FAO-UNDP collaboration gets stronger

15 October 2019, Rome - FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu met with Haoliang Xu, Assistant Secretary General and Director, Policy and Programme bureau of UNDP and Michele Candotti, UNDP Chief of Staff.

The meeting reviewed the two agency’s efforts to strengthen their partnership in integrating sustainable development policy work across the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to continue building on their work, including joint programmes rolled out at country level.

There was agreement on the necessity to put the Memorandum of Understanding signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in September swiftly into action.

The FAO Director-General and the UNDP representatives discussed how FAO’s work could be complementary to UNDP’s global governance work in contributing to food systems policies, and how the two agencies can work together in the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, Small Island Developing States, and countries affected by food crises.

These countries are priority countries of FAO’s Hand-in-Hand initiative – an initiative aimed at bringing countries with the highest poverty and hunger rates together with developed countries to support development efforts in the Least Developed Countries, Landlocked Developing Countries, Small Island Developing States, and countries affected by food crises. Looking ahead, the initiative will then seek to support highly-populated, less developed countries.