CSOs, Indigenous Peoples Urge Food Crisis Action

HIC representatives André Luzzi of Brazil and Hala Barakat of Egypt have taken on new roles with the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS). Luzzi and Barakat have facilitated the Urban Food Insecure constituency of the CSIPM since 2019 and 2021, respectively and, as of March 2022, they are serving as co-facilitators of the CSPIM Global Food Governance Working Group. HIC-HLRN Program Advisor Heather Elaydi is also a member of this Working Group.

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Global Food Governance Working Group has been drawing attention to the impact of the pandemic on food systems, publishing Voices from the Ground: from COVID-19 to Radical Transformation of our Food Systems, in 2020.

Food prices have been drastically increasing since the start of the pandemic, and the Russian war in Ukraine has added a new layer to the complex food systems crisis. In response, the CSIPM Global Food Governance Working Group has convened several meetings to coordinate a response to the crisis, and wants the CFS to convene an Extraordinary Plenary to address the new global emergency. To that end, CSIPM has issued an open letter, addressed to CFS Chair Gabriel Ferrero, requesting a call for the extraordinary session. It urges:

With the war in Ukraine, a new layer of global food crisis is unfolding and heavily impacting on food-dependent low- and middle-income countries and our constituencies, on top of the lasting effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, multiple conflicts and protracted crises, deep inequalities, and climate change.

In our view, an Extraordinary Plenary of the CFS should be convened as soon as possible to address the new global emergency and bring together the views and demands of all concerned countries, communities, and actors for a globally coordinated policy response. Special space and attention should be given to those countries and populations most affected by the new crisis. Governments from food-dependent low- and middle-income countries, from countries with high rates of food insecurity and those hosting many refugees should have a leading role in this Extraordinary Plenary, in sharing their analysis and proposals, and drafting the conclusions.

The alarming situation requires an immediate, sound, inclusive, effective, and globally coordinated policy response for the short-, mid-and long-term. It is time for the CFS, as the foremost inclusive intergovernmental and international platform on food security and nutrition, to play a central and coordinating role in the policy responses to this new layer of crisis.

Read the full open letter here.

Note: The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security has announced a change to the Mechanism’s acronym, now CSPIM. This reflects the addition of “Indigenous Peoples’” to the official name.