Rome, 6 April 2022
Esteemed CFS Chair, Dear Gabriel,
The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM) for relations with the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) sends you this Open Letter as an expression of deep concern for our constituencies, and with a sense of extraordinary urgency. 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.
The uncertainty and complexity of intertwined multiple crises require a diversity of knowledge and perspectives, and inclusivity of actors that are essential to frame adequate responses. The CFS is well-positioned to address the complex crisis by convening all relevant actors, including humanitarian, financial, trade, development, energy institutions, and stock exchanges.
Global discussions on policy responses to this new emergency need to fully include our voices as the most important actors for food security and nutrition: peasants and smallholder farmers, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, pastoralists, food, and agricultural workers, landless, fisherfolks, consumers, and urban food insecure.
In taking up a coordination role, the CFS can also make use of its policy outcomes directly related to food price volatility, social protection, protracted crises, smallholder agriculture and access to markets, and more generally the Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition as the normative compendium of the CFS.
The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism stands ready to support the CFS in taking significant and decisive steps towards an immediate, sound, inclusive, effective, and globally coordinated policy response to the new layer of global food crisis, in line with its mandate to promote food security and nutrition, and the progressive realization of the human right to adequate food for all.
With kind regards,
The Coordination Committee of the
Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism for relations with the CFS