World Food Day 2014 – plantation workers still Harvesting Hunger

The IUF together with the NGOs Misereor and FIAN is launching Harvesting Hunger – Plantation Workers and the Right to Food to mark World Food Day on October 16. The booklet highlights the massive violation of plantation workers’ right to food resulting from their low wages and the routine exclusion of this scandalous situation from food security debates.

IUF General secretary Ron Oswald commented “FIAN, IUF and Misereor share a common vision of the human right to food and have come together to focus on plantation workers, whose right to food is routinely abused by employers and ignored or violated by governments.

“Together we are presenting proposals to strengthen the power of plantation workers and the trade unions that represent them, including policy measures governments and the Committee on World Food Security should take to establish a rights agenda for plantation workers that would ensure their human right to food.”

 

FIAN and IUF representatives present Hilal Elver, the new special rapporteur on the right to food and ILO representative El’vis Beytullayev with a copy of  Harvesting Hunger during the October 2014 meeting of the Committee on World Food Security in Rome. L-R: Flávio Valente (FIAN), El’vis Beytullayev, Anja Westberg (IUF Vice-President), Svetlana Boincean (IUF) and Hilal Elver.