Survie NGO

Survie (French for "survival") is a non-governmental organization (NGO) founded in 1984 to fight hunger and corruption in the Third World. It has since became a federation of departmental associations, composed of 1,600 paying members, about a 100 activists and six employees. In September 2005, Odile Tobner became president of Survie, a post previously held by François-Xavier Verschave, famous for his criticisms of French neocolonialism in African former colonies and his neologism Françafrique.

Survie was founded in 1984 as a consequence of the 1981 Manifesto Appeal of the Nobel Prizewinners against hunger, written by Nobel laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel, French engineer Jean Fabre and the founder of the Italian Radical Party Marco Pannella. The Manifesto Appeal was signed originally by 55 Nobel laureates (123 Nobel laureates had signed it by 1996). To promote the Manifesto Appeal, an international NGO was founded in Bruxelles, Food and Disarmament International, while Survie was launched in Belgium and Italy, drawing tens of thousands of people.

In 1983, after the involvement of several Belgian mayors and a hunger strike spontaneously initiated by a blind man, the Belgian Parliament unanimously voted for a "Survival Act", which accorded 10 billion Belgian francs (1.6 billion French francs) to development aid in East Africa.

In 1984, more than 8,000 French mayors were members of Survie, while the next year the Italian Parliament passed a Survival Act according 9 billion French francs to an 18-month program in countries severely affected by hunger and decertification. Previously the French Parliament had failed to pass legislation similar to the Belgian and Italian Acts, however, Survie focused on lobbying deputies (MPs) instead of mayors. In the March 1993 Parliament, 319 MPs, along with the Prime minister, the Minister of Economics, the Foreign Affairs minister and the Cooperation minister, signed the proposal for a Survival Act. The Bill was conceived in 1989 by 5 MPs from all five groups of the French Parliament (French Communist Party, French Socialist Party, and the conservative Union for French Democracy, Rally for the Republic, and UDC). It provided .001 percent of the French national budget (6 billion French francs per year) to aid development, to be delivered according to a new institutional model, giving a key role to civil society.

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