FAO statement at ECOSOC HAS – High Level Panel 1: Humanitarian assistance and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic: working together to ensure that children and women are not left behind

 

High-level panel discussion 1

Humanitarian assistance and lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic:
working together to ensure that children and women are not left behind

Statement by FAO (as prepared), delivered by

Conor Elliott, Humanitarian and Resilience Programme Officer, FAO Liaison Office with the UN in New York

 
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Thank you for giving FAO the opportunity to take the floor.

While it is difficult to disentangle the precise effects of COVID-19 from other shocks and stresses, it is clear the pandemic has had a compounding effect on pre-existing and ongoing drivers of food insecurity. And once again, women, children, youth and indigenous people were the worst affected.

At the global level, the gender gap in the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity grew even larger in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, with the prevalence of moderate or severe food insecurity being 10 percent higher among women than men in 2020, compared with 6 percent in 2019. This is an issue that needs close attention and action.

Women were hit hard by the pandemic – more likely to lose income in informal work and hit by substantial drops in remittances. Coverage of essential nutrition services declined by 40 percent around the world.

FAO has been implementing its COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme since the start of the pandemic and has extended this comprehensive programme to July 2023.

FAO's goal has been to ensure the most vulnerable could access food, support livelihoods so people can continue to produce food, and ensure continuity of markets, while reducing the risk of transmission of COVID-19 to food chain actors.

Alongside on-the-ground livelihoods support, one major effort has been the improved measurement of multiple risks and real-time assessment and monitoring of the impacts of COVID-19 in 26 food crises countries, through FAO's new Data-in-Emergencies Hub.

This data is critical in providing up-to-date risk profiling; monitoring the impact of shocks on agricultural livelihoods; and ex-post impact assessments to provide a deeper understanding of the impact of shocks and crises on agricultural livelihoods.

The real-time monitoring has enabled FAO to redesign its programmes to addresses both direct effects of the virus and secondary impacts on food security and nutrition.

FAO actions were adapted to integrate COVID-19 risk mitigation measures and to reach groups most affected by COVID-19-related restrictions and increased prices of food and agricultural inputs (such as pastoralists, displaced populations and female headed households).

Thank you.