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In any African country you can
buy at any time of the year Euro-
pean agricultural products at half
the price practised by the African
farmer. Countries that are dum-
ping agricultural products are all
democracies -- except China. What
concerns the mechanisms that I
have mentioned is that each of
them could be destroyed tomorrow
if there was the political will to do
so. For example, the Norwegian
Parliament could prohibit food
speculation on the stock exchange,
since there is no stock exchange
in the world that operates outside
the law. Finance ministers could
cancel the debt of Third World
countries -- tomorrow morning
-- if there were the political will.
You can ban bio-fuel by law -- and
it would end. If you could stop the
land grabbing, then speculation
would no longer be interesting.

All you need in a democracy is de-
mocratic incoherence or, in other
words, that people wake up.

Q: Why are you so concerned
about all these issues?

My first job was in the Congo and
I saw people starve in eastern
Congo. Coming from Switzerland,
a "bourgeois milieu" and being
white, for me it was something
really horrible. The shops were full
of food, the restaurants were full
of people, but the peasants were Cubans. The next day I picked up Jean Ziegler was UN Special
dying because they were poor. It Che and drove him to the station, Rapporteur on the Right to Food
was my experience in the Congo where he was going to take the 2000-2008. He is currently a
that really opened my eyes. train to Prague. Needless to say, I member of the Advisory Com-
was hurt and disappointed that he mittee of the UN Human Rights
Later, I met Che Guevara. I was, in did not want me to go with him. Council and is the author of the
fact, his driver for two days when I thought he considered me as a book: Betting on Famine: Why
he came to Geneva to attend the useless little bourgeois -- he was the World Still Goes Hungry (The
first South Conference in 1964. At right. Militarily I was lousy, and New Press, New York); -- Wir las-
that time I met Fidel Castro and I'd probably now be lying in a mass sen sie verhungern (Bertelsmann,
Che Guevara. On the last night of grave somewhere in Bolivia or Munich); -- Destruction massive:
my assignment, I told Che: "Com- Guatemala Géopolitique de la faim (Editions
mander, I would like to go with dii Seuil, Paris).
you." Driving in Geneva at night Since then I have been a professor
we could see the lights and adver- of sociology in Geneva, at the Sor-
tisements of banks, jewellers, etc., bonne, a Member of Parliament,
and he then said: "Look around. a board member of the socialist
What you see here is the brain of office and, especially, the author of
the beast and it is here you should many books translated around the
fight." Che was very cold as a per- world -- and they are a powerful
son and not outgoing like other weapon.

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