FAO speaks on right to food and UN declaration on rights of peasants

“Ensuring the right to food and of peasants and rural workers are necessary steps to fulfill the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development,” said Carla Mucavi, Director of the FAO Liaison Office to the United Nations in New York, during the Seventy-third Session of the United Nations General Assembly Third Committee meeting on Promotion and Protection of Human Rights at the UN Headquarters on 29 October.

Mucavi highlighted that, as noted in the report of the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, agricultural workers are amongst the most food insecure despite their contribution to food production and that rural families are often forced to leave their homes because of factors such as prolonged or recurrent climate extremes and conflicts.

She also welcomed the report of the Chair of the open-ended working group on the declaration on the rights of peasants and other people living in rural areas, expressing FAO’s continued support to implementing the declearation, noting that the UN Decade on Family Farming can provide an operational framework to act on some of the issues raised in the declaration.

Mucavi also recalled the connections between the Right to Food and the Declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas with principles and guidelines adopted by FAO Governing Bodies at the Committee on World Food Security.

Finally, Mucavi invited the Committee to participate a high-level briefing on the state of food security, nutrition and agriculture in the world, to be led by the Director-General of FAO and the principals of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) and the World Food Programme (WFP) on 6 November in New York.