Finally, Mr. Casini mentioned that "Paragraph 10 of the Declaration of the World Food Summit: five years later calls States to establish a set of guidelines for the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food for all. We are convinced that the guidelines should stress the right to food as being binding and suggest concrete modalities for their implementation. They should also specify which obligations must be assumed by States, at national and international level, without overlooking the responsibility and the contribution of other intervening parties to make their contribution, including the international organisations and - possibly - the private sector". He concluded by saying that there is a need for all to show enthusiastic commitment to the ambitious and compelling objectives of the World Food Summit. Parliaments and the IPU will do their utmost in order to offer the most wretched of the earth the prospect of a life of hope and dignity.

During the parliamentary meeting held on Tuesday, among the 10 Speakers of Parliaments present, Speaker Casini stressed the absolute need to ensure that markets are more open to the products of poor countries. "Europe in particular cannot hold back on this point. There are many countries, especially on the African continent, and in America as well, the economies of which are based mainly on agriculture and often on only one or two cash crops. If these products cannot be marketed effectively because of protectionism, there is no possibility whatever for these economies to grow and no credible hope for the populations of these countries to move on from conditions of undernourishment and poverty", insisted Speaker Casini. He underscored the need to open up markets and warned that "in doing so, we must not rely solely on the rules of the market. I do not believe in the miraculous power of the market".

The Speaker of the Italian Senate, Mr. Marcello Pera, who opened the parliamentary meeting on Tuesday, declared that in order to fight hunger, two factors are important. "The first of these factors is good governance, which means strengthening the rule of law and transparency in government action, waging war on corruption, and making an effort to enhance the efficiency of public administration. The other factor is conflict prevention and settlement. Both of these factors are a sine qua non condition, the necessary ingredients for development". He went on to say that "the international community, the community of developed countries, has a duty to shoulder its responsibility and seek solutions to development problems. This is a need for innovative and bold policies also on the part of the countries that are affected, so that cycles of growth may replace the cycle of violence and denial of human rights".

The FAO Director General, Mr. Jacques Diouf, also took the floor at the parliamentary meeting. Once again, he sounded the alarm. "Today, some 815 million people throughout the world are undernourished, including 777 million in developing countries and 27 million in countries in transition. Now, despite the increase in population, the joint efforts of the international community, governments, and non-governmental organisations have all contributed to reducing by 39 million the number of people suffering from hunger in developing countries. However, this average yearly drop of six million is insufficient for us to achieve our objective by the year 2015. For this to happen, a decrease of 22 million per year would be necessary". He appealed to the MPs of the world : "Your proposed legislation and the vote on your budgets, your written and oral questions as well as your monitoring of government action are all very important links in the international chain of solidarity. Your continuous action and support can contribute to a victory to combat the guilty indifference that the world has shown with regard to hunger and its devastating consequences throughout the globe".

In her message to the world's parliaments, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mrs. Mary Robinson, stressed that "as part of the shaping of an ethical globalisation, parliaments have a crucial role to play in identifying steps at the local, national regional and international levels, to make human rights part of the decision-making of governments and private entities under their jurisdiction. This is a challenging task; it requires effort at all levels, international, regional and national". Commenting on FAO figures, Mrs. Robinson said that "everybody agreed on the shocking starvation statistics for southern Africa that we are facing, some 13 million people. After that, it was words and more words. What I am trying to convey is that if we are going to change pace and fast-track more action, then we must be more rigorous than rhetorical ; we must have a framework. And human rights form part of that framework".

The Secretary General of the Inter-Parliamentary Union, Mr. Anders B. Johnsson, said that "IPU is firmly convinced that the major political and economic commitments undertaken by States should necessarily involve national legislative institutions. Parliament oversees government action and it is Parliament that adopts laws and approves national budgets. Parliamentarians, the elected representatives of the people, have a special role to play, particularly when the issue concerned is of such fundamental importance as the right to food". He stressed that "fulfilling the World Food Summit's commitments has proven to be a difficult task, probably more difficult than imagined by some participants in the Summit. It is therefore all the more important for the international community to take a critical look at the achievements and the failures of the last five years, to analyse problems and identify new strategies, including those in the field of national legislation. The conclusions of FAO experts are far from comforting in this regards".

For the President of the Italian Inter-Parliamentary Group, Mr. Antonio Martino, who is also the Defence Minister of Italy, "food security - the possibility for all citizens of the world to have access to the food they need to survive - is both a political issue and a moral imperative". Agricultural policy development and food distribution policies have improved, although millions of people are still excluded and do not have any realistic hope of survival, insisted Mr. Martino. For the Defence Minister, "international co-operation is a necessary condition for achieving much-aspired goals, for opening up to others and to other countries, and for facilitating access to food". Finally, he reminded that "political conflicts and problems are often at the root of hunger. War and hostility are a prelude to hunger as the history of Europe has taught us, Europe, where hunger and war went hand in hand through the centuries".

Two experts also participated in the parliamentary meeting, organised by the Italian Inter-Parliamentary Group and the IPU. The UN Rapporteur for the Right to Food, Mr. Jean Ziegler, said he was optimistic : "It is from the parliaments that we will receive the necessary assistance and solidarity for us to safeguard this new human right". He mentioned the problem of national legislation. "If the right to food is going to be a judicial matter then, as Mrs. Robinson pointed out earlier, we need some type of framework law that will make this possible. But obviously this is much more complicated. It is not enough to draft a law defending the right to food. When we speak of a framework law, we first need an inventory of all existing laws in a given country to see the negative picture first, if you wish, the picture of which who threaten the right to land and to water, which would be a violation of the right to food. Then we should correct that. Certain positive steps would have to be taken, which have proved immediately effective, even in the neediest countries".