Mandela group declares food human right - AP - July 16, 2008

Editor's Note: Over the last five decades, regimes of the Ethiopian Empire have used "hunger" as a weapon to crack down on dissenting regions. By purposely under-developing regions of the Empire with powerful political dissents, these regimes have exposed these "rebelling regions" to starvation. Their motto has been "Surrender or Starve!" To be specific, the Haile-Sellasie monarchial rule had severely underdeveloped Wollo in order to punish political dissents in that region. Similarly, in the 1980's the Derg military junta used "hunger" to unsuccessfully mute the popular uprisings in Tigray. And now, the Woyane regime has continued the legacy of its predecessors by deliberately under-developing Oromia, Ogaden and the South in order to make peoples of these regions surrender to its tyranny through starvation. It was high time that the "freedom from hunger" was adopted as a fundamental human right.

Desmond Tutu, Kofi Annan and other members of Nelson Mandela's global crisis task force turned their attention to world hunger on Wednesday, focusing on soaring food prices.

The Nobel laureates and human rights activists the former South African president brought together as The Elders at his birthday last year have sent peace missions to the Middle East and Sudan's Darfur and spoken out against sham elections and political violence in Zimbabwe.

With the food crisis, they were taking on an issue that some experts say could lead to new wars, and that has touched all parts of the world, rich and poor.

Tutu, the Elders chairman and former Cape Town Anglican archbishop, called the right to food "fundamental." Read More.

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