FAO Director-General invites Tajikistan to participate in Hand-in-Hand Initiative

29 January, 2020, Rome - FAO Director General QU Dongyu met today with Tajikistan’s Deputy Foreign Minister Muzaffar Huseynzoda.

During the meeting, the FAO chief presented the UN agency's new Hand-in-Hand Initiative, inviting Tajikistan to participate in it, both as a recipient and as a donor country.

Highlighting the importance of strengthening collaboration between FAO and Tajikistan, QU welcomed the possibility of a visit of the President of Tajikistan Emomali Rahmon to the FAO headquarters and extended the invitation to the newly appointed Minister for Agriculture of Tajikistan Emomali Salimzoda to attend the next FAO Regional Conference for Europe in May 2020.

For his part, the Deputy Minister welcomed FAO’s technical support in the country, and underlined that further collaboration could be explored in the field of ecological farming, soil and water management, food security, forestry and climate change adaptation.

He also invited the Director-General to visit Tajikistan next June on the occasion of the Second High-level International Conference on the International Decade for Action “Water for Sustainable Development, 2018-2028”.