" 1. The Asian Legal Resource Centre has, over a number of years, brought credible reports of food scarcity in Myanmar to the attention of the Commission (most recently at its fifty-ninth session, E/CN.4/2003/NGO/84). Hunger persists in Myanmar not due to natural disaster or causes otherwise beyond human control, but rather because of the policies and practices of the Government of Myanmar, which deny people?s right to food. 2. In the past year, the Asian Legal Resource Centre announced the launch of the Permanent People?s Tribunal on the Right to Food and the Rule of Law in Asia. In its introduction to the Tribunal, which comprises a number of eminent Asian jurists and activists, the Asian Legal Resource Centre observed that the Tribunal comes at a time when many governments still falsely assert that economic and social rights can be addressed separately from civil and political rights. In fact, political equality among human beings can be guaranteed only when the right to food is adequately met. However, apart from people in a few industrialised countries, the populations of the world are yet to know even the most rudimentary equality, evidenced daily by the billions denied access to adequate and safe food and water. Such inequality affects the organization of all societies, including those in Asia. Authoritarian rule has an explicit link to inequalities relating to food and water. It is not possible for a government to win popular consent until it has satisfied its people?s basic nutritional needs. Therefore, societies where large numbers of people are going hungry are inevitably ruled without popular consent and participation..."