A/RES/56/155 Reaffirming that a peaceful, stable and enabling political, social and economic environment, at both the national and the international level, is the essential foundation which will enable States to give adequate priority to food security and poverty eradication, Reiterating, as did the Rome Declaration, that food should not be used as an instrument of political or economic pressure, and reaffirming in this regard the importance of international cooperation and solidarity, as well as the necessity of refraining from unilateral measures that are not in accordance with international law and the Charter of the United Nations and that endanger food security, Convinced that each State must adopt a strategy consistent with its resources and capacities to achieve its individual goals in implementing the recommendations contained in the Rome Declaration and Plan of Action of the World Food Summit and, at the same time, cooperate regionally and internationally in order to organize collective solutions to global issues of food security in a world of increasingly interlinked institutions, societies and economies where coordinated efforts and shared responsibilities are essential, Stressing the importance of reversing the continuing decline of official development assistance devoted to agriculture, both in real terms and as a share of total official development assistance, 1. Reaffirms that hunger constitutes an outrage and a violation of human dignity and therefore requires the adoption of urgent measures at the national, regional and international levels for its elimination; Also reaffirms the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious 2. food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger so as to be able fully to develop and maintain their physical and mental capacities; 3. Considers it intolerable that 826 million people, most of them women and children, throughout the world and particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs, which infringes upon their fundamental human rights and at the same time can generate additional pressures on the environment in ecologically fragile areas; 4. Encourages all States to take steps with a view to achieving progressively the full realization of the right to food, including steps to promote the conditions for everyone to be free from hunger and, as soon as possible, to enjoy fully the right to food, and to elaborate and adopt national plans to combat hunger; 5. Stresses the need to make efforts to mobilize and optimize the allocation and utilization of technical and financial resources from all sources, including external debt relief for developing countries, and to reinforce national actions to implement sustainable food security policies; 6. Urges States to give adequate priority in their development strategies and expenditures to the realization of the right to food; 7. Takes note of the report of the United Nations Children’s Fund on early childhood entitled The State of the World’s Children, 2001,7 and in this context recalls that the nurturing of young children merits the highest priority; Takes note with appreciation of the preliminary report of the Special 8. Rapporteur of the Commission on Human Rights on the right to food,8 submitted in _______________ 7 8 2 United Nations publication, Sales No. E.01.XX.1. See A/56/210.