FAO statement at the 2022 ECOSOC Management Segment

United Nations Economic and Social Council – Management Segment

FAO Statement following the presentations of the annual reports of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and
UN Nutrition, under the joint consideration of agenda items 10, 11 and 13

Delivered by Lucas Tavares, Senior Liaison Officer, FAO Liaison Office with the UN in New York

As delivered

Thank you, Madam Chair.

On behalf of FAO, I want to thank the Chairs of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) and of UN Nutrition for their reports. 

Hunger and malnutrition are driven by a set of interrelated drivers, including economic slowdowns, rooted inequalities, extreme weather events, climate change, and conflict. The COVID-19 pandemic, and more recently, the war in Ukraine, worsened what was an already difficult situation, as the Chairs of CFS and UN Nutrition already noted.

Responding to global food insecurity and malnutrition requires urgent, coherent, bottom-up and multidimensional actions involving different partners at different levels. FAO’s strategic framework and vision for nutrition contributes to this response. And as the two reports outline, the CFS and UN Nutrition are part of these efforts. We welcome their reports and their work. 

FAO, with IFAD, UNICEF, WFP and WHO constitute the core membership of UN Nutrition and have collectively set out an ambitious strategy for 2022–2030, aiming at more coherent policy and action in nutrition from the United Nations. We are now working together on the strategy’s implementation. Its priorities include the importance of alignment and convergence in key global processes and supporting the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition. 

In this context, let me mention that the third report of the Secretary-General on the Nutrition Decade, prepared by FAO and WHO, was submitted to the General Assembly in April. The report shares the progress achieved so far and identifies priorities for nutrition action for the next years. 

Chair, 

I also want to congratulate the Committee on World Food Security for its work and its Chair, Mr. Gabriel Ferrero, for his election in October. As the FAO Director-General said at the committee’s last session, the CFS is a crucial partner of FAO for achieving successful agrifood systems transformation. 

The CFS, hosted in FAO, offers the broad and inclusive forum to discuss food security and nutrition that we need. And it has a key role to play in the follow-up to the Food Systems Summit. We look forward to working together in this process.

The CFS also continues to produce relevant policy documents and guidelines, supported, among others, by its High-Level Panel of Experts and by UN entities, including FAO. 

As an example of our support, in collaboration with members of UN Nutrition, FAO developed an evidence platform to facilitate the uptake of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition. 

We now provide technical support to the development of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in the context of food security and nutrition and to the policy recommendations on promoting youth engagement in agriculture and food systems.

Chair, to end, and taking advantage of the presence of the CFS Chair in the room, I would like to ask Mr. Ferrero to elaborate on two issues. 

First, given the interrelated drivers of hunger and malnutrition and the need for holistic responses, how is the CFS engaging with other relevant UN processes, such as the recently concluded Conference of Partiers of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification? 

And second, may I ask if Mr. Ferrero could share what are the Committee’s main priorities in the coming months?

Thank you for your attention.