New York City is the largest city in the United States, with a metropolitan population of roughly 18 million people. For every person in New York City, there nearly 50 people in the world who are malnourished.
“Hunger is a worldwide problem,” said John Teton, founding director of the International Food Security Treaty campaign. “There is a mechanism at hand to virtually eliminate it.”
The 15-year-old IFST’s campaign is centered around the idea that food is a basic human right. The treaty aims to protect people from hunger with international law, essentially making it illegal for countries involved to allow starvation within their borders.
Tonight in the Knight Library, Teton will give an “unusual hybrid of a presentation” that combines a lecture and a book signing.
Following “Conquering Paradigm Paralysis: Human Rights Law and End of World Hunger,” a speech regarding IFST, Teton will read from and sign copies of his 2006 science fiction novel “Upsurge,” one of the themes of which is rampant poverty and hunger deteriorating the world’s condition.
“They’re quite intimately connected because the human-rights treaty arose from notes from the novel,” he said.
According to CARE, a humanitarian organization dedicated to fighting global poverty, 840 million people in the world are malnourished, 799 million of whom live in the developing world and 153 million of whom are children under the age of five. While every country in the world has the potential to produce enough food to feed all of its citizens, 54 nations currently do not, mostly because of droughts, floods, armed conflict and political disruptions.
Teton’s talk is sponsored by the University’s political science department, international studies program and the Duck Store.
“(International studies professor Dennis Galvan and I) both agreed that for the new day and age, the treaty seems sort of like, ‘What the heck is this?’” said political science professor Jane Cramer.
Cramer said that while the treaty may sound like a longshot, it’s both interesting and amazing to her because “grassroots actions are having more power than ever.
“World hunger is actually a really solvable problem,” she said. “We have plenty of food on the planet and all it takes is political will and attention to solve it.”
IFST is centered around four principles, which call for each participating country to provide food to its citizens who can’t feed themselves; to assist nations in need by contributing to a world food and reserve center; to criminalize activities that use hunger as punishment; and to support the United Nations Food Security Enforcement in formally investigating countries that can’t or won’t comply.
“If law enforcement mechanisms are in place and enforced, the likelihood of law-breaking would go down,” Teton said. “There are still people who double park and commit murder even if there is law enforcement in place … but if not, I think we can all agree that it’d be much worse.”
Teton, a Chicago native who lives in Portland, said the University is a good place to find people who want to get involved with IFST.
“Oregon is generally a very progressive population and Eugene would have the highest concentration of that quality of people, I’d think,” he said. “This campaign appeals to people who believe we shouldn’t be satisfied with the status quo when it comes to major problems, both at home and worldwide.”
Laura White, author event coordinator for the Duck Store, agreed. “Especially on campus, you’re always seeing groups of people setting up for different causes,” she said. “People seem to get organizing and make it happen, and it’s really cool.”
Teton said his goal tonight is to inspire people to get involved, be it volunteering, contributing, urging political figures to support the food security treaty or encouraging others to do the same.
“This could be the centerpiece of a whole system that could fundamentally eliminate hunger,” Teton said.
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