STWR - Share The World's Resources

Every child who dies of hunger in today's world is the victim of an assassination, a United Nations expert on the right to food, Jean Ziegler, said today in New York.

The world's agricultural production should be able to feed 12 billion people, but globally, 852 million are consistently undernourished, 100,000 people die of hunger every day, and a child under 10 years of age dies every 5 seconds, Mr. Ziegler told a press conference. He called this a daily massacre of human beings through malnutrition.

The tragedy is most intense in Africa, where bad harvests have destroyed the lives of millions of people in the Sahel, especially in Niger, where only 430 tons of millet have been harvested this year instead of the usual 1.6 million.

With one third of the population on the verge of destruction, international organizations, and the majority of Member States, have not responded adequately, said Mr. Ziegler, who is an unpaid expert serving in an independent personal capacity. He received his mandate from the UN Commission on Human Rights and regularly reports back to it.

Sugar has long been the sweetener in Mauritius' global trade. But now the island faces an unpalatable fight to keep the industry going in light of a recent European Union (EU) proposal to cut sugar prices to African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) countries.

The European Commission (the executive arm of the EU) plans to slash the prices by 39 percent over the next four years. Beginning 2006, this will lead to a drop from about 630 dollars per tonne of sugar to just over 390 dollars.

The move follows a World Trade Organisation (WTO) ruling that the above-market prices paid to European sugar producers -- and those in former colonies such as Mauritius which have special access to EU markets -- constituted unfair trade.

However, Mauritians aren't taking these developments lying down.

"'Yes to reforms, but not (those which are) brutal and devastating," said Agro-Industry Minister Arvin Boolell, who is also a spokesman for the ACP group of sugar producing nations.

The warning came ahead of a four day conference in Nigeria to discuss ways to stimulate small-scale fish farming and to improve aquaculture.

Fishing is vital to Africa, supporting annual exports worth about $3bn.

Fish is also crucial to the health of 200 million Africans, providing a source of inexpensive protein.

The two faces of Niger

In Tahoua market, there is no sign that times are hard. Instead, there are piles of red onions, bundles of glistening spinach, and pumpkins sliced into orange shards. There are plastic bags of rice, pasta and manioc flour, and the sound of butchers' knives whistling as they are sharpened before hacking apart joints of goat and beef.

A few minutes' drive from the market, along muddy streets filled with puddles of rainwater, there is the more familiar face of Niger. Under canvas tents, aid workers coax babies with spidery limbs to take sips of milk, or the smallest dabs of high-protein paste.

Wasted infants are wrapped in gold foil to keep them warm. There is the sound of children wailing, or coughing in machine-gun bursts.

"I cannot afford to buy millet in the market, so I have no food, and there is no milk to give my baby," says Fatou, a mother cradling her son Alhassan. Though he is 12 months old he weighs just 3.3kg (around 7lbs).