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In
1996, the World Food Summit organised by the Food and Agriculture
Organisation (FAO) of the United Nations was held in Rome, Italy. As
with all UN Summits following the 1992 Earth Summit, an NGO Forum was
also organized. In preparation for the Summit, South Asian groups
working on the environment, ecology and sustainable livelihoods felt
the need to get together and identify issues to be raised at the
Summit. UBINIG (Policy Research for Development Alternative) in
Bangladesh initiated and organised a South Asian workshop in Tangail,
Bangladesh in August, 1996, attended by over 80 people from India,
Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Canada and Bangladesh.
During the three days, people expressed many
concerns about the World Food Summit, leading to the development and
endorsement of the South Asia Statement of Concern. The general
intention of the Statement was to articulate significant voices of the
popular movements in South Asia who shared a common view on food,
ecology and culture. During the NGO Forum and the World Food Summit in
Rome the Statement was widely distributed. It was endorsed by a large
number of organisations and individuals from around the world.
In the process of articulating the issues, the
workshop participants decided to form a network on South Asian food
security issues: it was named the South Asia Network on Food, Ecology
and Culture (SANFEC). The Statement became the basis upon which
different grassroots organisations and individuals came together to
work collectively on common concerns and to join hands as a network.
It allowed us to collectively address regional issues, which we could
not have adequately addressed as individual organisations.
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