Dear Friends,
The Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) wishes to forward to you the following press release from the Steering group of the Right to Food Campaign.
Asian Human Rights Commission
Hong Kong
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A Press Release from the Steering group of the Right to Food Campaign forwarded by the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC)
INDIA: Announcement on fourth National Convention on the Right to Food and Work
The Steering group of the Right to Food Campaign invites you and your organization to the fourth National Convention on the Right to Food and Work, to be held in Orissa from 6-8 August 2010.
This convention, convened by the Right to Food Campaign, is extremely significant in the current context where the Government on the one hand is increasingly eroding people’s control over their livelihoods and resources while on the other, promising to enact a National Food Security Act that guarantees food security for all. With spiraling food prices and widespread drought experienced across the country last year, pushing people further into hunger and poverty, the principle of universality in food entitlements must be established in an urgent manner. The draft National Food Security Act proposed by the government, in fact falls far short of any such guarantee and even erodes entitlements that already exist.
The right to food for all can only be realised if water, land and forests are not diverted from food production and people’s control over these resources is safeguarded. The Government has to be forced to make a commitment that nobody goes to sleep hungry. Further, with such high levels of malnutrition as in India, food security must be understood to mean “nutritional” security and not just access to cheap food grains.
It is in this backdrop that we want to discuss issues related to the question of people’s right to food that are of concern to our campaign.
The Convention will be held over three days and will be a mix of plenary sessions and parallel workshops. The discussions on the first day will focus on issues related to determinants of food security and hunger. The second day will focus on the National Food Security Act, entitlements and government schemes. On the last day we have a plenary on addressing the issue of access to the Right to food in areas of Conflict including in areas where struggles against displacement are taking place. The Convention will end with a Rally and public meeting.
To get more information, please contact:
National Campaign Contacts:
The Right to Food Campaign secretariat
Phone: +91 11 2649 9563
Mobile: +91 9560923178 (Deepika) righttofood@gmail.com
Website: www.righttofoodindia.org
Orissa Contact:
Convenor of the Orissa Organising committee of Fourth National Convention
Mr. Prafulla Samantary “Prafulla Samantara”
Email: psamantary@rediffmail.com
Coordinator Working group of Organising Committee
Bidyut Mohanty
Email: bidyut.mohanty@gmail.com
Phone: +91-943 702 5326
Rourkela Organiser
Mr. Abul Kalam Azad
Email: disharkl@yahoo.co.in
Phone: +91-9437049329
Member of the Steering group of the Right to Food Campaign:
Annie Raja (National Federation for Indian Women)
Anuradha Talwar (New Trade Union Initiative)
Arun Gupta& Radha Holla (Breast Feeding Promotion Network of India)
Arundhati Dhuru and Sandeep Pandey (National People’s Movement of India)
Ashok Bharti (National Conference of Dalit Organizations)
Anjali Bhardwaj
Aruna Roy and Nikhil Dey (National Campaign for People’s Right to Information)
Asha Mishra and Vinod Raina (Bharat Gyan Vigyan Samiti)
Colin Gonsalves (Human Rights Law Network)
Kavita Srivastava (People’s Union for Civil Liberties)
Mira Shiva and Vandana Prasad (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan)
Paul Diwakar (National Campaign for Dalit Human Rights)
Subhash Bhatnagar (National Campaign Committee for Unorganized Sector workers)
Jean Dreze (Former support group and Allahabad University)
V.B.Rawat (Former support group and Social Development Foundation)
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