CFS events put gender and innovation at the heart of the Sustainable Development Agenda

Promoting innovation and applying digital technologies in agri-food systems, as well as reducing food loss and waste, are vital to stepping up the fight against hunger and poverty. This was FAO's main message at the opening of the High-Level Special Event “Strengthening Global Governance of Food Security and Nutrition” organized by the Committee on World Food Security (CFS).

The European Union was an active participant in the CFS High-Level Virtual Special Event. Speaking at the plenary session on food systems transformation, the European Commissioner for International Partnerships, Jutta Urpilainen, stressed the need to build more sustainable food systems and invest in people, especially rural women and youth on the most vulnerable in food crises with initiatives such as the Global Network Against Food Crises,

Within the CFS, the UN Rome-based agencies (RBAs) together with the European Union, the Government of Spain and the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) organized an event to raise awareness on the importance, relevance and benefits of gender transformative approaches for the achievement of SDG2 and gender equality within the framework of the EU-funded “Joint Programme on Gender Transformative Approaches (GTAs) for Food Security and Nutrition”. The programme aims to trigger transformative changes to empower women, men, boys and girls in households, communities and institutions in rural areas as well as supporting the RBAs to embed GTAs in their policies, programmes, institutional culture and working modalities. The Deputy Director-General of the EU Commission’s Directorate-General for International Cooperation and Development (DG DEVCO), Marjeta Jager, underscored the need for any transition to be gender responsive and gender sensitive. She noted that the EU has reinforced its commitment to integrate gender into all its external actions and to reach a target of gender-responsive components in at least 85 percent of its new programmes.

FAO’s Director for Inclusive Rural Transformation and Gender Equity, Benjamin Davis, said innovative GTAs are powerful tools to achieve gender equality, by addressing not only the symptoms of gender inequalities but also, their root causes, such as unequal power dynamics and social structures, discriminatory social norms, and legislative and policy frameworks, which exacerbate the problem.