The international community is failing to end hunger, evidenced by the tragic crisis in Yemen, the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) José Graziano da Silva told a high-level briefing on food insecurity to Member States at the United Nations in New York.
The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) has launched a recovery programme to help more than 70 000 Indonesian farmers and fishers grow food and fish again following a series of disasters that just over a month ago devastated their lives. The country’s deadliest earthquake in more than a decade, a tsunami and then landslides wracked havoc on people’s homes and lands, and caused widespread loss of life and displacement.
The warning came during the launch of a new regional report revealing that the reduction in the number of hungry and malnourished people - including children - has come to a virtual standstill in many parts of Asia and the Pacific.
Government representatives attending the Ministerial Forum on South-South Cooperation in Agriculture, held in China, have today committed to greater South-South cooperation on agriculture and rural development to increase momentum towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goal of Zero Hunger.
The FAO Food Price Index, a measure of the monthly change in international prices of a basket of food commodities, averaged 163.5 points in October, down 0.9 percent from September and 7.4 percent below its level a year earlier.
NDB President, K V Kamath, and FAO Director-General, José Graziano da Silva, today met in Shanghai to pave the way for a formal agreement which is expected to be finalized soon. It would mark the first such cooperation between the NDB and an UN agency.
The countries involved include Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Ghana, Guinea, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Uganda.
It is essential that parliaments around the world act without delay to adapt and improve legal, political and institutional frameworks to end hunger and ensure nutritious and healthy diets for all
He made the remarks at the Italy-Africa Ministerial Conference in Rome, which includes foreign ministers and other officials from more than 45 African Countries, as well as representatives from the African Union, other international organizations, and the private sector.
A Global Forum in Marrakesh supported by the European Union and organized by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and FAO has heard that development and international financing institutions must collaborate more strategically to leverage private investments.
