On the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Wednesday 26 September, the European Commission and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations took a further step in their partnership to fight against serious and recurrent food crises in the world.
The European Commission granted a further €70 million to the FAO as a contribution to the global partnership against hunger. The financing agreement was signed by European Commissioner for International Cooperation and Development Neven Mimica and FAO Director General José Graziano da Silva.
Mimica stated that last year the global network against food crises enabled concerted measures to be taken to mitigate food crises and to avoid the famine that threatened 20 million people in northern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen (see EUROPE 11831).
"We need to scale this up. This additional contribution of €70 million to the FAO will further bolster our partnership and speed up the network's efforts to tackle hunger globally by strengthening links between humanitarian, development and peace actors, as recommended by UN Security Council Resolution 2417", Mimica stated. This resolution condemns the starving of civilians as a method of warfare.
The EU's financing "will help improve the way we detect, prevent and respond to food crises. It will ultimately make hunger-stricken rural communities stronger in the face of emerging food crises", Graziano da Silva stated.
The global network against food crises was launched by the EU, the FAO and the World Food Programme (WFP) at the world humanitarian summit held in Istanbul in May 2016. The network's objective is to become the engine of very close coordination between humanitarian, development and peace actors. Last year, 120 million people in 51 countries were affected by acute food insecurity – in other words, 11 million more people than in the previous year. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)