Israel Matzav

With all the starvation in the world, a UN expert is investigating... Canada

Starvation is a really serious issue across Africa, in parts of the Arab world, and in many other non-Western countries. So why is the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier de Schutter of Belgium, spending 11 days in Canada? Hillel Neuer explains.

A key co-ordinator and promoter of De Schutter’s mission is Food Secure Canada, a lobby group whose website accuses the Harper government of “failing Canadians…and [failing to] fulfill the right to food for all.” The group calls instead for a “People’s Food Policy.”

I asked De Schutter if his time wouldn’t better be spent on calling attention to countries that actually have starving people.

“Globally, 1.3 billion people are overweight or obese,” he responded via his spokesperson, “and this causes a range of diseases such as certain types of cancers, cardio-vascular diseases or (especially) type-2 diabetes that are a huge burden.”

In other words, the hunger expert is not even that interested in hunger, but the opposite. Sure, we should all eat less fries, but do Canadians need a costly UN inquiry to tell us that?

Before Canadians can take De Schutter seriously, they ought to ask him some serious questions about whether his mission is about human rights or a political agenda.

Can you guess which one it is?

DeSchutter's mission sounds like one that would be sponsored by Michelle Obama, and indeed it is being sponsored by her and by each and every one of you who pay taxes to the United States. You see, the US pays 22% of the 'human rights council's budget (and that of most other UN agencies). So if it's costing $1 million to keep DeShutter in Canada for two weeks, US taxpayers are footing $220,000 of the bill. That's a lot of hamburgers.

Read the whole thing.

Labels: food shortage, United Nations Human Rights Council, US foreign aid

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:45 PM