Toward Reforming FAO and Resisting Corporate Capture
Over the past decade, the policies of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the UN (FAO) have significantly regressed in respecting and promoting the Strategic Partnership with Civil Society Organizationsand social movements adopted in 2013, which focuses on five strategic objectives to eliminate poverty and food insecurity. Therein, FAO had pledged to build an enabling environment for dialogue between governments and non-state actors.
Multiple crises have significantly damaged our food systems and left them facing long-term fragility. FAO has not promoted democratic frameworks for policy- and program-making to confront these crises. This decline has broken the promise to ensure that food remains a right for all, rather than a commodity enjoyed by the few.
Civil society perceives stakeholder engagement by replacement in food system policy making and governance processes. The World Food Forum (WFF) in 2021, alongside the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and the World Food Summit (WFS) form the precedents. These new entities shaping food-related policy have marginalized the UN’s premier food policy-making organ in favor of non-state corporatist actors.
The global agri-business, agrochemical, pharmaceutical, and technology conglomerates determine UN implementation function, notably post-pandemic. Even at the regional level, the official biennial conferences of ministers of agriculture organized by FAO to assess food security policy have become notably subject to private-sector dominance and priorities, and civil society with policy competence are being replaced by hand-picked charities.
In particular, the strategy of partnership and cooperation between FAO and CSOs in the Near East and North Africa (NENA) region has been affected by the same trend of diminishing the role of civil society organizations in favor of corporate actors. Continued consultations with civil society organizations in the form of workshop exercises related to food security since 2016 have remained largely symbolic. The lone FAO officer in the consultation, a senior policy advisor, would invariably absent the room when CSOs discussed FAO policy issues.
Neither the series of reports nor the symbolic statements submitted to the organization`s official regional conferences have produced any meaningful influence on the organization`s decision makers, nor have they even mitigated policy proposals that conflict with civil society`s priorities and positions.
Among these are such guidance as “Support for Smallholder Family Farms” and “Investments in Agricultural Water.” With these, FAO, together with contractors, promotes privatization of public water in the agricultural sector. Policy advice in state support of family farming (but not necessarily family farmers) by pushing small-scale family farmers and food producers eventually to “transition out of agriculture.” That advice makes way for corporate land holders, while ignoring these producers` own immediate priorities: Crushing debt, the absence of a living wage, denial of their human rights to organize, and protection from the harassment they face from their own government institutions.
Meanwhile, the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and FAO aligned to recommend dismantling effective water-user associations in favor of private interests. Visions for food systems grounded in community-led and Indigenous Peoples` efforts, based on agroecology, and committed to climate justice, accountability, and food sovereignty remain only symbolically present in FAO langage.
Numerous proposals have emerged from civil society and social movements, calling for the reform of FAO, viewing this as a political opportunity to meet the need for greater coherence across the Rome-based agencies of the UN system, along its three cardinal pillars: Human rights, development, peace and security. These proposals also emphasize the importance of a strong, multilateral UN system in which member states retain decision-making authority with accountability.
IPC has established a committee to study FAO reform, building on the common foundation of the UN Charter and its three pillars, and to develop a coherent approach that considers both FAO`s functions and the role of civil society as effective partners.
CSOs seek solutions to structural incoherence
- Empowering authentic agricultural unions as the “platform” representing smallholder farming families;
- Helping FAO recognize and respect local civil institutions as part of a national/regional approach grounded in peoples’ right to self-determination;
- Developing a methodology for transitioning from temporary relief and charitable roles to development-oriented roles;
- Activating food sovereignty principles, including sovereignty over national wealth and natural resources;
- Shortening food-supply chains;
- Pursuing policy coherence as defined in the FFS (rather than the diversionary “Triple Nexus” subsequently launched by the OECD);
- Coherence and pooling of resources, including scattered data across the System;
- Addressing the phenomenon of land-tenure concentration arising from crises and conflicts (as evidenced by international jurisprudence).
Other normative frameworks for FAO and CSO mutual reference:
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