US Response to September 11 Means People Going Hungry

The following is a press release issued Oct. 16, World Food Day, by the Center for Economic & Social Rights (CESR), a New York-based international human rights organization that focuses on issues of poverty and economic justice (CESR, 162 Montague St., 2nd fl., Brooklyn, NY 11201; 718-237-9145 <rights@cesr.org> www.cesr.org>).

The Center for Economic and Social Rights warns on World Food Day that the government's response to the Sept. 11 attacks will exacerbate hunger within the US.

Hunger in the United States, already prevalent among poor children, threatens to spread in light of the failure of the government to prioritize the basic human rights of its own population after September 11. The government's economic stimulus plan targets large corporations, the military, and wealthy Americans to the exclusion of individuals and families burdened by growing need. With economic recession deepening, many families face an increasingly insecure future with little or no social safety net.

Government Center, Boston, 10/8 © Pat Rabby

In 1999 the Department of Agriculture reported that at least 10% of Americans--including 12 million children--faced food insecurity. In 2000 the US Conference of Mayors reported a 17% increase in requests for emergency food relief from the previous year. Despite such widespread hunger, a July 2001 study by the Department of Agriculture found that 4 of 10 Americans eligible for food stamps are not receiving them. Many are being illegally excluded from the program as part of sweeping welfare reform policies implemented by state and local governments all over the country. For example, a federal judge ruled in Reynolds v. Giuliani (1999) that New York City was deliberately obstructing access to the federal food stamp program as a means of slashing the welfare rolls.

The economic shock waves from the terrorist attacks--combined with a weakening economy, a growing federal deficit, and an increasingly draconian welfare policy--threaten to cause an enormous surge in poverty and hunger across the US. One hidden casualty of September 11 has been the privately-run emergency food bank system. Food banks, the last stop before hunger for many Americans, have seen supplies plummet due to the diversion of funds to disaster relief.

Rather than move quickly to stem the looming hunger crisis, the Bush Administration is seeking to shift more resources away from already depleted social programs and urging a new round of tax cuts which primarily benefit the wealthiest Americans. Unless the government recognizes the legal and moral imperative to address the problem of hunger in the US, there will be millions of new victims in the coming months and years, with nowhere to turn to feed themselves and their families.

According to the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, "the right to food means that every man, woman and child, alone and in community with others, must have physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement." Yet unlike their European or Canadian counterparts--and despite international human rights standards to the contrary--Americans do not enjoy the right to food under current US law and policy, even in times of economic crisis.

On World Food Day, the CESR calls upon the US government to take all steps necessary to safeguard the fundamental right of every American to be free from hunger. CESR also urges the government to ratify two key human rights treaties protecting the right to food: the International Convention on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, ratified by 142 countries including every other industrialized nation, and the Convention on the Rights of the Child, ratified by 191 countries including all UN members except the US and Somalia.

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