Everyone has the right to adequate food and the fundamental right to freedom from hunger," (World Food Summit, 1996). When food was scarce and famine struck Africa, Asia and Latin America in the early 1970s, the right to food received more attention than it had in previous decades. The World Food Conference which convened in 1974 to analyze the cause of these food crises and identify remedies, adopted a Universal Declaration on the Eradication of Hunger and Malnutrition which was indorsed by the General Assembly of the United Nations the same year. These declarations proclaiming, "The right to be free from hunger and malnutrition," did not include the legal instruments, but the conference itself proposed the establishment of a United Nations financial institution exclusively to improve the livelihood of the rural poor, the first victims of famine.