Pratham has used outcome measurement to build public opinion on the quality of primary education also gives them confidence. In 2005 Pratham launched a nationwide, volunteer-led, participatory assessment of learning outcomes and produced the first Annual Survey of Education Report (ASER), showing that of the large numbers of rural children in primary schools, almost half were learning practically nothing. This was followed by even a bigger ASER 2006 (covering some 549 rural Indian districts from a possible 587), from which the results above are quoted. Pratham has committed to produce ASER (which means “impact” in Hindi) for 10 years. In the wake of the success since 2001 with getting more kids into school as part of India’s universal primary education program, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, ASER is widely credited along with the work on teacher absenteeism in India in 2003-04 with refocusing the national debate on learning outcomes and quality.
At the heart of Read India is, first, a commitment to work with the government, teachers, the schools, and communities to make sure that kids learn. Pratham strongly believes that creating an articulate demand for quality primary education that results in demonstrated, basic learning is important to reform the system. Second, it uses an accelerated teaching technique piloted in 2002 that can bring about visible changes in the learning levels of children in about three months.
Pratham’s training model equips each volunteer with the ability to transform the learning levels of 15-20 children in a couple of weeks. This vitalizes volunteers and communities to initiate, by themselves, a process of transformation of the education status of their communities, their states, and eventually the nation. Between November 2006 and April 2007 Pratham’s rural teams worked with Shiksha Mitras (teacher’s assistants) in government schools in 20 districts across Uttar Pradesh to improve the learning levels of grade I and II children. In a second phase during the 2007 summer, all rural teams moved to three UP districts, including Meerut, with the objective of covering every child in those districts. At least two volunteers per village were mobilized across 4500 villages in the three districts, reaching some 100,000 children every day. Besides UP, Pratham has commenced work on Read India with other states and the list is growing rapidly.
I had first met Nuzhat Mallik of Pratham in 2005 in Jaunpur in Eastern Uttar Pradesh while visiting the Pratham-MIT-World Bank research project on the role of information in mobilizing communities to demand better services. The abiding impression I have from that visit is that of a girl in the third grade turning a test card with simple sentences on it first this way and then that, confused which way the alphabet had to be read.
The Meerut visit has restored my faith that much can be done, and done quickly, even as the challenge remains monumental. India still accounts for one-quarter of the world’s 104 million out-of-school children, in addition to those in school who are not learning (Additional resources here on education in India). India’s 86th Constitutional Amendment (2002) makes elementary education a fundamental right of every child. Pratham is helping make that a reality. There is similar news from other parts of the world. This week I chaired a lunch-time seminar in Washington DC organized by the Bank’s Human Development Network on the RECURSO program in Peru, with a similar emphasis on using measurement and community involvement to build demand and the accountability for service delivery and outcomes.( http://endpovertyinsouthasia.worldbank.org/user/shekhar)