Forum Umwelt & Entwicklung – successful Plenary Session of the UN Committee on World Food Secu-rity (CFS)

With the participation of Parliamentary State Secretary Ophelia Nick in the Plenary Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), the German Federal Government and the Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture (BMEL) underscored the relevance of the CFS and the Right to Adequate Food. Especially in times of geopolitical confrontation, these signals from the Federal Government, which emphasise its own 20 years of efforts addressing the topic, are of particular value. The coherent presentation of the BMEL and the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) was also encouraging.

One important outcome of the CFS 52 is that resolutions were adopted which demand that food and water not be used as weapons in the wars in Gaza and elsewhere, and to at last point to other conflicts and wars which have led to a strong increase in hunger world-wide: in Haiti, Lebanon, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen.

Furthermore, for the first time, a formulation was found referring to war and Ukraine in one sentence which was accepted by Russia. All this may sound not so relevant, but at the diplomatic level, it represents considerable progress – progress which was only made possible through Chairwoman Nosipho Jezile never relieving states of their responsibility to negotiate and reach compromises.

Positive impulses from the Global South
 

In addition, the CFS supported various initiatives from countries in the Global South, such as Colombia’s proposal to organise an international conference on agricultural reform and rural development (ICARRD+20). The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) were called upon to support the preparation of the conference.

The event is to give further impulses to the implementation of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (VGGT). This also addresses a wide range of demands by smallholders, fishers, pastoralists, Indigenous Peoples and other groups organised as rightsholders in the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM).

The official presentation of the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty (GAHP) by the Brazilian government constitutes a further positive impulse. For the Alliance regards itself as committed to the CFS and the latter’s human rights-based approach, which is based on the premise that the countries and people affected by hunger themselves have to formulate and implement the answers to eliminating hunger. In this regard, Brazil sees its national policies, which build on inclusivity and the Right to Food, as an example to be followed in the Alliance. Already once before – prior to the right-wing radical Bolsonaro government – Brazil had succeeded in eliminating hunger in this manner.

Inequality in the world food system
 

The CFS Member States responded to increasing inequality in many countries and regions by adopting policy recommendations to reduce inequalities in the food system. Violent wars, conflicts and occupations, unfair trade relations, high state debts and indecent working conditions are examples of severe imbalance in power relations within and outside food systems and in and between countries.

One novelty is that with these policy recommendations, for the first time, a CFS Policy Document is addressing the influence of trade relations and debt on food insecurity, thus initiating an important debate on the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines on the Right to Adequate Food.

Worrying trends in the FAO
 

However, worrying trends are coming from the FAO in particular. For instance, FAO’s Director-General Qu Dongyu once again staged the World Food Forum (WFF), which does not negotiate any multilateral resolutions, for a whole week on the occasion of World Food Day. But this forum is above all more of an event at which, instead of taking part in political negotiations, participants sing and dance together. That Civil Society and the Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSIPM) were denied the opportunity to hold their Annual Forum in the run-up to the CFS in the FAO, as they had in the past, shows how much the FAO and its Director-General care about active participation of rightsholders in political decision-making.

These trends in the FAO need to be countered by states at last establishing the Right to Food in the FAO’s core budget and once again shifting the CFS Plenary Session date back to the week World Food Day is held in.

Authors:

Stig Tanzmann (Brot für die Welt), Jan Dreier (FIAN Deutschland), Lena Bassermann (TMG) and Paula Gioia (Arbeitsgemeinschaft bäuerliche Landwirtschaft) belonged to the German Civil Society Delegation attending CFS 52. In addition, Rahel Böhme (BUNDjugend Arbeitskreis Landwirtschaft) and Jonathan Effe (Junges Bioland e.V.) were part of the young delegation of the BMEL at the WFF and the CFS.