29 September 2022. When COVID-19 erupted over two years ago, the Civil society and Indigenous People’s Mechanism…
The Guide to Facilitation was launched by the Facilitation Working Group in May 2021. It aims to help support…
An alternative to the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition The present document was written…
CSM Report on Monitoring the use and application of the CFS Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (CFS-FFA) DOWNLOAD THE REPORT IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC! ENGLISH |ARABIC The last decade has witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of protracted crises. The number of displaced people in the world is now roughly 80% higher than in 2010, while internal displacement has reached an all-time high. Protracted crises can often lead to drastic breakdowns in food systems, with extreme levels of food insecurity, malnourishment and hunger. Currently, there are nearly 60 million more undernourished people than in 2014, due in large part to the growing number of conflicts; indeed, the majority of undernourished people live in countries experiencing conflict. Historically, deep discussion on food security in protracted crises was stifled in food policy platforms, as many protracted crises require political solutions. However, these contexts pose unique challenges – both in the duration of food insecurity and the complexity of appropriate remedial interventions – and require unique solutions. For many years, peoples’ organisations from conflict-inflicted regions agitated for a focus on this vital issue. In 2012, the CFS embraced this priority and initiated a process to create a framework to guide comprehensive approaches to food security in these circumstances, which was celebrated as a victory for the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM). The FFA is unique in its emphasis on addressing, resolving and preventing underlying causes of protracted crises, and the food insecurity and malnutrition they so often cause. The FFA is anchored in the human rights and humanitarian law framework which is fundamental to these goals and to ensuring accountability and restitution for those affected by crises. Equally important, the framework recognises that resilience-building must enhance peoples’ capacity to prevent crises, not merely to prepare for or absorb them. As communities affected by crises assert, they should not be left to cope with or adapt to crises but rather be supported to resist their re-emergence and achieve meaningful recovery and development. The FFA provides a much-needed basis for CFS and other policy platforms to better discuss and define comprehensive and coherent responses, the processes required to realise them, and the context-specific methods for conflict-resolution and peacebuilding. This report aims to complement the CFS-led assessment of the implementation of the FFA by providing reflections from civil society organisations on: a) the implementation of and alignment with the FFA (or lack thereof) in policy decisions and actions taken in their home countries experiencing protracted crises; b) key barriers and challenges to use and implementation of the FFA; c) CSO experiences in advocating for the implementation of the FFA; d) coherence between the FFA and pre-existing (binding and non-binding) obligations and commitments of states,
POLICY RESPONSE TO COVID-19 The virus itself does not discriminate, but its impacts do, as the UN Secretary General has pointed out. There is increasing evidence from all parts of the world that the most affected by this health, food and economic crisis are the very same people who have been the most at risk before. The virus opens the eyes of the whole world to the horrific structural inequalities, discrimination, exploitation, racism and sexism that already reigned before, inadequately contested by public policies, and that now exacerbate the effects of the crisis on the most vulnerable in real time. This page intends to gather all publications, statements, contributions and material related to the urgent need of a CFS global policy response to COVID-19. Since March 2019 the CFS has been generating spaces of debate on this pandemic and its impacts on food security and nutrition. As a result of the CFS Chair initiative, the HLPE has produced in 2020 an Issues paper on COVID-19, while policy dialogues events have took place at CFS throughout the year. The CSM, from its side, has been actively engaged and committed to bring to the CFS the urgent policy demands raising from the ground, as the global pandemic continued to impact millions of lives. The CSM has urged CFS members and participants to assume the political responsibility of this crisis, proposing CFS to draft a global policy response to the food crisis that can support governments in their national responses to the crisis. So far this request has remained unanswered. CSM Reports on COVID-19 CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORT! CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORT! CLICK HERE TO READ THE REPORT! CSM Statements on COVID-19 CSM preliminary messages for the CFS Advisory Group and Bureau Meeting on COVID-19 and its impacts on food security and nutrition (19 March 2020) Preliminary CSM messages to the Extraordinary Meeting of the CFS Bureau and Advisory Group (31 March 2020) CSM Key messages on COVID-19 and the policy response to avert the global food crisis (13 May 2020) HLPE Reports relevant to COVID-19 Impacts of COVID-19 on food security and nutrition: developing effective policy responses to address the hunger and malnutrition pandemic (HLPE Issues paper) AR|FR|ES|RU|CH (September 2020) Food Security and Nutrition: building a global narrative towards 2030 (HLPE Report) AR|CH|ES|FR|RU (June 2020) CFS High-Level Events (13-15 October 2020) CFS Chair Summary of the High-level Events October 2020 CSM Press release towards CFS High-level events 12
The COVID-19 food crisis is closely linked to economic, social, gender and environmental injustices of free-market neoliberalism, says a report launched today by the largest international space of grassroots organizations and Indigenous Peoples working to eradicate food insecurity and malnutrition. The crisis will not be fixed by emergency measures or stimulus packages that perpetuate the same model, but only by a human rights-compliant radical transformation of food systems. Between 83 and 180 million more people could be pushed into hunger because of the pandemic, raising the overall number of food insecure people to over 2 billion. Bold actions are required to reverse this trend. Promoting food as a commodity is no longer an option, given the catastrophic impact of industrial agriculture and livestock on people and ecosystems. Food sovereignty is the only solution to this crisis. It guarantees the right to healthy and culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and the right of people to define their own food and agriculture systems. The report shows that the most effective initiatives to address the COVID-19 food crises have come from community efforts – to prevent contagion, protect workers (especially migrants), ensure food and economic security, halt evictions and land grabbing. Despite official recognition that 70 – 80% of the world is fed by small-scale food producers and local food systems, most COVID-19 policies, financial support and economic stimulus packages continue to favour the corporate agro-industrial complex and global supply chains. Small-scale food producers, workers, Indigenous Peoples, the urban food insecure and landless peoples, particularly women, are among the worst affected by the pandemic. Their health, livelihoods, safety and secure access to resources are least protected from against poverty, discrimination and violence. In addition, the report exposes how ecosystem destruction caused by industrial food chains is closely linked to the rise of pathogens such as COVID-19. Rather than promoting an intensive, export-oriented agriculture that perpetuates inequality, human rights abuses and the climate crisis, the report urges States to encourage agroecology, which offers healthy and nutritious food, while also preserving the environment. The COVID-19 pandemic presents a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to accelerate the agroecological transition and reverse decades of neoliberal policies that have exacerbated inequalities and led to official neglect of the public realm integral to building robust health and welfare, and sustainable food systems. In addition, it is high time for development priorities to be redefined in accordance with gender justice and the demands of
Voices from the ground: From COVID-19 to radical transformation of our food systems DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT HERE! Download the Short Policy Report here This report presents the experiences and concerns of millions of small-scale food producers, workers, consumers, women and youth represented in the organizations that participate in the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples Mechanism (CSM)1. As the COVID-19 pandemic swung from country to country in its deadly course this year, the members of the CSM Coordination Committee gathered virtually to discuss how it was affecting their communities and regions. From these discussions emerged the conviction that addressing the pandemic and its implications should be at the center of discourse and action not only in the CSM, but in the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) as a whole. It would be inconceivable for the CFS to fail to assume its responsibility in the face of the worst food-affecting phenomenon to strike humanity since the 2007-2008 crisis that sparked its reform. The World Food Programme (WFP) warns that COVID-19 could almost double the number of people suffering from acute hunger, pushing it to more than a quarter of a billion by the end of 2020.2 Accordingly, over the past months the CSM has advocated that the CFS exercise all of its agreed functions in addressing COVID-19, including that of policy convergence. The cogency of this position has become increasingly apparent as the weeks have passed, bringing evidence that COVID-19 is not a passing episode, but a manifestation and harbinger of deeply-rooted challenges, that globalized food supply systems are subject to multiple fragilities and generate deep and often fatal inequalities, and that a coordinated and coherent global response adhering to agreed principles and guidelines has never been more indispensible. The present report is intended as a contribution to meeting this challenge. The methodology adopted for its preparation has been inclusive and participatory. All CSM Coordination Committee members were asked to reach out to the constituencies and regions they facilitate, responding to three questions: 1) What impacts is COVID-19 having on food systems, food security and the right to food? 2) How are communities, solidarity movements, constituencies reacting to these impacts? 3) What public policy proposals are emerging for building more equitable and resilient food systems? The Women’s and Youth Working Groups of the CSM have made dedicated contributions from the viewpoints of their constituencies elaborating, respectively, a women’s autonomous report and a youth declaration. The hundreds of inputs received have been synthesized into the present report and live links provided to longer documents. Video recordings have been inserted where possible in order to provide readers with the possibility of obtaining more detail and direct testimony. The diversity of style of the sections testifies to the fact that they have been
Gender, COVID-19 and Food Systems: impacts, community responses and feminist policy demands DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE! This publication is a report of the CSM Women’s Working Group. It was authored by Jessica Duncan and Priscilla Claeys in consultation with the Women’s Working Group. “We won’t go back to normality, because normality was the problem.” With this sentence projected on the facade of a building in Santiago of Chile in March 2020, grassroots and feminist movements clearly articulated their perspective on the COVID-19 crisis. This is a profound and unprecedented global crisis that is exacerbating and leveraging pre-existent systemic forms of patriarchal inequalities, oppressions, racism, colonialism, violence and discrimination that cannot be tolerated. With this sentence capturing the public space and visibility of a building, feminist movements also proclaimed that they would not surrender to isolation and the silencing of their voices, struggles and demands during this pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic has uncovered the structural vulnerabilities and weaknesses of our food systems. Neoliberalism, global capitalism and feudalism[i] have been eroding for decades our social protection and welfare systems, fostering the structural colonial deprivation and grabbing of natural resources of the global south, violating human rights, harming ecosystems and biodiversity and strengthening the sexual division of labor, leaving women to face alone the burden of productive and social reproductive work. From a feminist perspective, the COVID-19 crisis is indeed a global care crisis, where states and governments have failed to prioritize people’s interests, while (transnational) corporations are increasingly capturing and dismantling the public commons to impose their own private interest. This pattern is also well reflected in the current production and consumption food systems. It has been suggested that the COVID-19 pandemic may add between 83 and 132 million people to the total number of undernourished in the world in 2020 depending on the economic growth scenario.[ii] Women are indeed positioned, due to their gender-assigned roles, to be disproportionately impacted, as they are literally on the front line of the crisis.Women and girls are the majority of food producers and providers for their households, they are the majority of nurses, care and social workers, food and agricultural workers and teachers. Yet, they have been consistently overlooked and invisible in research and responses to the pandemic. Gender inequality and discrimination is shaping, and will continue to shape, the COVID-19 pandemic in tangible and significant ways. The collective spirit and emotional intensity generated during
Protecting our rights and enabling our agency for the present and future of our health, societies, cultures, knowledges and ecosystems DOWNLOAD THE POLICY DECLARATION HERE CSM Youth Working Group October 2020 Covid-19 and the responses of governments are having devastating impacts on young people and our communities around the globe. We are experiencing the combined impacts of an acute health crisis, a current and looming food crisis, and a climate crisis – all illustrative of wider systems crises. Covid-19 has shown that neoliberal food, economic, governance and development/production systems are not working. Not only are they part of the problem – creating the underlying hunger, poverty, environmental destruction and social exclusion that responses to Covid-19 have exacerbated – but they are unable to offer solutions to these unfolding crises. In this time of multiple crises, Youth are facing several challenges. As markets fail, schools close, and jobs disappear, we see opportunities and our futures crumble away. However, we are not standing idly by. We, as a diverse community of Youth from around the globe, are active in developing solutions to the challenges facing our communities: we are organizing ourselves to continue providing food for our communities and caring for the elderly as well as our children; we are shortening the distance from producer to consumer; we are defending school feeding programs and local markets; we are rebuilding rural economies and territories, ensuring youth can stay and return in the countryside; we are caring for and healing the earth by growing nourishing food through agroecology; we are standing up to domestic violence against women and girls as well as racism, homophobia, xenophobia and the patriarchy; and, we are defending workers’ and migrants’ rights as well as the rights of rural people. We are also imagining new ways to organize the world: envisioning healthy, sustainable and dignified food systems, and taking steps towards achieving them. In our own constituencies and territories, and now here at the CFS, we are elaborating public policy demands to ensure that radical transformations occur NOW, before it is too late. Young people are often presented as beacons of hope for the future. The expectation is on us to imagine and enact solutions to the world’s problems that we have inherited. We do have solutions, but to bring them forward, we need a seat at the table. Similarly, young people are often depicted as a monolith – with
CFS Policy Outcomes Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crisis Principles for Responsible Investment in Agriculture and Food Systems Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of the Tenure of land, fisheries and forests in the context of food security (VGGT 2012) Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition (last updated in 2017) Online GSF Voluntary Guidelines to support the progressive realisation of the right to adequate food in the context of the national food security Sustainable forestry for food security and nutrition (CFS44, 2017) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Sustainable agricultural development for food security and nutrition: what roles for livestock? (CFS 43 2016) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Connecting Smallholders to Markets (CFS 43, 2016) Policy Recommendations Water for food security and nutrition (CFS 42, 2015) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Food losses and waste in the context of sustainable food systems (CFS 41, 2014) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Sustainable fisheries and aquaculture for food security and nutrition (CFS 41, 2014) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Biofuels and food security (CFS 40, 2013) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Investing in smallholder agriculture for food security (CFS 40, 2013) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Food Security and Climate Change (CFS 39, 2012) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Social protection for food security (CFS 39, 2012) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report How to increase food security and smallholder sensitive investments in agriculture (CFS 37, 2011) Policy Recommendations Gender, food security and nutrition (CFS 37, 2011) Policy Recommendations Price volatility and food security (CFS 37, 2011) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report Land tenure and international investments in agriculture (CFS 37, 2011) Policy Recommendations || HLPE Report
CSM Annual Report 2019 DOWNLOAD THE REPORT HERE 2019 was a year of trials and tribulations for global food governance. We witnessed unprecedented attacks on multi-lateral intergovernmental spaces, including the CFS, and new attempts of corporate capture of the United Nations. And yet, amidst a new world food crisis and collapsing ecosystems, the number of food insecure people across the world is growing. In 2018, the CSM expressed loud and clear that it was high time to recommit to the CFS and its vision. In 2019 the CSM asserted once again that the change of direction we recommitted to is vital. Transformational action cannot wait any longer! The CSM Report 2019 sets out to be a shared tool that covers all the work carried out by the CSM Coordination Committee (CC) members and CSM participating organizations throughout 2019, as well as an exercise of accountability and reporting. Our intention in writing this document is also to express our gratitude and appreciation for the incredible work carried out by CSM participating organizations at local, regional and global levels, day in and day out, in the struggle for the right to food for all. As in previous years, a draft of this report was presented and discussed at the CC meeting and CSM Forum of October 2019, and then further revised and completed. The first chapter summarizes the CSM key messages conveyed to the CFS Plenary 2019, and includes an outline of CSM engagement with CFS policy processes, then further developed throughout the second chapter. The third chapter provides an overview of the work done by the CC members and participating organizations to ‘bring Rome home’, and to bring the realities and struggles ‘from home to Rome’. It shows the efforts made at all levels to promote the use, application and monitoring of CFS policy outcomes, and to raise awareness on the CFS and its relevance for peoples’ struggles. It highlights the work done by local level actors to collect demands, requests and inputs, to then channel them to the CFS, through the space facilitated by the CSM. Additionally, in this report you will find: an overview of the key decisions taken by the CC; the CSM financial overview; and a summary of the outcomes from the CSM Southern Africa sub-regional meeting that took place in March 2019. The results of the CC renewal selection process that took place from February