President Lula's speech at the pre-launch of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty

Participating in this Task Force ministerial meeting, which lays the foundations for the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, is one of the most important moments in the 18 months of my third term.

In this symbolic space —Galpão da Cidadania— we are taking a decisive step towards putting this issue back at the center of the international agenda once and for all.

Over the centuries, hunger and poverty have been surrounded by prejudice and hidden agendas.

Many saw the poor as a "necessary evil", as cheap labor to produce wealth for the oligarchies.

False theories held them responsible for their own poverty, attributed to an innate indolence, without any evidence to that effect.

The poor have been ignored by governments and by wealthy sectors of society.

They have been kept on the margins of society and the marketplace.

Those who could not be incorporated into production and consumption are still seen as a hindrance today.

At best, they have become the subject of palliative compensatory measures.

Over recent decades, neoliberal globalization has aggravated this situation.

Never have so many had so little and so few concentrated so much wealth. 

In the middle of the 21st century, nothing is as absurd and unacceptable as the persistence of hunger and poverty, when we have so much abundance, so many scientific and technological resources and the artificial intelligence revolution at our disposal.

This realization weighs heavily on our consciences.

No topic is more crucial and challenging to humanity.

We cannot normalize these disparities.

Hunger is the most degrading of human deprivations. It is an assault on life, an assault on freedom.

Hunger, as the great Brazilian social scientist Josué de Castro said, "is the biological expression of social evils."

The data released today by FAO on the state of world food insecurity is appalling.

Extreme poverty has increased for the first time in decades.

The number of hungry people around the world has risen by more than 152 million since 2019.

This means that 9% of the world's population (or 733 million people) are undernourished.

The problem is especially serious in Africa and Asia, but it also persists in parts of Latin America.

Even in rich countries, nutritional apartheid is on the rise through food poverty and the obesity epidemic.

In 2023, 29% of the world's population (or 2.3 billion people) faced moderate to severe food insecurity.

Hunger has the face of a woman and the voice of a child.

Even though they prepare most of the meals and grow much of the food, women and girls are the majority of hungry people in the world.

Many women are heads of households, but earn less.

They work more in the informal sector, devote themselves more to unpaid care and have less access to land than men.

Ethnic, racial and geographical discrimination also amplifies hunger and poverty among Afro-descendant populations, indigenous peoples and traditional communities.

Recurrent and simultaneous crises aggravate this situation.

The Covid-19 pandemic has dramatically increased malnutrition and these high rates remain unchanged.

Armed conflicts disrupt the production and distribution of food and supplies, contributing to rising price.

Extreme weather events take lives and devastate crops and infrastructure.

Agricultural subsidies in rich countries undermine family farming in the Global South.

Protectionism discriminates against products from developing countries.

But hunger is not just the result of external factors.

It stems above all from political choices.

Today the world produces more than enough food to eradicate it.

We still need to create conditions for access to food.

Meanwhile, spending on weapons rose by 7% last year, reaching 2.4 trillion dollars.

Reversing this logic is a moral imperative for social justice and essential to sustainable development.

In Brazil we are fighting hunger through a new social contract that puts human beings at the center of government action. 

We have resumed policies to raise the minimum wage, eradicate child labor and combat contemporary forms of slavery.

We have a solid policy in place for generating formal jobs. Unemployment is the lowest it has been in a decade.

We passed a law on equal pay for men and women.

We have formulated a National Care Plan to address inequalities of class, gender, race, age, disabilities and territories, with special focus on domestic workers.

Programs such as Bolsa Família, Food Acquisition and School Meals allow healthy meals to reach the most vulnerable, encourage agricultural production and promote local development.

Family farming is an essential part of this strategy. Brazil has almost 5 million rural properties of up to 100 hectares producing a significant portion of the country’s food demand.

In short, we have made the political decision to place the poor on our budget.

As a result, in 2023 alone we lifted 24.4 million people out of severe food insecurity.

There are still more than 8 million Brazilian citizens in that situation.

This is my government’s most urgent commitment: to end hunger in Brazil as we did in 2014.

My friend the Director General of FAO can prepare to announce, soon, that Brazil is once again off the Hunger Map.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty was born out of this political will and spirit of solidarity.

It will be the most important legacy of Brazil's G20 presidency.

Its goal is to give renewed impetus to existing initiatives by aligning efforts at the domestic and international levels.

We want to get the Sustainable Development Goals back on track.

In 2008, the G20 was crucial to preventing the collapse of the global economy.

Now, world leaders are faced with the opportunity to respond to this other systemic challenge.

We need lasting solutions and we must think and act together.

The Alliance represents a strategy towards building citizenship.

The best way to implement it is to promote the coordination of all relevant stakeholders.

In order to achieve this, we have brought together the two tracks, Finance and Sherpas, into this Task Force.

It is gratifying to see ministers from 30 member countries and guests here today alongside international organizations and development banks.

The role of the United Nations and particularly of the FAO, the IFAD and the World Food Program will be decisive.

We are going to continue dialoguing with governors, mayors, civil society and the private sector.

Our best tool will be the sharing of effective public policies.

Many countries have also succeeded in fighting hunger and promoting agriculture and we want these examples to be known and implemented.

We will take advantage of these experiences and accumulated knowledge and expand the scope of our efforts.

No program is going to be easily transferrable from one place to another.

We are going to systematize and offer a set of projects that can be adapted to the specific realities of each region.

All adaptation and implementation will have to be led by the recipient countries — because each one knows their own problems better than anyone else.

They must be the protagonists of their own success.

The Alliance will be managed by a secretariat based at FAO headquarters in Rome and Brasilia.

Its structure will be small, efficient and temporary; it will be staffed by specialized personnel and operate until 2030, when it will be closed down.

Half of its costs will be covered by Brazil. I would like to express my gratitude to the countries that have already expressed their willingness to contribute to this effort.

Nor will the Alliance require new funds. We will direct global and regional resources that already exist but are currently dispersed.

We were pleased to receive the announcements made today by the Inter-American Development Bank and the African Development Bank.

Both institutions are going to establish an innovative financial mechanism for the use of hybrid Special Drawing Rights capital in support of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty.

It is gratifying to know that food security will be a central topic in the World Bank's strategic agenda over the coming years — and that the International Development Association will establish a new recomposition of capital to help the poorest countries.

All those who want to join this collective effort are welcome to do so.

The Global Alliance was born within the G20, but it is open to the world.

Ladies and gentlemen,

On July 22, 1944, exactly 80 years ago, the Bretton Woods Conference was concluded.

Since then, the global financial architecture has changed very little, but the foundations for a new economic governance have not yet been launched.

The distorted representation at the helm of the IMF and the World Bank is an obstacle to tackling today's complex problems.

Without more effective and fairer governance, in which the Global South is adequately represented, problems such as hunger and poverty will be recurrent.

This is another priority of our G20 presidency.

Dealing with inequality will also be part of this effort.

The wealth of billionaires has risen from 4% of the world's GDP to almost 14% over the last three decades.

Some individuals control more resources than entire countries.  Others have their own space programs.

Several countries face a similar problem. At the top of the pyramid, tax systems stop being progressive and become regressive.

The super-rich pay proportionally much less tax than the working classes.

To correct this anomaly, Brazil has insisted on international cooperation to develop minimum global tax standards, strengthening existing initiatives and including billionaires.

Alongside the African Union, which is participating for the first time as a full member of the G20, we have been warning about the debt problem.

Today we see an absurd net transfer of resources from the poorest countries to the richest.

Collective well-being cannot be financed if a significant part of the budget is consumed by debt servicing.

Hunger and climate change are two scourges that are mutually aggravating.

The existence of those who are hungry is trapped in the pain of the present. They become incapable of thinking about tomorrow.

Reducing socio-economic vulnerabilities paves the way for a just transition, builds resilience in the face of extreme events and strengthens efforts against global warming.

Planetary energy transition and decarbonization are opportunities in this fight against hunger.

Ladies and gentlemen,

The motto of Brazil’s G20 presidency — "Building a Just World and a Sustainable Planet" — seems unattainable, but today we are taking a decisive step towards its fulfillment.  

Hunger and poverty inhibit the full exercise of citizenship and weaken democracy itself.

Eradicating them is equivalent to real political emancipation for millions of people.

As long as there are families without food on the table, children on the streets and young people without hope, there will be no peace.

A just world is a world in which people have unimpeded access to food, health, housing, education and decent jobs.

These conditions are essential to building prosperous, free, democratic and sovereign societies.

I hope to see you again in November, here in Rio de Janeiro, for the G20 Summit meeting.

It will be an occasion to officially launch the Global Alliance and announce its founding members.

I want to say that I am counting on all of you to succeed, but I would like to end by coining a phrase that I have tried to repeat at every meeting I go. Economists, government officials, people who have decision-making power, people who run investment banks and banks that make loans all need to understand one thing: too much money in the hands of too few people symbolizes misery, symbolizes prostitution, symbolizes illiteracy, symbolizes impoverishment and symbolizes hunger.

Now, the opposite: a little money in the hands of the many means exactly the opposite. It means a prosperous society, a society with jobs, a society that consumes and a society that can live decently, you know? This ethic is essential to human survival.

When I say that, I get emotional, because hunger is not a natural thing. Hunger is something that requires political decision. We leaders cannot look only — and all the time — at those who are close to us.

We need to be able to take an X-ray and look at those who are far away, those who cannot get close to palaces, those who cannot get close to ministers. Those who cannot get to a school, who are victims of prejudice every single day.

These people need to be seen. It is unacceptable that, halfway through the 21st century, while already discussing even artificial intelligence (before being able to use the natural intelligence that we all have), we are still obliged to discuss this, saying to our political leaders around the world: "Please look at the poor, because they are human beings. They are people and they want to have opportunities."

Thank you very much for your presence. Thank you very much.