"The value of a Summit lies in what people do differently in the years afterwards." This observation reminds us that, whatever the achievement of the World Food Summit held in Rome in November 1996, it is the long-term impact on the world's hungry that really matters. It has also been said that, after every major United Nations conference or summit, there is a "precipitate decline" in NGO interest and activity. There is evidence that the hundreds of NGOs who attended the Summit and the NGO Forum have since been working to prove that statement untrue. The purpose of this first issue of DEEP since the World Food Summit is to recall the experience and declarations of the NGO Forum, to survey the initiatives taken by FAO and NGOs in the post-Summit year, 1997, and to scan the negotiating horizon of the next two years in order to pinpoint the opportunities to fulfil the Summit's seven commitments through international agreements.
We begin with a round-up of the NGO Forum: who attended, what happened and what was said. The unity of analysis which emerged from the diversity of experience of the participating NGOs was memorable. The Forum's statement to the Summit can be obtained from FOCSIV (Via San Francesco di Sales 18, 00165 Rome, Italy) and the Rome Declaration on World Food Security is available from FAO.
Two personal reflections on the Summit follow, one written from a gender perspective.
Next comes an account of developments since the Summit. In three main areas FAO and NGOs have broken new ground: in working to clarify and draft the legal basis for the Human Right to Adequate Food, in implementing the Summit's call to develop Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS) and in following up the Plan of Action's many references to civil society with a review of the cooperation between FAO and NGOs. The decisions on reporting and monitoring taken by the 1997 Committee on Food Security are recorded, as well as the UN machinery being established to coordinate follow-up of the Summit at both national and international levels.
Public awareness of the Summit's aims has been sustained in 1997 by the launch of the TeleFood broadcasting initiative on World Food Day, with its focus on the FAO Special Programme on Food Security. This year has also seen a number of regional NGO conferences called to consolidate the networks which coalesced at the NGO Forum: the main outcomes of these meetings are described, including the initiative to constitute a Global Forum representative of the main regional groupings.
NGOs have identified a number of key international negotiations with the potential to contribute to or detract from the commitments of the World Food Summit. Five of these will take place in May and June 1998 alone: the fourth Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity will be held; an external review of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research is expected to report; the Food Aid Convention is due for revision; the second ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization will signal the launch of new talks on agricultural trade and intellectual property; and the FAO Committee on World Food Security will receive the first national reports on Summit implementation.
If the scaling of the 1996 Summit represented the first comprehensive effort in two decades to reduce the numbers of hungry people, these are some of the new mountains that NGOs and FAO will need to climb in order to reach that vital goal.
This round-up of the NGO Forum is based on the Final Report of the Italian Committee for the NGO Forum, issued as a supplement to Volontari e Terzo Mondo, XXV(1-2) January-June 1997, published by Volontari nel Mondo-FOCSIV,
Via San Francesco di Sales 18, 00165 Rome, Italy.
Tel.: (39 6) 6877796/6877867;
Fax: (39 6) 6872373
An NGO Forum in a railway station? For many participants the abiding memory of Rome's Ostiense Air Terminal, where the Forum took place from 11 to 17 November 1996, will be the sight of the overhead indicator "Treni in arrivo" as their attention occasionally drifted away from the speakers. The refurbishment of this unusual setting into an adequate conference hall was a tribute to the ingenuity and hard work of the Italian NGO hosts and their supporters in the national, regional and municipal governments.
The Forum was attended by more 800 NGO participants from 80 countries, of whom a slight majority came from the South and East - 270 NGOs from Africa were accredited, for instance. Observers and guests swelled this number: indeed, the average daily attendance was around 1 000, and 300 journalists followed the event.
Thinking about a Forum had begun a year earlier when 200 NGOs meeting on the occasion of FAO's 50th anniversary celebration in Qu�bec City had launched a Global Network on Food Security. Planning began in earnest when the main Italian development NGO federations (COCIS, CIPSI and FOCSIV) joined forces with social, agricultural, environmental and trade union organizations to constitute an Italian Committee for the NGO Forum on Food Security. This Committee attracted funds from a range of donors, led by the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs with 500 million lire, and benefited from funds raised by FAO from donor governments to support the participation of Southern NGOs in both the Summit and the Forum. It was assisted throughout 1996 by an International Support Committee (ISC), initially comprising four international NGO networks and later expanded to include nine representatives of Southern/Eastern NGOs. Meetings of the ISC became easier during the programme of NGO consultations organized by FAO, which included an NGO meeting attended by 249 organizations at the time of the Committee on World Food Security in September 1996 and two-day NGO consultations at the FAO regional conferences which preceded the Summit.
The Forum was divided into a two-day plenary session (12-13 November) to prepare a statement for delivery to the Summit, followed by about 30 workshops. Sustainable agriculture was the main theme of 14 November, with a full-day workshop on rights to productive resources and sustainable methods of food production. An afternoon workshop examined the case study of Senegal and the Sahel region to learn from practical experience of cooperation between FAO, peasant organizations and NGOs in agricultural policy and programmes. Fifteen November was Women's Day, with a series of workshops running simultaneously with one on the impact of market liberalization on strategies for food security. Two workshops occupied the morning of 16 November - one to discuss NGO calls for a code of conduct and a global convention to embody the right to food and another to discuss the Food for All Campaign - before participants came together in a final plenary that afternoon.
More symbolic presentations included the torchlight procession Rome for the World: Food for All, supported by the Municipality of Rome and the NGO Forum (in support of the objective of reducing foreign debt by the year 2000), and The Campesinos Cultivate the Forum, in which members of the global peasant network La Via Campesina scattered soil and seeds from around the world to create a bed of biodiversity in front of the Ostiense Air Terminal.
Opening speeches at the Forum set the tone for the discussions. In a speech which was read for her owing to her last-minute absence, Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberta Menchu claimed that, "Peace does not only mean no war; it is very difficult to achieve world peace if there is still poverty, racism, discrimination and alienation.... The current development model has proved largely inadequate, in terms of development with social justice. We often hear that the economy grows, but this economic growth has brought no benefits to a large part of the population that lives in conditions of poverty or extreme poverty.... The work of NGOs has been fundamental and essential in covering those areas which ought to be covered by the state. NGOs have come to play a role of vital importance because they have become valid interlocutors and intermediaries between society and the state, and promote and encourage citizens to participate."
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf told the Forum that, "the involvement of civil society has been of the utmost importance throughout the entire process. Today this Forum is a public expression of your enthusiasm, your hard work and your commitment.... The Summit Plan of Action will serve to focus and to mobilize the efforts of governments, the UN system including FAO, and all parts of civil society.... Everyone recognizes that governments alone cannot solve these problems and that, if we are to make any progress, we need the energy and expertise that reside in civil society.... Your continued contribution after the Summit will be decisive."
Entitled Profit for Few or Food for All, the statement adopted by the Forum and delivered to the World Food Summit on 17 November by spokesperson Jeanot Minla Mfou'ou from Cameroon declared that "the globalization of the world economy, along with the lack of accountability of multinational corporations and spreading patterns of overconsumption, have increased world poverty". It called for a new model for achieving food security that would be based on decentralization and would challenge existing assumptions, policies and practices. Six priorities for action were set:
While the statement commanded widespread support in the Forum, a number of groups wished to emphasize aspects of it, which they elaborated in further statements. La Via Campesina, the global peasant network, disagreed with "the model of economic neo-liberalism which we regard as imposed on our countries" and "industrial food production, a system that damages biodiversity and natural environments". The network called for "an immediate, profound and genuine agrarian reform, including land distribution, credit and technical assistance" and "food sovereignty at local and national levels, as the right of the people to produce food, control its marketing and feed ourselves in healthy way".
African NGOs agreed a special statement on the impact on food security of "armed conflicts between ethnic and political groups manipulated by external forces", condemning "arms-manufacturing powers that stir up and support armed conflicts to sell their deadly weapons, as well as the African nations that cooperate with them". Addressing African governments, the Organization of African Unity (OAU) and the wider international community, the NGOs called for priority to be given to the timely prevention of conflicts, welcomed African and international emergency food aid but said "no" to the sending of "neo-colonial external military emergency forces". The Near East/North African group of NGOs condemned the use of food as a weapon through economic embargoes, and drew attention to the need to resolve the problems of refugees, diversion of water resources and expropriation of agricultural land for food security to be achieved.
What did the NGO Forum achieve? In a short space of time, this large and diverse gathering expressed its solidarity in a message to the World Food Summit urging the replacement of the globalized approach to food security by a decentralized, participatory and agro-ecological model. As Antonio Onorati, President of the Italian NGO Committee, said in his opening statement: "Neither the market nor powerful governments will ever be capable of redistributing food to the poor around the world. Without the involvement of those billions of women who pay the highest price of their poverty, without the action of peasants, native peoples, fisherfolk and those who support their efforts, any Plan of Action signed by governments that expects to ... eradicate poverty and hunger in the next 25 years ...' is bound to fail."
Perhaps the Forum's greater achievement was the rich exchange of experience among its participants. Onorati continued: "Based on age-old experience, the profound understanding of their needs and their farming systems, rural communities have developed agricultural strategies founded on the efficient management of natural resources, not as an output tool, but as the roots of their existence. These are the experiences we wished to bring to the Forum. We hope that our coming together can help us gather the immense resources of our experience and that not even a drop of rain is lost." A word so prophetic that, at the end of the week, as the last NGOs left the Terminal, a rainstorm finally struck Rome, leaving parts of the converted railway station under water.
"This will be the first generation that has lost more knowledge
than it has gained."Contact the Sustainable Agriculture Caucus,
c/o Intermediate Technology, Myson House,
Railway Terrace, Rugby, CV21 3HT, UK.
Tel.: (44 1788) 560631; Fax: (44 1788) 540270;
E-mail: [email protected]
This was the worry of the Sustainable Agriculture Caucus which addressed the World Food Summit. Large landowners, it said, use chemicals and biotechnological products that poison soil, water, food and people in addition to disrupting the environment and destroying native vegetation. Mechanized single-crop farming entails considerable energy and financial costs as well as indirect costs through the destruction of natural resources. This system survives through the use of direct or indirect subsidies which have made it competitive through artificially low prices. Peasants, on the other hand, are increasingly pushed towards low-quality, high-risk land, and farmed areas are becoming smaller. This is leading to the destruction of agricultural economies and migration to cities and even to other countries, thereby globalizing poverty and food insecurity.
To overcome these unsustainable agricultural models, the Caucus called for:
The right to food means the right to productive resources for sustainable livelihoods and the right to feed oneself. It entails:
Contact the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy,
2105 1st Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN 55404, USA.
Tel.: (1 612) 870 3415; Fax: (1 612) 870 4846;
E-mail: [email protected];
Food security website: http://www.sustain.org/foodsec=20
The proposal for a Sustainable Food Security Convention was presented to the Forum by an international group of NGOs who saw the need to reform those provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO) Agreement on Agriculture which undermine food security. It seeks to create a legally binding global framework which formally establishes food security in international law.
Many developing country governments, especially in food-importing countries, are emphasizing the need to base food security first on local and national production and on equitable distribution. Trade can complement domestic food security strategies but it cannot replace them. With a significant amount of power over agricultural policy shifting to WTO, farmers', consumer and environmental organizations as well as national governments have lost many of the policy tools they once could employ to defend food security. The need is for forms of collaboration that place food security, not trade, as the highest priority.
The workshop proposal asks FAO to involve the UN General Assembly in negotiations for a Sustainable Food Security Convention, with five primary purposes:
Contact CNCR,
BP 249, Dakar, Senegal.
Tel.: (221) 214339 213987; Fax: (221) 223474/214509
This workshop illustrated, through testimony by Senegalese peasant organizations and FAO officials, the recent history of collaboration in Senegal.
Established in 1976 as a nationwide peasant federation, by the late 1980s the F�d�rations des organisations non gouvernementales du S�n�gal (FONGS) faced a rapidly changing policy environment. Its request in 1990 for FAO's assistance in understanding the Programme of Agricultural Structural Adjustment then under negotiation received a positive response, despite the novelty and difficulty for an intergovernmental technical agency. Success factors within FAO included the creation of a dedicated NGO programme which enjoyed mutual confidence with FONGS, some seed money and the readiness of people in the FAO technical unit and country office concerned to accept an important challenge. This partnership led to the organization in 1993 of a national forum in which the peasant movement presented its proposals and its critique of national agricultural policy, and to the creation of a confederation, the Conseil national de concertation et de coop�ration des ruraux (CNCR), as the rural peoples' interlocutor with the government and development partners. The government's willingness to accept dialogue with rural peoples' organizations has been a key factor in the success of the movement.
To build its negotiating capacity, the CNCR sought FAO's assistance in developing a training programme in analysis of agricultural policy and international trade and in sustainable agriculture. Technical support was requested and received for the formulation of projects to strengthen the economic activities of CNCR members and for the development of a mechanism to allow funds received by the government to be administered by rural peoples' organizations. The Special Programme for Food Security (see p. 20), launched by FAO for the low-income food-deficit countries, was formulated in Senegal in 1995 in partnership with member associations of the FONGS.
At the regional level the Platform of Peasant Organizations of the Sahel was established in 1996 following preparation and support from the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS). FAO's assistance was requested to formulate a programme of capacity building to include countries in which the peasant movement is less well structured than in Senegal.
The Senegal case offered a good illustration of national-level cooperation issues raised in the FAO/NGO cooperation review paper (see p. 21). Although there is no universally valid model, it was suggested that the following steps could be taken to replicate the positive cooperation seen in Senegal and enhance people's participation in determining national policy.
Through rural people's organizations:
Through FAO:
Summary of an article by Patrick Mulvany, Intermediate Technology (UK), which first appeared in Development in Practice, 7(3)
August 1997.Development in Practice is published by OXFAM (UK and Ireland),
274 Banbury Rd, Oxford, OX2 7DZ, UK.Patrick Mulvany can be contacted at Intermediate Technology
Myson House, Railway Terrace, Rugby CV21 3HT, UK.
Tel.: (44 1788) 560631; Fax: (44 1788) 540270;
E-mail: [email protected]
Most speakers at the World Food Summit were united by their deep concern about the injustice of 800 million people in the world being hungry 22 years after FAO's 1974 World Food Conference. Thereafter such unity fractured. There were those who saw solutions through planned economic and social development based on the contribution, rights and needs of small-scale farmers and poor consumers while other speakers and documents claimed that a more liberal market would provide the required food for a growing and increasingly urbanized population.
Speakers such as European Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler had problems with this, admitting: "Simply liberalizing markets cannot be the only answer because there are many people who cannot pay." Writing for South Centre, Solon Barraclough (1996) says, "The notion that market forces can eliminate hunger with minimal state intervention, other than providing a stable legal framework together with macroeconomic policies that encourage free trade and private investment, is utopian".
Issues of food production and availability, nutrition, food safety and food security are higher up the agenda of producers, politicians and consumers than they were at the start of the World Food Summit process. Civil society organizations (CSOs) are more effective now because of the improved networks set up for the Summit. This enhanced coordination of CSOs may prove to be one of the most positive outcomes of the Summit.
But summits, resolutions, plans of action and words are not enough. Action is needed. The initiative may have to be taken by CSOs, setting a new agenda for the formal sector and encouraging the development of new institutions and fora in which CSOs, governments and industry jointly determine the global framework for food security: the right to food, the right to productive resources, a convention on food security. Are CSOs ready for this challenge?
Alison van Rooy (1997) notes in her review of NGO lobbying at the 1974 World Food Conference and the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio that there have been limited successes. NGOs' success in influencing their governments has been greatest in "low-policy, open-door" areas of gender, social development, environmental policy and development practice. It remains to be seen if CSOs, including NGOs, will develop their capacity so that they can influence "high-policy, closed-door" issues for the benefit of food security. A test of this will be the effectiveness of the CSO lobby at the World Trade Organization's (WTO) 1999 review of the Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) r�gime, as it applies to living matter and genetic material, and the review of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture.
The challenge will be for CSOs to redefine food security in terms of local and national production, access and availability. As this position may conflict with the interests of multinational corporations, which control an increasing proportion of the world food system, CSOs will need to find new ways of developing collective positions. Global food security depends on this. CSOs must organize to take the initiative: no one else will.
REFERENCES
Barraclough, S. 1996. Universal food security: issues for the South. Geneva, South Centre. (draft)
Van Rooy, A. 1997. The frontiers of influence: NGO lobbying at the 1974 World Food Conference, the 1992 Earth Summit and beyond. World Dev., 25(1): 93-114. (Elsevier Science Ltd)
The full A-Z of food security can be obtained from the contributor of this article:
Nancy Pearson Arcellana, Research Manager,
Isis International-Manila, 3 Marunong St,
Brgy Central District Quezon City, the Philippines.
Tel.: (632) 435 3405/3408; Tel./Fax: (632) 436 0312;
E-mail: [email protected];
[email protected]
In November 1996, the halls of the FAO labyrinth in Rome were bustling with world leaders and heads of state. They had delicately manoeuvred through the text of the World Food Summit Plan of Action and were now gathered for the official approval ceremony. Not far away in the Ostiense Air Terminal, rural women - producers of food - spoke out about their perspectives and recommendations to the NGO Forum participants and FAO representatives on achieving food security. These rural women came from 29 countries and every region of the globe.
The World Food Summit provided the impetus for four organizations - Isis International-Manila, La Via Campesina, People-Centred Development Forum and the Women's Food and Agriculture Working Group - to gather rural women in Rome and provide them with a venue to share their knowledge and experience. It also provided space to develop avenues for action in their communities, nations, regions and worldwide.
Isis International-Manila remains committed to creating spaces, facilitating processes and disseminating information for rural women to enable them to voice their concerns, network together and plan their own responses. In the Philippines, Isis participated in regional gatherings of women farmers and fisherfolk, culminating in a trade fair, seminar and concert for World Food Day. In December 1997, Isis provided support for an Asian regional workshop for 50 women and men organic farmers in Viet Nam. The themes of the workshop were: the impact of the market economy and globalization on agriculture in Asia; organic farming models and practices; and rural women in Asia - issues and challenges. Three of the organizations which sent women farmers to the Rural Women's Workshop (RWW) in Rome also participated in the workshop in Viet Nam.
On the other side of the world, the rural women who attended the RWW in Rome from La Via Campesina network have been active. In conjunction with the Latin American Peasant Organizations (CLOC) and La Via Campesina, rural women from all the major Latin American and Caribbean countries gathered in Brazil for the First Assembly of Latin American Peasant Women, entitled Peasant Women Cultivating a Millennium of Justice and Equality. The women then joined their male counterparts in the Second Congress of CLOC and La Via Campesina and ensured a strong gender perspective in all the proceedings. One of the resolutions emphasized the equality of men and women in all initiatives and a commitment to a 50 percent participation of women among national delegates.
The Summit was one step in the journey. It is often difficult to mark progress when there is so much yet to be done. The ABCs of food security can offer an evaluation tool for policy-makers.
A = Access. Women, who are the primary producers of food for their families and extended communities, must have access to land, water, seeds, education, credit and other financial support and decision-making processes - in other words, the total means of production. In addition, women the world over ensure that their families have food for consumption. Food must be both accessible, affordable and culturally appropriate.
B = Benefit women. Many studies have shown that women consistently use their resources - whether produce or money - to ensure the food security, health and education of their families. Women need empowerment to participate in decision-making, policies that support their vital roles and concrete benefits from development activities.
C = Community-based. Community-based resource management and sustainable agriculture are essential elements in achieving food security for all. Communities, and particularly women, must be given the opportunity, power and autonomy to participate in decision-making processes at all levels.
Simply put, the ABCs serve as a touchstone for the progress of the World Food Summit Plan of Action and highlight the direction towards which rural women are striving until, ultimately, food security is attained by all.
Copies of the draft International Code of Conduct on the Human Right to Adequate Food can be obtained from FIAN International,
PO Box 10 22 43, 69012 Heidelberg, Germany.
Tel.: (49 6221) 830620; Fax: (49 6221) 830545;
E-mail: [email protected]
Both FAO and NGOs forged ahead in 1997 with work in pursuit of the right to food, which appeared in Objective 7.4 of the World Food Summit Plan of Action. There has been close cooperation between FAO and the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), while NGOs have prepared a draft International Code of Conduct on the Human Right to Adequate Food.
In Objective 7.4, governments committed themselves "To clarify the content of the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, as stated in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other relevant international and regional instruments". In subpara (b) they urged states that are not yet Parties to the Covenant, adopted in 1966, to adhere to it as soon as possible. In subpara (e) they invited "the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in consultation with relevant treaty bodies, and in collaboration with relevant specialized agencies and programmes of the UN system and appropriate intergovernmental mechanisms, to better define the rights related to food in Article 11 of the Covenant and to propose ways to implement and realize these rights as a means of achieving the commitments and objectives of the World Food Summit, taking into account the possibility of formulating voluntary guidelines for food security for all".
The FAO Director-General and the High Commissioner for Human Rights signed a Memorandum of Understanding on 29 May 1997, providing a framework of cooperation between the two offices on issues related to the right to food. The Summit's invitation to the High Commissioner was endorsed by the UN Commission on Human Rights in Resolution 1997/8. Following a report in May by FAO to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (the treaty body responsible for monitoring implementation of the International Covenant), the Committee devoted a full day, 1 December 1997, to a debate on Article 11. It was followed the next day by an expert seminar organized by OHCHR with a wide range of UN agencies to make recommendations to the High Commissioner. A number of countries at the FAO Conference in November 1997 also stressed the importance of national legislation on the right to food, with the assistance of FAO where necessary.
NGOs at the Forum in November 1996 proposed to draft a code of conduct on the right to food. A first draft was considered at a conference convened in Geneva from 1 to 4 May 1997 by the Food First Information and Action Network (FIAN) and World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights (WANAHR). A further draft was circulated in September with the additional endorsement of the Jacques Maritain International Institute. The 15-article draft covers substance and process: it includes a precise definition of the content of the right to food and sets out not only the obligations of states but the responsibilities of other actors (international organizations, economic enterprises, civil society). States are enjoined to respect, protect and fulfil their citizens' right to food. The draft contains provisions for improved monitoring of violations of this right. The code is offered as a guide to the international community, states and other actors to help with legislation at national and international levels. It is written to support the right to food of individuals and communities, while the proposal for a Sustainable Food Security Convention (see p. 8) deals with national food sovereignty. The draft was made available to the expert seminar on 2 December 1997.
Ten December 1998 will see the 50th anniversary of the UN Declaration on Human Rights, while 1998 is also the year of a five-year review of the Plan of Action of the World Conference on Human Rights (Vienna, 1993). Plans are being made by FAO and OHCHR to mark the 50th anniversary with a public event to record the progress they have jointly made in clarifying and implementing the right to food.
For more information on the household food economy approach to food security assessment, contact
SCF-UK Food Economy Assessment Team (FEAT), Regional Office for Eastern Africa, PO Box 39664, Nairobi, Kenya.
Tel.: (254 2) 744279; Fax: (254 2) 748889;
E-mail:[email protected]
Household food economy analysis is a method for assessing the needs of areas or population groups facing acute food insecurity. Developed by the British NGO Save the Children (SCF), the method is based on an understanding of the options people employ to secure access to food. The approach goes beyond production-based assessments by exploring the other food sources people rely on, and the extent to which these can be expanded in times of crisis. In a bad year, can people increase their consumption of wild foods? Or can some family members migrate in search of employment? Can affected households turn to their better-off kin for gifts or loans to help them get by? Or do they have food stocks or other assets they can draw on?
The results lend themselves to simple visual presentation. A pie chart analysis for the war-affected Akot area of the Sudan is shown on page 17. By focusing on the mechanisms used to gain access to food, the analysis can suggest interventions other than food aid, to support rather than replace local initiatives. It can also help in targeting assistance, as it allows a clearer definition of who is vulnerable and why.
The approach taps into the knowledge of local people using "key informant" enquiries (recognizing that it is unrealistic to expect information needs to be fully met through expensive household surveys). Key informants are found at various levels: village, district, regional. They may be government employees or NGO workers, teachers, representatives of village organizations (farmers' unions, women's unions), traditional local leaders or traders. Above all, they are people who, through their position or experience, know how the household food economy works.
SCF and Helen Keller International were the two NGOs attending the March 1997 expert consultation organized by FAO to draw up a workplan for the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping System (FIVIMS) called for by Commitments Two and Seven of the Summit Plan of Action. The workplan has since been approved by FAO's Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and Council.
The consultation recognized that, despite its deficiencies, the food balance sheets approach used by FAO has no current substitute and should be used and supplemented by other information. It sometimes underestimates food availability, especially in Africa, through incomplete coverage of roots and tubers. Large countries such as China, India and Brazil also require fuller information at the subnational or regional level. In Brazil a hunger mapping exercise using existing household income data has proved useful in identifying the most vulnerable communities and municipalities and in targeting public policy and investment.
Contact the FAO Global Information and Early Warning System website:
More information on FAO initiatives to follow up the World Food Summit can be obtained at the website:
The consultation agreed that no single set of indicators could be applied across all countries at all times. According to the CFS, FIVIMS should include indicators that are: i) simple and reliable; ii) already available; iii) of both a social and anthropometric nature; and iv) found at all levels, including the household. The consultation concluded that the "expert system" (the key informant approach as in the SCF analysis above) and the "indicator" approach to vulnerability assessment were complementary and that there were strong reasons to combine their use.
The agreed workplan includes four short-term measures to be taken before the meeting of the CFS in June 1998:
| SOURCES OF FOOD IN AKOT, SOUTHERN SUDAN
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Consultations were also held with the World Bank to integrate within FIVIMS the Bank initiative to create an Africa Nutrition Database. With Japanese Government support, a regional project aimed at a FIVIMS database for Asia is expected to be operational early in 1998.
The Summit entrusted FAO's Committee on World Food Security (CFS) with the task of monitoring the implementation of the Plan of Action and progress in reaching the minimum target of reducing the number of undernourished people to half the 1996 level no later than 2015. The Committee's meeting in April 1997 provided governments with their first opportunity to discuss the monitoring procedures.
The CFS recognized that primary responsibility for implementation of the Plan of Action rests with individual governments, and it heard from a number of countries which had begun to develop national action plans to follow up on the Summit commitments. As responsibilities under the Plan of Action belong to non-governmental and private actors as well as governments, it is expected that the plans and their reporting will include all relevant stakeholders.
The CFS agreed on a provisional reporting procedure to be used in 1997-98, whereby three reporting streams (governments, UN agencies and other international institutions) will report on actions taken to implement the objectives under each of the Plan of Action's seven commitments. The information should include analysis of how national policies and actions are geared towards, and effective in, reducing the number of undernourished.
Reports on the year 1997 are to reach FAO by the end of January 1998. At its June 1998 meeting the CFS will consider a standard reporting format for successive years. An open-ended working group will be held before the CFS meeting to examine proposals for this. Governments have expressed different views about the future timetable, some arguing that national reports should be submitted only every two years. The 1998 session will also consider whether future meetings should each discuss a theme linked to Summit implementation.
Summit commitments continue to influence FAO programmes. All of FAO's technical committees discussed follow-up during 1997 and FAO regional conferences will have an item on follow-up during their 1998 cycle. All reports to the CFS on the subject are being made widely available, including on the Internet, and governments are encouraged to do likewise with their reports.
As the last official reporting obligation from the 1992 International Conference on Nutrition was met in 1995, further monitoring of ICN commitments will occur as part of the WFS process. The 1979 World Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development has been subject to four-yearly reporting cycles; separate reports will now cease and progress will be covered as an integral part of Summit reporting.
The Committee recognized the important role played by civil society organizations (CSOs) in the preparation process of the Summit and encouraged them to continue participating in the work of the CFS. Delegates urged the CFS to build on experiences of the World Food Summit and of other UN fora in order to permit national and international CSOs which meet the criteria of relevance and competence to contribute as observers more actively to its deliberations. The need to ensure a geographical balance was noted, including through assistance for the participation of CSOs from the developing world, as was the possibility for governments to include such organizations in their national delegations. The Committee requested the Secretariat to take interim measures to broaden NGO participation at the 1998 meeting, at which time it will examine the matter in more detail.
Development NGOs have commented on these possibilities for enhanced CSO participation. They are attracted by the idea of a more interactive input into the CFS proceedings, echoing the suggestion made at the 1997 meeting of a reconfiguration of the CFS as an enabling forum for Summit follow-up for all actors. NGOs need to know that their positions can be reflected in reports of the Committee's discussions. They have also suggested widened opportunities for participation before and around CFS meetings, including collaboration in drafting of papers, preparatory meetings, workshops and exhibitions and involvement in the working group meeting in 1998 to consider future reporting procedures.
FAO does not stand alone in implementing and monitoring the Summit Plan of Action. Commitments 7.2 and 7.3 give responsibility to the UN's Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) for coordinating interagency follow-up and to the Economic and Social Committee (ECOSOC) for receiving progress reports from FAO and other agencies.
The UN General Assembly in December 1996 welcomed the outcome of the Summit and received FAO's first report on it at its 1997 session. The ACC has launched interagency follow-up by establishing the ACC Network on Rural Development and Food Security, as proposed jointly by FAO and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). More than 16 UN agencies have joined and the UN Secretary-General has welcomed the intention to involve civil society and the emphasis placed on country-level action in the two-tiered network. All FAO country representatives and UN resident coordinators have been asked to help in setting up interagency thematic groups on rural development and food security at the country level. FAO has introduced a website for the network within SD Dimensions (http://www.fao.org/waicent/faoinfo/sustdev).
ECOSOC has welcomed the ACC's decision to include follow-up to the World Food Summit within the context of the integrated follow-up process of all major UN conferences and summits. With these decisions, the machinery has been set in motion for early and sustained support from both interagency and intergovernmental bodies to national efforts to implement the Plan of Action.
Contact the TeleFood Website:http://www.fao.org/food
The profile of food security was maintained in 1997 with FAO's launching of TeleFood, the first global telecast dedicated to the theme of Food for All. Television stations in 60 countries linked up on Sunday
19 October (three days after World Food Day) to a programme
of reports, entertainment and a gala concert from the Vatican, anchored by
Italian broadcasting company RAI and reaching out to a global audience of
approximately 450 million.
FAO Director-General Jacques Diouf declared, "TeleFood has one major objective: to raise awareness of the scale of the problem and encourage solidarity in the fight against hunger. In addition we will also try to mobilize resources in some countries for practical projects and programmes to do something about it." FAO pledged that every dollar raised by the TeleFood appeal will go to support rural people in developing countries through FAO's Special Programme for Food Security (SPFS) and similar grassroots projects designed to help them grow more food. All funds raised will be subject to an independent external audit.
The SPFS was launched by FAO in 1994 to respond to the need to boost food production in 86 low-income food-deficit countries (LIFDCs) which are home to the majority of the world's 800 million hungry. The Programme emphasizes national ownership and farmer participation, environmental awareness and the role of women in food production and marketing. Its pilot phase is now operational in 19 countries and is being formulated in 32 others.
The three-year pilot phase starts with on-farm demonstrations by farmers to teach husbandry and farming techniques to fellow farmers. It has four related components:
The expansion phase will aim to improve the policy framework for the agricultural sector through dialogue with governments and invest in agricultural infrastructure.
Increased yields and net returns to farmers are initially encouraging. In Bolivia maize yields at demonstration sites have doubled and potato yields are up by 240 to 425 percent. Yield increases of 44 to 75 percent have been achieved in Nepal. In the United Republic of Tanzania, farmer participation in training, savings and technical demonstrations helped double yields of maize and rice. In Zambia the programme's introduction of treadle pumps, including some from Bangladesh, is helping boost horticultural production by expanding the area under low-cost irrigation.
South-South cooperation is enabling some countries to benefit from expertise from other developing countries. Vietnamese technicians are helping Senegalese farmers in the implementation of the SPFS and, in 1998, Moroccan experts are likely to assist farmers in Burkina Faso and the Niger. An increasing number of governments and financial institutions are offering soft loans for the pilot activities. The ball is rolling and TeleFood has given it a push.
Contact Lamia Tabet-N�me,
Office for Liaison with National Committees (GIDN), FAO, 00100 Rome, Italy.
Tel.: (39 6) 570 55328; Fax: (39 6) 570 53210;
E-mail:[email protected]
Governments are requested under Commitment Seven of the Summit Plan of Action to launch national Food for All Campaigns in cooperation with civil society. A unit in FAO - the Office for Liaison with National Committees (GIDN) - is offering advice and assistance to all member countries, partners and players wishing to constitute a national forum for enhancing public awareness and political will and for mobilizing adequate actions and resources to achieve food security for all. It is expected that broad consultations will initiate at the national level and be reflected at regional and global levels in order to set up the status, role, composition and main objectives of the national fora which should be based on the priorities emerging in the national strategy papers for implementing the World Food Summit Plan of Action. A national eminent person, preferably no longer active in politics or administration and well known for his or her competence in rural development and/or dedication to alleviate hunger and malnutrition, could be identified in each country to spearhead the campaign and, more particularly, the forum. NGOs that participated in the preparation of the World Food Summit and the NGO Forum in Rome in November 1996 are expected to play a key role in the establishment of national fora and in helping to create an international enabling environment for achieving universal food security. They are therefore welcome to provide FAO (GIDN) with their views and suggestions in this regard.
Contact D. Daniels, Chief,
Unit for
Cooperation with the Private Sector and NGOs (TCDN), FAO, 00100 Rome,
Italy.
Tel.: (39 6) 570 54050; Fax: (39 6) 570 55175;
E-mail: [email protected]
One important strand of the reform of FAO undertaken since 1994 has been a recognition of the need to concentrate on those roles and functions which FAO is best placed to perform, and to broaden links and build cooperation with others. The creation of the Unit for Cooperation with the Private Sector and NGOs (TCDN) was one institutional reflection of the policy orientation towards outreach. In 1996 the Director-General requested TCDN to undertake a thorough review of FAO's policy and strategy of cooperation with NGOs, building on past and current experience in order to provide a solid, Organization-wide basis for harnessing the renewed energy and interest on the part of civil society organizations (CSOs) that the World Food Summit was expected to stimulate.
The review has been carried out in close consultation with a broad variety of NGOs in all regions. Their views and expections have been synthesized in a paper entitled FAO's Cooperation with NGOs,which was widely distributed at the NGO Forum in November 1996. Within FAO, a network of NGO focal points has been established to share experience and stimulate reflection. Input has been sought from field offices and each technical department has undertaken its own review of its cooperation with NGOs with a view both to flagging policy issues requiring attention at the Organization-wide level and to identifying priorities and concrete opportunities for working with NGOs in the medium term in the specific technical areas of concern to them.
The results of these separate exercises are now being brought together and the output is expected to be available early in 1998. This will include a policy statement to be issued by the FAO Director-General and a programme document to be discussed with civil society organizations in the course of 1998, which will propose cooperation in four areas: field programmes, policy dialogue, exchange of information and promoting public awareness, and mobilization of resources. Underlying all of these is the fundamental issue of FAO's role in helping to define appropriate divisions of responsibilities and to promote dialogue and collaboration among governments, CSOs and other actors.
Contact ANGOC, PO Box 3107, QCCPO 1103, Quezon City, Metro Manila, the Philippines.
Tel.: (63 2) 433 7654; Fax: (63 2) 920 7434;
E-mail:[email protected]
NGOs, regionally and globally, made 1997 a year to consolidate the networking begun at the NGO Forum and the FAO Regional Conferences in 1996. They came together in meetings, strengthened their food security networks and identified the major events of the next three years where the civil society voice for food security needs to be heard.
The Asian NGO Coalition for Agrarian Reform and Rural Development (ANGOC) held a regional meeting in Bangkok, Thailand, from 5 to 8 August 1997, which drew up a plan of action for World Food Summit follow-up on the part of Southeast Asian NGOs. This included calling for a food security clause in the review of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture, joining the campaign for reform of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), a focus on regional institutions (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Council and the Asian Development Bank), supporting national policies of food self-reliance (to reduce "food kilometres" - the distance between where food is produced and where it is consumed) and a baseline survey in 200 villages in ten countries in order to compare food security indicators after five and ten years.
Contact UBINIG, 5/3 Barabo Mahanpur, Ring Road, Shaymoli, Dhaka - 1207, Bangladesh.
Tel.: (880 2) 811465/329620; Fax: (880 2) 813065
More than 50 women and men attended a five-day meeting of the South Asian Network on Food, Ecology and Culture (SANFEC), held in Tangail, Bangladesh, from 18 to 22 August 1997). The meeting saw the pursuit of ecological agriculture as the only way out of the hunger still suffered by 500 million people in South Asia, despite the claims of the green revolution. It underlined the importance of culture for food security - food items are not simply commodities or consumer goods - and looked forward to the day when "culture will become our currency". The rights to common property resources must be ensured, including the rights of women, indigenous people and other marginal groups to land and resources. The meeting reiterated that food production and command over the market must remain in the hands of small farmers.
Contact COASAD, c/o FONGS, BP 269, Thi�s, Senegal.
Tel.: (221) 9511237; Fax: (221) 9512059;
or at 6A Rue des Champs Elys�es, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium.
Tel.: (32 2) 503 1424; Fax: (32 2) 503 2666;
E-mail:[email protected]
During the NGO Forum, 112 African NGO participants from 25 countries came together to set up an African NGO continental platform. The provisional bureau of this platform, known as the African Organizations Coalition for Food Security - Sovereignty and Sustainable Development (COASAD), met in Tunis in June 1997 to devise an initial workplan, centred on a launch meeting expected to take place in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania, in January 1998. NGOs from all African countries, as well as existing networks specializing in food security, are to be invited. Noting that Africa is the only region where poverty is increasing and per caput food availability is falling, COASAD is calling for a more favourable policy environment and increased budgetary resources for agriculture so that an agricultural strategy built on the grassroots experience of farmers, including women, can become the motor of economic growth. The Coalition aims to fill the gap created by the lack of communication and information among African NGOs and public opinion.
In a subregional initiative, the Forum of Sahelian Societies met in Banjul, the Gambia, in September 1997. It presented to the Permanent Interstate Committee for Drought Control in the Sahel (CILSS) Council of Ministers a confident vision of the future for the promotion of human resources and access by all to basic rights, reinforcement of institutional capacities, rapid and sustainable development of food production, economic growth and diversification (based on a diversity of economic operators unconstrained by monopolies) and Sahelian economic integration open to Africa and the world. The Forum called on Sahelian governments to recognize the growing role of social and economic actors, cooperating with a state fulfilling its essential functions and delegating other tasks to local and professional groups: "The positioning of economic and social actors at national and regional level and through platforms of women, young people, parliamentarians, NGOs, rural producers, economic operators and journalists must allow them to become responsible partners, capable of dialogue with the state."
The Food Security Group of the Liaison Committee of Development NGOs to the European Union (EU) renewed its membership in 1997 and began work on the follow-up to the World Food Summit, implementation of the 1996 EU food security regulation and coherence between the EU's development, agriculture and trade policies. It is keeping in touch with the coordination of NGOs in Central and Eastern Europe which was active during the Summit. In the United States, the World Food Day Committee marked 16 October with its 14th annual televised conference featuring participants from overseas NGOs and FAO; United States and Canadian NGOs continued to work together on the Summit follow-up.
Representatives from the International Youth Forum for the World Food Summit, held in November 1996 with 500 participants from 130 countries, took part in a follow-up meeting in Rome in October 1997 and agreed to set up a permanent secretariat as well as appointing official representatives at the national level. The Popular Coalition against Hunger and Poverty, created at the World Conference on Hunger and Poverty in Brussels in November 1995, will hold an assembly in Rome in February 1998, in parallel with the 20th anniversary meeting of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD).
Contact Global Forum on Sustainable Food and Nutritional Security, c/o Agora (Associa��o para Projetos de Combate a Fome), SCLN 210 Bloco "C" salas 215-218, 70.862-530. Brasilia, DF, Brazil.
Tel.: (55 61) 347 4914; Fax: (55 61) 347 9002;
E-mail:[email protected]
The NGO Forum at the World Food Summit did not agree on any global follow-up. It was observed that any new global network might need to arise from the points of energy identified at the Forum, in particular the regional and sectoral caucuses of NGOs. A regional meeting of Latin American and Caribbean food security networks was convened in Brasilia in August 1997 and, in the same week, a global meeting of networks of the South took place with the participation of some Northern partners. The 14 people's movements and networks at the Latin American and Caribbean assembly agreed that the focus of their cooperation would be to prepare civil society participation in the revision of the WTO agreements, integrated with follow-up of the World Food Summit and related international conferences. They agreed to establish a Latin American and Caribbean Forum on Nutrition and Food Security.
The 26 representatives of regional networks from five continents gathered at the global meeting decided to create the Global Forum on Sustainable Food and Nutritional Security - with a strong Southern perspective. Its three central themes are the achievement of sustainable food security at the national level, participation in the review of the WTO agreements and the follow-up of the food security commitments made by governments at international conferences, especially the World Food Summit. The Global Forum is essentially a collection of tasks (and task forces) held together by a light superstructure. In addition to fund-raising, the ten tasks are:
The way into the Forum is to offer help with one of these self-regulated task forces, each of which has an NGO network as its focal point. The Forum will have a two-year mandate before the next meeting of its assembly in 1999. Until then, an elected steering committee of five regional representatives will take decisions about coordination, and a small secretariat will be based in the Brazilian NGO Agora.
At three key meetings in May 1998 policy-makers will have the opportunity to give effect to Commitments Three and Four of the World Food Summit Plan of Action. The meetings are the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, the meeting of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) and the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organization (WTO) which will signal the launch of a new round of talks including agriculture and biodiversity.
Commitment Three of the Summit Plan of Action recognizes the significant developments in FAO's normative and operational activities for biodiversity. For the mass of the rural poor, agricultural biodiversity constitutes not only their means of livelihood but also their collective intellectual and physical contribution to global food security, providing the raw material for future plant and animal production.
The 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) paved the way for FAO's leadership role in setting the global framework for the conservation and sustainable use
of agricultural biodiversity. This role was formally recognized by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in its landmark decision at its third meeting:
Decision III/11.
The Decision registers the importance of the three major international processes being led by FAO: the follow-up to the Leipzig Global Plan of Action for the Conservation and Sustainable Utilization of Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture; the broadening of the mandate of the FAO Commission on Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (CGRFA) to include all genetic resources (farm animals and fisheries as well as plant genetic resources and agroecosystems); and the CGRFA negotiations for the revision of the International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, in harmony with the CBD. This last process is perhaps the most important because it will allow for the full realization of Farmers' Rights. NGOs welcome the progress being made in these three streams of negotiation to lend greater support to poor farmers in low-income countries who safeguard many of the world's genetic resources for food and agriculture.
The negotiating agenda is tight with negotiating meetings of the CGRFA that are being convened by FAO for the revision of the International Undertaking, as well as the regular meeting of the CGRFA in early 1999 and the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the CBD (COP IV) to be held in Bratislava, the Slovak Republic (see Calendar of coming events in 1998, inside back cover). NGOs would like to see the revision of the International Undertaking completed by the time of the Conference of FAO in 1999.
COP IV will take place less than one year before the 1999 WTO review of the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), where many NGOs would like to see confirmation of the role of sui generis systems and the removal from patentability of life forms1. In tandem, the renegotiation of the WTO Agreement on Agriculture (the outcome of the GATT Uruguay Round) is scheduled to begin, which will also affect the capacity of the rural poor for sustainable use of their agricultural biodiversity. Decisions in the WTO could reinforce or weaken the progress made by FAO and the CBD, and will be an advocacy focus in the next two years. NGOs, as part of civil society, need to work with FAO and the CBD and with the often marginalized national ministries of agriculture and environment, towards outcomes of the WTO negotiations that will safeguard biodiversity and deploy it in the interest of small farmers and farming communities.
1 Article 27 of the TRIPS Agreement allows countries to exclude from patentability plants and animals provided they adopt effective plant varietal protection under sui generis systems, or patents or a mixture of both. NGOs have suggested that developing countries should be offered technical assistance to do this.
Follow the CGIAR discussions through the Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI) website:
http://www.rafi.ca
The world's largest and most influential international agricultural research network, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), is conducting its first full system-wide review in 17 years (see also DEEP, Without waiting ..., September 1995, p. 33). In May 1998 in Brazil, a prestigious review panel led by Maurice Strong will table its recommendations for the future of the research network, which launched the green revolution. Among the key areas for review are CGIAR's governance structure and membership system; the reorientation of its research towards sustainable agriculture; addressing the problem and potential of biotechnology; and the renegotiation of CGIAR's relationships with national agricultural research networks, agribusiness and farming communities.
Depending on which figures are used, CGIAR's US$304 million annual budget represents between 4 and10 percent of the South's agricultural research funds and contributes to the training of almost every agronomist in the developing world. CGIAR estimates that the results of its research feed at least one billion people, that its high-yielding varieties produce as much as previous varieties on 40 percent less farmland than would otherwise be needed and that they have kept staple food prices low for the urban poor. As much as 70 percent of the South's most important food crops are based on CGIAR germplasm enhancement. The Consultative Group's 16 International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) play a formative role in research policy development throughout the South.
Despite recent improvements, the South continues to be a marginal player in the development of CGIAR's research policies, which have a profound impact on national economies. The present review could correct this. Further, foreign aid flows to CGIAR of US$300 million per annum yield an unacknowledged return (to the North) of not less than US$5 billion. The review could restructure benefit-sharing arrangements. Despite these economic benefits, the contracting aid environment, coupled with the growing strength of the private biotechnology industry, is building momentum for the privatization of some CGIAR assets and programmes. The nine-member Review Panel includes representatives of two of the world's largest agribusinesses. To ensure that the Consultative Group's External Review benefits from a range of innovative and diverse viewpoints, governments, farmers' organizations and other members of civil society may wish to participate actively in the review process.
The signature of the Uruguay Round Agreement on Agriculture (AoA) in 1994 left many NGOs and developing countries with the conviction that their food security concerns had not been sufficiently incorporated. The agriculture talks had been conducted mainly between the major producers and exporters, leaving developing countries with little voice in the matter. The WTO ministerial conference in May 1998 in Geneva is expected to set a timetable for the AoA to be reviewed from 1999. Developing countries, and their billions of small-scale producers and consumers, look to this review to take better account of their interests.
Already, the existing AoA includes provisions that can be used by developing countries to promote food security. These include production policies, where developing countries have more flexibility and longer adjustment periods as well as special and differential treatment in the provision of input and investment subsidies. For consumption, the AoA contains exemptions for developing countries allowing them to subsidize foodstuffs to meet the food requirements of the urban and rural poor at reasonable prices. In market stabilization policies there are several WTO-compatible options including varying the level of tariffs within the bound ceilings, use of food security stocks, discipline on export prohibitions, additional tariffs in the case of import surges or low import prices and also recourse to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) safeguards.
FAO recognizes that these provisions may not always work as they were intended to and there is scope for a re-examination of the experience. In fact, this is written into the AoA itself (Article 20) which makes the continuation of the reform process conditional on a review of:
The experience with implementation of the AoA is being monitored by the WTO Committee on Agriculture, which FAO follows closely.
An essential element of FAO's work is to examine the experience of developing countries in the difficulties they have had in implementing the Agreement and the adjustments they consider necessary in order to gain market access and to safeguard food security concerns. Its aim is also to help developing countries build their own capacity in assessing the impact of proposed changes in the international trading system and be better prepared to negotiate in the next round. This was stressed in Commitment Four of the Summit Plan of Action where governments pledged to "ensure that developing countries are well informed and equal partners in the process".
NGO conferences and statements since the Summit clearly indicate their priority to achieve a fair trading system which respects food security. Here are some of the proposals they have begun to discuss:
During 1998 NGOs expect to assemble the evidence of local impacts of the AoA on food security, showing why such measures are needed. They will also develop and promote proposals of these kinds.
