The World Food Summit plus 5 will meet in Rome in November this year to assess the commitments of governments to halve world hunger by 2015. But the world is nowhere near that target; in fact global hunger has become worse.

Globalisation is the reason for the worsening of global hunger. It has devastated the livelihoods and lives of millions of peasants, agricultural and other rural workers, indigenous peoples and Dalits, fisherfolk, small farmers and particularly rural women and children as a result of policies of trade and financial liberalization, deregulation and privatization.

The World Trade Organization is mainly to blame for this catastrophe as its policies promote the business interests of transnational corporations. It has opened agricultural markets to the importation of apparently cheap, but unhealthy food. But this is resulting in the dependency and domination by food and agrichemical TNCs resulting in the displacement of domestic food and agricultural sectors.

Such dumping of cheap, subsidized food and agricultural products have led to massive bankruptcy especially for the small peasant farmers, fisherfolk and indigenous peoples, besides threatening the health of poor consumers. This has led to the acceleration of massive landlessness, indebtedness, destitution and migration, besides the increase in displacement, trafficking and violence against women.

Under the stewardship of the governments of the G8 countries, the globalisation process has only benefited Transnational Corporations and the elites of our countries who have been increasingly taking control of the natural resources and land from the toiling peasants. Agriculture is increasingly being corporatised resulting in greater destruction to the environment, to the health of peasants and consumers. This also promotes monopoly control of our food production and distribution.

It is opportune that the 4th Ministerial meeting of the WTO will be held in Doha, Qatar immediately after the WFS+5. We, 28 representatives from peasants organisations, CSOs and NGOs from Indonesia, Thailand, Philippines, Malaysia, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Japan, Korea, Chile, Nicaragua and Spain meeting in Penang, Malaysia on 24-26 July 2001 at a strategy meeting organized by PAN-AP, IBON Foundation and La Via Campesina resolve to join hands with fellow peasants and activists from all over the world to raise the demands "End global hunger! WTO out of agriculture!" at the WFS+5 and at Doha.

The World Food Summit + 5 must take cognizance of the role of the WTO and the transnational corporations in the globalisation of hunger and poverty. On the other hand, the World Leaders meeting in Doha must take cognizance of the urgent issues of hunger and agricultural crisis taken up in Rome and accept that the WTO's policies are mainly to blame.

We resolve to raise our demands "End global hunger! WTO out of agriculture!" in all the preliminary meetings and activities, especially the meetings, demonstrations, caravans and no-food festivals to observe World Food Day on 16 October 2001. We will make this demand reverberate during the World Food Summit +5 and throughout the world mainly through demonstrations in Rome on the 4th and 9th of November and simultaneous with mass actions in each of our countries.

We call on our governments as they prepare for the WFS+5 to take steps to call for a World Convention on Food Sovereignty and Trade. In the light of increasing global hunger, sufficient healthy food for all can only be assured through food sovereignty where everyone, especially the peasants and other small farmers, shall have control over resources for sustainable agriculture as the foundation for food self-sufficiency in each of our countries. Such convention shall negotiate a new treaty that shall subsume food and agriculture trade to the realization of food sovereignty for all, and rescind all WTO agreements related to agriculture.