The partnership agreement, signed by Neven Mimica, European commissioner for international cooperation and development, and José Graziano da Silva, director general, FAO, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, contributed to the Global Network against Food crisis to promote sustainable solutions to food crisis.
Mimica said, “Last year, the Global Network against Food crisis allowed us to take concrete and concerted steps to mitigate food crisis and avert famine in northern Nigeria, South Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. And we need to scale this up.”
“Our 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,” he added.
The Resolution condemning the starving of civilians as a method of warfare signalled a shared ambition to prevent and eradicate conflict-induced hunger.
Graziano da Silva said, “The EU’s contribution will help improve the way we detect, prevent and respond to food crisis. It will ultimately make hunger-stricken rural communities stronger in the face of emerging food crisis. Investing in resilience is key to fighting hunger today and in the future.”
“In view of the magnitude and persistence of food crisis, we need to invest more in resilience interventions and create stronger alliances with all parties – humanitarian, development and peace actors – working together to stem hunger,” he added.
The extra funding will enable the EU, FAO and their partners to roll out resilience interventions wherever they are needed; to produce food security and resilience analyses to better target actions against hunger; and to strengthen coordination, policy, prevention and response mechanisms at country and global level to better tackle deepening food crisis. Moreover, the agreement will complement interventions in 12 countries hit by food crisis to address the root causes of hunger.
The EU contribution has come at a time when conflict and extreme climatic events are on the rise, leaving millions of people hungry and forcing a record number of people — 68 million — to leave their land and homes.
Over 120 million people in 51 countries were affected by acute food insecurity in 2017 — that’s 11 million more people than the year before. Acute food insecurity means hunger so severe that it poses an immediate threat to lives or livelihoods.
The EU, FAO and UN World Food Programme (WFP) launched the Global Network against Food Crisis at the World Humanitarian Summit in 2016. Having begun with three founding partners two years ago, the Network is expanding and aims to become the engine behind promoting closer coordination between humanitarian and development agencies and peace actors.
The Partnership Agreement builds on previous successful EU-FAO partnerships and interventions, and is a testimony to the organisations’ continued efforts to build resilience to food crisis for all – at family, community and country level.
