The European Union, the United States, the African Union, Spain, Germany, Colombia and Nigeria committed themselves in a joint declaration by their leaders to fight in a coordinated way against food insecurity in the most vulnerable countries, on Tuesday 20 September in New York, during the Global Food Security Summit organised on the sidelines of the 77th General Assembly of the United Nations (UNGA-77), which is being held against the backdrop of multiple crises.
“People are suffering and the poorest are the most affected”, said the UN Secretary-General António Guterres in his opening address.
The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, confirmed the EU’s commitment to combat, under UN coordination, “the food insecurity exacerbated by Russia's war in Ukraine”.
Along the same lines, the President of the European Council, Charles Michel, considered it “not acceptable” that “over 200 million people in the world are in acute need of food, and even more may lose their lives to hunger”.
The joint declaration is in line with the UN Summit on Sustainable Food Systems in 2021 in Tokyo (see EUROPE 12917/20).
The signatories stress “the need for sustained and coordinated action to achieve the goals” of this summit “as well as to address immediate humanitarian needs and build more resilient agriculture and food systems”.
They commit to “act with urgency, at scale and in concert, to respond to the urgent food security and nutrition needs of hundreds of millions of people around the world”, along seven lines of action which are:
- make new financial donations to key humanitarian organizations to allow for an increased provision of immediate life-saving humanitarian assistance;
- donate in-kind to major humanitarian organisations to enable the delivery of foodstuffs according to the needs of the affected countries;
- keep food, fertiliser and agricultural markets open and avoid unjustified restrictive measures that increase market volatility and threaten food and nutrition security;
- support an increase in fertiliser production, accelerate and develop fertiliser innovations, support their commercialisation and promote methods to maximise fertiliser efficiency;
- accelerate efforts to support sustainable agriculture and food systems by enhancing agricultural productivity, particularly in the most affected countries, to support their resilience;
- increase investment in research and technology to develop and implement science-based and climate-resilient agricultural innovations, including seeds, that contribute to sustainable and resilient agricultural sectors and food systems;
- monitor markets affecting food systems, including futures markets, to ensure full transparency and share reliable data and information on global food market developments. (Original version in French by Aminata Niang)