Havana: UN food expert hailed Cuba as a world model in feeding its population, some 18 years after the collapse of the Soviet Bloc ravaged the island's economy and sparked widespread hunger.

"We haven't seen even one malnourished person" a rare feat in much of poverty-stricken Latin America, Jean Ziegler said yesterday. The right to being fed is the priority, without a doubt - he added.

According to Jean, Cuba is one of 32 countries that include the "right to food" in their constitutions, and fewer still including Brazil, Latin America s largest economy meet pledges to provide food to all their citizens.

"Despite a 46-year US embargo against the communist-run island, Cuba has found ways to ensure its population does not go hungry. Cuba always invents an answer," he noted.

Widespread daily shortages continue to frustrate Cubans, and the government blames those and nearly all other problems on the embargo.

Jean Ziegler has been the United Nations independent investigator on "the right to food" since 2000 and he spent 11 days in Cuba on a fact-finding mission, meeting with top officials and chatting up farmers, state managers and ordinary Cubans waiting in line for food allotted by ration cards. He also visited two prisons in Havana to ask inmates about their daily diets without addressing human rights concerns over the arbitrary imprisonment and alleged abuse of political prisoners and critics of the island's one-party government.

Source : PTI