Lula rallies G20 countries against world hunger

RIO DE JANERIO

Brazil's President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva Wednesday launched a new initiative against world hunger ahead of an upcoming G20 meeting in Rio de Janeiro.

Finance ministers for grouping's member states will convene today and tomorrow in the Brazilian metropolis, one of the final gatherings before the G20 summit takes place on Nov. 18-19 in the same city.

The initiative, dubbed the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty, will seek to secure common financial resources to combat world hunger and replicate successful programs that have worked locally.

"The fight against inequality, the fight against hunger, the fight against poverty are all fights that cannot be done by one country," Lula told reporters.

"It has to be done by all the countries that are willing to take on this historic responsibility."

The initiative is one of Lula's major priorities ahead of the G20 summit.

A recent report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations outlining the state of world hunger will be presented at the meeting to illustrate the scale of the endeavor.

Aside from the world hunger initiative, the agenda for this week's meeting of G20 finance ministers will involve discussions of how to achieve another objective set by Brazil: Figuring out ways to tax the ultra-wealthy.

The initiative, first discussed during a meeting in Sao Paulo in February, involves determining methodologies to tax billionaires and other high-income earners based on the work of French economist Gabriel Zucman.

However, talks have been highly contentious, and any forward progress is far from guaranteed.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen opposed international negotiations of the subject during a G7 finance meeting held in May in Italy.

The meeting will also discuss taxation of multinational corporations nearly three years after an agreement was signed to create a plan on the initiative.