Contents
From 10-13 October, the CFS 50th plenary session was held in person at FAO Headquarters in Rome, and virtually. A large CSIPM delegation representing various and diverse constituencies, including: smallholder farmers, pastoralists, fisherfolks, Indigenous Peoples, agricultural and food workers, landless, women, youth, consumers, urban food insecure and NGOs, from all regions of the world, participated to demand transformative policies to tackle the food crisis.
On October 10, the plenary session started with the Ministerial Segment: Coordinating policy responses to the global food crisis – The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022. On behalf of CSIPM André Luzzi from HIC International, the CSIPM Global Food Governance working group and Coordination Committee presented the highlights from the global report Voices from the Ground 2: Transformative solutions to the global systemic food crises.
Agenda item II | Ministerial segment: Coordinating policy responses to the global food crisis – The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022
The previous speakers have highlighted that we are facing a deep and ongoing crisis of hunger, climate chaos and inequalities. If we don’t act it will not be the last. Acting means tackling this crisis in a comprehensive, systemic way to overcome it adequately, and for the long term.
To inform this need, the CSIPM conducted another round of popular consultations. This year we gathered 539 contributions from 72 countries, providing evidence about the impacts on those most affected by the food crisis, the actions they have taken to respond, as well as their concrete demands. The consolidated report ‘Voices from the ground 2: transformative solutions to the global systemic food crises’ tells the stories of sharp increases in already entrenched inequalities in all regions. Stories of:
- Climate chaos, where those most impacted are those who contribute least to Greenhouse Gas emissions.
- Conflicts, wars, sanctions and state violence that persist and expand, while food is being used as a geopolitical weapon.
- Where participation of rights holders in democratic processes is shrinking, and there is a growing disregard for defending human rights.
- Where corporations are reporting record profits, cashing in on government bailouts, rising prices and speculation while the FAO reports record inflation and people starve.
Our results clearly point to interconnected structural issues that reinforce and perpetuate the food crisis, for example:
- Increasing debt that leaves countries without the fiscal and policy space to take crucial actions.
- Countries’ increasing dependency on imports that leaves them vulnerable to global price fluctuations, supply gaps and undermines agrarian communities.
- The continued negotiation of trade and investment deals with no consideration of their impact on the Right to Food and other Human Rights.
Dear delegates, we need urgent short-term measures, but they must not make the crisis worse in the long term. Simply scrambling to find new sources of fertiliser is not compatible with the demand from many producers in our consultation to end the chemical treadmill of production in the long term.
In the last 3 years, we have seen that small-scale producers who use agroecological methods and indigenous knowledge systems continue feeding their communities. Gaps in public support were filled by the solidarity action and innovations of communities, social movements, non-profits, and people’s organisations.
Through our CSIPM popular consultations in the last 3 years, we have brought together UN agencies, academics, the HLPE, Governments, and our constituencies who all have solutions and are keen to coordinate strategies. But where is the CFS?
We urgently demand the CFS take action now. Existing global response spaces are not equipped or mandated to provide ongoing structural and long-term analysis and coordination. The Global Crisis Response Group (GCRG) on food, energy, and finance, provides important exposure to the urgent need to tackle the food crisis, but it is the responsibility of the CFS to provide it with substantive answers based on the CFS role of intergovernmental, inter-agency coordination. . We urgently need a democratic debate anchored in Human Rights approaches that allow most affected countries and constituencies to effectively input into responses.
We add our voices to many delegations here which have also asked in past plenaries that the CFS take up its coordination to the global food crises since the pandemic erupted in 2020 which it regrettably did not. The CFS needs to act now.
In line with the evidence presented in our report, and in line with the CFS strategic objective of being a platform to discuss the food security and nutrition situation and coordinate collective action at all levels, we propose adding an additional paragraph after the present paragraph i) in the decision box, as follows:
The CFS agrees to leverage its convening power to coordinate efforts and start a process, led by a Member State and open to all interested members and participants, to i) share impacts, responses, and strategies to address current and prevent future food crises during this inter-sessional period and ii) design by CFS 51 a plan of action to provide ongoing globally coordinated policy guidance.
Statement delivered by Thierry Kesteloot (OXFAM) | CSIPM Global Food Governance Working Group
We are happy to explain why we want an addition in the proposed text. A lot of time has been wasted in trying to blame who is responsible for the current crisis. But we haven’t had any time to discuss the substance on what and how we can respond to the crisis. This is a shame for the CFS, and we call all Member States, all delegates, to come up with a way forward on what the CFS can do between now and the next session.
On what we heard at the session on Monday, we heard that there was and that there is a strong consensus on the need to act now. That there is a strong consensus that the CFS is the place to respond to the need for a coordinated response to the global crisis. So we listen to you and try to explain and adapt also the proposition we made on the first day.
On the lack of consensus to the Bureau. So what, the delegate from Argentina just said, we have listened to it, but at the same time, it is essential that the Plenary can discuss and make decisions. It is not up to the Bureau trying to hijack, if I may use that term informally, the decisions, the final decisions of the session. It is ultimately to the Plenary to take that decision.
And again, what we want is that the Plenary takes a decision for the next step. What is now on the screen is very, very weak. We know and we participate in the AG & Bureau meetings, and there is no real discussion. We can contribute, but we do not know what Member States think. That is not a way forward. We do participate in the Global Crisis Response Group, this is a way also to inform that it’s not a way to address the global food prices. And that is happening now, and that will still be there tomorrow.
So, within that context, what we would like to add in this specific decision box is an element, an additional element dimension. It is to state that we would start an inclusive Member State lead process to propose to the CFS 51 an approach for providing globally coordinated policy guidance to prevent future crises.
And that is in the mandate of the CFS, which was also a concern raised in the beginning. And we are very open and flexible on how that process is. We don’t request, a negotiated process. We want to activate that platform objective of the CFS. It is not a policy convergence recommendations set, but that we address the issue in a more upfront way and that we are also ready to have for the CFS 51.
Thank you.
- Report Voices from the ground 2: transformative solutions to the global systemic food crises. (September 2022)
- The State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022 (SOFI report)
- Declaration: Grassroots impacts of COVID-19, conflicts, and crises on the right to food and food sovereignty in Africa (September 2022)
- Ending the food emergency and preventing future crises through transformative policies. (July 2022)
- Press release: Civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and International Panel of Experts urge governments to develop responses to the global food crisis. (July 2022)
- What is the CSIPM Global Food Governance Working Group
Agenda item III | Empowering women and girls and promoting gender equality. Update and discussion on the preparation of the CFS Voluntary Guidelines.
On October 11 during the morning session the celebration regarding International Rural Women’s Day, and the discussion on the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment in the Context of Food Security and Nutrition, took place.
Esteemed chair,
The statement we are reading is a summary of a longer statement that is going public now and which after very few days only got over 400 signatures from Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples around the globe.
“How much time do you need for our voices to reach your hearts?”
We are a collective of women and persons, composed of Peasants women; Indigenous Peoples Women; from territories under colonial rule; from war-torn countries; living under occupation; Non-binary people; fisherfolk; forest people; landless people; pastoralists; agricultural and food workers; consumers; people with disabilities, and urban food insecure women. We are people from the furthest South in the globe. We exist in all our diversities, including those who are historically subjected to discrimination due to their sexual orientation and/or gender identity; race, caste; ethnicity; and other characteristics and identities impacted by multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination and violence.
“One woman can go through so many different forms of oppression; this is the reality of millions of people.”
Each form of invisibilization; discrimination and injustice block us from realising our human right to adequate food and nutrition- Our Right to Food- a right that is indivisible and intertwined with other Human Rights.During the development of the Voluntary Guidelines we evidenced multiple forms of violence and discrimination and how they are shamefully a part of our daily lives. We demonstrated how it intersects with other forms of oppression. Our access to natural resources, producing and accessing food in dignity is mercilessly blocked!
The CFS has recognized the need to achieve gender equality and e full realisation of women’s rights. As the foremost inclusive international and intergovernmental platform, the CFS must fulfill its commitment to address gender discrimination as a pressing and urgent issue that obstructs more than half of the world’s population from realising our right to food. All of us are major actors in local food production as well as agents of food and nutrition throughout the globe.
We are experiencing dramatic, inhumane and worrying regression and erosion of women’s rights. It is crucial that we produce effective and evidence-based guidelines. This regression and erosion confirm that patriarchy is still embedded in our societies, hence calling vehemently for the need to achieve a pioneering document on gender equality in the context of food security and nutrition. Initially, the voices of the most affected were in the process of being prioritised. This could have resulted in a strong document that recognized the socioeconomic realities faced by women and non-binary gender people. During the last round of negotiations many key issues that had emerged throughout the process were deleted from the text without any evidence-based argumentation.
We are convinced that a true commitment to gender equality does not avoid divergent positions, but rather engages in a discussion on the issues at hand and consider available evidence. The CFS needs to understand and address them in full. It is imperative for the CSIPM to continue the policy convergence process. We cannot accept that the crucial and alarming issues we presented be made invisible; doing so allows for discrimination and violation to continue unabated. If the convergence process builds on the premise of “sticking to agreed language’ then the patriarchal status quo will never be transformed.
We firmly propose that the CFS organises special sessions in which experts that include: UN Officials, Special Rapporteurs, Independent Experts, UN WG’s, Academics, Specialized Civil Society Organisations and Indigenous Peoples, among others, can present evidence to inform successive debates among CFS Members and participants.
Furthermore, we strongly believe that the CFS needs to conduct sessions to clarify what the CFS understands as UN agreed language, including references to peasants and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas (UNDROP), the CFS mandate and its role vis-à-vis UN agreed language, and how this language should be included in CFS policy negotiations.
Well-informed discussions on these thematic fields will benefit more broadly the CFS’s GEWE policy convergence process, as well as the upcoming CFS workstreams. We are confident these meetings can foster discussion, give guidance on thematic fields identified thus far, and help to find a way forward based on meaningful consensus that will allow for the true realisation of the “Right to Food”, including nutrition for all the people we represent.
Unless we change the way we do things, unless we listen to those who are really the core of the document, unless we can move forward, there is no way we can change things.”
#We Exist!!!!
“MY VOICE DOES NOT ATTACK IF IT IS NOT ATTACKED”
Yesterday we heard many interventions regarding the multiple global crises that are having an unprecedented impact on the right to food and the food security of millions of people. For each layer of these intertwined crises, there are multiple lines of oppression, discrimination and violence, that are both visible and invisible.
The human right to adequate food is the responsibility and political vision of this Committee. Today, we wish to strongly emphasise that this is not possible without the full realisation, full recognition and full protection of women’s rights.
October 15 is the International Day of Rural Women, but it is much more than a mere day on the international calendar or a narrative full of good words yet devoid of intentions. This day represents sweat, life, solidarity, resistance, struggle and commitment. It is a continuous claim for our process toward self-determination. It is a constant resistance against all forms of violence and oppression, which strip us of words, lands, seeds, identities, bodies and a future of freedom. Today more than ever, we, rural women, are still not heard or made visible, and we feel deeply distant from this conference room in Rome.
October 15 is a living day that strongly calls for a radical change of direction. It makes us sad to note that, today, this celebration is devoid of its meaning and value. We have come to know that the convergence process has made us invisible. In this scenario of world food crisis we ask: What is the point of celebrating rural women, if at the same time we are silenced and discriminated against during debates? Will you have the benefit of encouraging this contradiction?
We are women: rural, peasant, fisherwomen, pastoralists, indigenous women, agricultural workers, consumers, women with disabilities, urban women living in food insecurity, landless women, youth. Some of us live in conflict zones. In this face-to-face session today, once again we share our experiences, which have been marked by inequalities. In doing so, we demonstrate our commitment to the CFS, which must continue to claim: We no longer tolerate these oppressions!
We will tirelessly continue to advance in this powerful work of building another rural life, with freedom from violence at its core, and centred on our knowhow and indigenous knowledge, our seeds, our territories, our agroecological practices, our struggles and resistance. Without mutual recognition there is no future. We are your linkage with the realities of life. We represent that tangible potential for systemic change that we so urgently need.
Organised by Canada, the Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights (OHCHR), UN Women, the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM), and the Private Sector Mechanism (PSM), speakers shared what the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Gender Equality and Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment (GEWGE), and the CFS itself, need to fully consider the different dimensions of gender equality, including the recognition of diversities of women and girls, in order to achieve truly inclusive policy outcomes so that all persons, with no exception, can live free of discrimination, hunger, malnutrition, and violence which hampers their right to food.
Moderator: Stefania Tripodi, Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights
Speakers:
- Souad Mahmoud, World March of Women, CSIPM Women and Gender Diversities Working Group
- Jemimah Njuki, Chief of Economic Empowerment from UN Women
- Irina Wandera, Gender Lead from Private Sector Mechanism (PSM)
- Maarten de Groot, Deputy Permanent Representative of Canada
- Paola Romero, FIAN Colombia, CSIPM Women and Gender Diversities Working Group
Agenda item IV: CFS strategic direction toward 2030
Furthermore, the CSIPM also participated during the segments of the CFS Strategic Direction Toward 2030, regarding the Critical Emerging and Enduring issues for food security and nutrition, and Data Collection and Analysis Tools, to present comments on elements of the HLPE report which are key for the upcoming Data Policy Process.
Statement delivered by Nora McKeon | Global Food Governance Working Group
Critical, emerging and enduring issues for food security and nutrition.
The CSIPM expresses its continued deep appreciation of the work of the HLPE as the CFS’s mechanism for providing an evidence basis for the Committee’s policy discussions, unique because of its multisectoral scope, its balanced composition, its interactive approach to developing its reports, and the fact that it recognizes the validity of traditional, Indigenous and practitioner knowledge.
In developing our proposals for the coming MYPOW, 2024-2027, the CSIPM will be drawing on the outcomes of our popular consultation, on which we reported on yesterday, which has gathered over 550 responses from 77 countries. Some important issues voiced repeatedly in the different regions are already mentioned in the HLPE proposed themes, such as climate change, food workers’ rights, conflicts, and the fragility of food systems. The CFS has to take up its responsibility in forbidding that food be weaponized and putting a stop to the ordeal of the millions of people who are suffering the consequences of conflicts and losing their lives on immigration death boats. Other themes that have been raised by our constituencies are not touched on in the HLPE document, such as the importance of social and solidarity economies and popular agrarian reform. We commit to contributing the voices from the ground to framing priorities for the CFS’s work for the coming years.
We will be carrying out our process of internal consultation and will submit our proposal within the timeframe foreseen.
Agenda item V. Data collection and analysis tools
Statement delivered by Patti Naylor (National Family Farm Coalition) | CSIPM Data Working Group
Thank you, Chair. The HLPE report on “Data collection and analysis tools for food security and nutrition” presents important perspectives and incorporates some of our suggestions; for this, we would like to express our appreciation for this ambitious report.
We would also like to offer some comments on elements of the HLPE report that we believe are key for the upcoming process:
The report places data governance at the heart of its proposed framework, opens up the discussion about digitalization, explains and discusses digitalization tools, and raises serious questions regarding the balance of benefits and risks. It acknowledges that emerging digital technologies must be addressed, and elaborates a comprehensive framework for democratizing data collection and data-informed decision-making. It also mentions the importance of grounding the conceptual framework for data collection and analysis in human rights, including the right to food, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and other people working in rural areas.
However, in spite of the undeniable importance of technological developments that have improved people’s lives in many ways, critical qualitative and social and cultural values cannot be properly recognized with the current over-emphasis on the collection of statistical quantitative data. Today, digitalization is being introduced into all aspects of food system activity, from food production to distribution through to consumption, with the ostensible goal of “optimizing” food systems to make them sustainable and efficient.
Data-driven technologies are being introduced by agribusiness companies, often through partnerships with large tech companies. As a result, data on food systems is now emerging as one of the most valuable commodities. This massive accumulation of digital information on land, seeds, production systems, and consumer behavior, and of the capacity to analyze and process data, is concentrating power and wealth into the hands of a few and putting future food security in jeopardy. The report acknowledges the risks of these technologies, including concerns over discrimination based on algorithms, the lack of transparency behind these technologies, privacy, unethical tracking and targeting, and digital lock-ins.
The HLPE offers important elements to begin the conversation on just governance of data, although it falls short of elaborating adequate mechanisms and leaves many questions unanswered.
For instance, How does private ownership and control over these private data gathering skew the sort of evidence available, sideline public and carefully designed data gathering exercises or drive particular conclusions?
How do we prevent powerful data players from scraping and leveraging ‘public’ data sets for private advantage?
The policy recommendations should find answers to these and other issues. We have substantial discussions ahead in order to build a shared understanding on what needs to be done. In that sense, we consider that the timeline for this work stream is unrealistic and strongly recommend, therefore, to review it.
Our constituencies are at the forefront of innovation when it comes to the transformation of food systems towards agroecology and food sovereignty. We are exploring open access technologies, and data collection and analysis methodologies to work for social good, such as solidarity economies. We embrace technologies that are beneficial to our constituencies yet also elevate the knowledge of lived experiences. And, we are deeply committed to the creation and sharing of knowledge at the service of the care and well-being of our communities, our countries, and the planet.
This Data policy process is an opportunity to strengthen democratic, participatory and inclusive decision-making for food security and nutrition.
Thank you
Agenda item VI. Empowering youth in inclusive and sustainable food systems. Endorsement and uptake of the CFS policy recommendations.
On 12 October, during the segment Empowering youth in inclusive and sustainable food systems, the CFS Policy Recommendations on Promoting Youth Engagement and Employment in Agriculture and Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition were endorsed and the CSIPM Youth delegation delivered statements to present their internal assessment as well as the working group’s reservations.
The CSIPM Youth working group endorsed the Policy Recommendations but requested to include their reservations as an Annex to the CFS 50 Final Report.
Song
“Soma Soma Soma” (Study, Study, Study)
Kijana ah. Wazuri wazidi kuzaliwa.Na dunia. Nayo yazidi badilika-it continues to change. Kijana aa. ( Young person. The good ones/ the beautiful are yet to be born. And the world. It continues to change. Young person)
This is a song from my country, Kenya, to encourage young people to study, so that they will be guaranteed a good livelihood in the future. Most of the time, this is not the case.
We are grateful for the opportunity to bring our diverse voices directly here in the CFS. My name is Sefu Sanni, coordinator of the CSIPM youth working group and member of the World March of Women.
What we see today is a global crisis for the youth, who are unemployed, who are dealing with the fact that agriculture is not seen as a means of achieving a sustainable and dignified livelihood; and who are grappling with many issues like rural to urban migration; climate change; not having access to land and natural resources…
Given the scope of the challenges – we had hoped for a more ambitious document that would both identify the major challenges that impede the dignified engagement of youth in food systems and offer meaningful recommendations to address them. But this is not the document we have negotiated.
The CSIPM Youth WG assessed the document and found that while there are various positive aspects, other key elements are missing or are harmful.
- Positive elements in the document:
- the addition of “dignified livelihoods” and not only “decent work”
- recommendations for redistributive reforms that could address gender inequalities, ownership concentration and rural poverty.
- the inclusion of the term situations of marginalization and not just “vulnerability”
- recommendations for gender responsive and gender transformative policies
- recommendations for recognition, compensation and redistribution of unpaid work, including care and domestic work performed mostly by young women
- a reference to informal markets, local food hubs, community-supported agriculture, urban and peri-urban agriculture, and public procurement
2) Missing
Women’s rights, the rights of gender diverse people, and the centrality of peasants’ rights are missing in the document. The right to food sovereignty is overlooked.
There is no recognition of the fact that youth are a diverse and heterogeneous group who suffer intersecting forms of oppression. Historical injustices, structural violence, systemic inequalities, were not recognized.
Planetary boundaries and the ecological footprint of the industrial food system, that youth have globally denounced, is not acknowledged.
Furthermore, the recommendations fail to recognize the transformative potential of agroecology and to see youth as agents of systemic change. Failure to outline pathways for a just transition toward a future in which all people – in all our diversities – can live with dignity, in peace, in harmony with nature, and with our human rights fully realized and protected by States.
3) Harmful
- The separation of the right to food from other basic human rights is harmful because it undermines the principles and multiple instruments of international human rights law.
- Agroecology is the solution to the unsustainable menace of industrial agriculture [that is destroying our food system]. Its potential is not addressed sufficiently in the policy recommendations. On the contrary, the proposal in the policy recommendation is to continue with industrial agriculture, which is extractive and structurally violent. This is the main reason why young people are excluded from food systems and why we fight back against it.
- Finally, the recommendations in the HLPE report were basically ignored in the OEWG discussions and during the negotiations.
For these reasons the CSIPM youth will support the member states’ endorsement of the policy recommendations with strong reservations that will be presented by the other coordinator of the WG.
Thank you, Chair.
I’m Tyler Short. I practice agroecology as a worker on a small-scale family farm, and I am a member of the CSIPM Coordination Committee for the Youth constituency, representing the international peasant movement La Via Campesina.
As Sefu from the CSIPM indicated, our youth working group determined that there are some positive elements in the policy recommendations, and we believe that if States actually implemented these relatively good aspects, then the engagement of youth in food systems could truly improve and expand.
However, there are also several elements of the policy product that will have the opposite effect – that, if implemented, they will limit youth engagement – and in some cases, they might actually cause harm. While we support the adoption of the document, we cannot do so without communicating our reservations. Following the precedent set during CFS47, we sincerely request support from Member States to include an explanatory note containing our reservations as an appendix in the final report of this current Plenary. Though, due to time limitations, I can only outline a few of these. We have provided a full copy to the CFS Secretariat.
First, the CSIPM dissociates with all textual references to youth “in diverse situations and conditions.” This language does not recognize the diversity of youth, especially with respect to multiple, intersecting identities and the identities of persons historically subjected to discrimination based on their sexual orientation and gender identity. The CSIPM also takes serious issue with the exclusion of peasants as a key constituency to be addressed by these recommendations and consulted for their implementation.
Second, the CSIPM notes the great failure of the policy product to explicitly recognize women’s rights. In addition, we disassociate from the caveats attached to human rights in the recommendations, particularly the caveat of “as far as they have been agreed, acknowledged and/or endorsed” before UNDROP, UNDRIP, CEDAW, and other human rights instruments as well as the caveat “as applicable” attached to all references to the right of Indigenous Peoples to free, prior and informed consent. These caveats make the references inconsistent with international law.
Third, the CSIPM disassociates from language calling for “equitable access” to productive resources, rather than recognizing that youth have human rights to these sources of life, including rights to land, seeds and water as enshrined in UNDROP and UNDRIP.
Fourth, the CSIPM disassociates from references to “other innovative approaches” that the recommendations situate alongside agroecology. In conflating these approaches, the recommendations fail to recognize agroecology’s transformative potential.
Fifth, food sovereignty – which was central to the HLPE report on youth but not accepted into the final text of the policy product – incorporates various dimensions of youth agency as well as the fundamental importance of human rights for the radical transformation of food systems. The CSIPM therefore disassociates from the multiple phrases supporting youth entrepreneurship due to the overall lack of balance in the document.
Sixth, the CSIPM dissociates from the weak language on young people’s ownership and control over digital and other tools and their data. The policy recommendations fail to formulate a conception of innovation that acknowledges diverse forms of social, technical and cultural innovations that support transitions towards economies of well-being. Finally, the CSIPM has serious concerns about the treatment of the HLPE report in the negotiation process, in particular the failure to take seriously the HLPE’s scientific assessment of the structural challenges for youth engagement and employment.. The CSIPM therefore disassociates from the language describing this policy product as “informed by” the HLPE report. Had these recommendations truly been informed by the HLPE, they would have offered the steps forward for the urgently needed radical transformation of our food systems.
In conclusion, we want to reiterate that this was a very challenging process for us. But, Mr. Chair, if I may end on a positive note:
As we celebrate 10 years since the adoption of the Tenure Guidelines, we must underscore the crucial importance of the reference to redistributive reforms in Recommendation 3. As the Guidelines indicate, redistributive reforms are particularly relevant due to gender-based inequalities and where a high degree of ownership concentration combines with a significant level of rural poverty attributable to lack of access to land, fisheries, and forests. Comprehensive and genuine agrarian reforms are necessary to ensure that youth – in all of our diversities – can have a dignified future in agriculture and food systems.
Thank you.
- Download the working group’s explanatory note on reservations
- Read the CFS Policy Recommendations on Promoting Youth Engagement and Employment in Agriculture and Food Systems for Food Security and Nutrition
- Public briefing: Key priorities to promote youth engagement and employment in agriculture and food systems
- Learn more about the Youth WG and join
Our rights, our bodies, our future – side event
Youth voices from around the world presented their visions for the future of food systems, as well as the CSIPM Youth Working Group internal assessment of the CFS Youth policy recommendations.
The event was moderated by Moïse Mbimbe, from Action for Community Development (ACD), and the CSIPM Youth Working Group.
Speakers:
- Nadia Lambek, CSIPM Youth Working Group.
- Paola Laini, European Coordination of La Via Campesina, CSIPM Youth Working Group
- Moayyad Bsharat, La Vía Campesina, CSIPM Coordination Committee
- Blanco Kiyongo, COPACO, CSIPM Youth Working Group
- Migdalia “Tai Pelli” Pellicier, International Indian Treaty Council, CSIPM Coordinating Committee
- Michael Fakhri, United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food
- Hannah Wittman, University of British Columbia in Canada, and HLPE representative
- Víctor Suárez Carrera, Vice-Minister of Food Self-Sufficiency, Mexico
- Sefu Sanni, World March of Women, CSIPM Youth Working Group
Special event | Food systems transformations – Building long-term resilience to global crises
On Thursday 13 October, was held the CFS 50 – Special Event entitled “Food Systems Transformations – Building long-term resilience to global crises.”, where Member States and other participants shared information regarding the National Pathways and other activities following the UN Food Systems Summit from 2021.
Statement delivered by Magdalena Ackermann (SID) | CSIPM Global Food Governance Working Group
Thank you for giving us the floor. You highlighted at the beginning of the event that we should also bring forward the challenges before the question. So I would like to highlight some challenges before adding my question to the panel, but also to the Member States here present in the room this morning.
We have been hearing from our constituencies the outcomes and the processes behind these national pathways, the national dialogues. And the results we are seeing are that very often these dialogues and these pathways are very disconnected from the realities on the ground. They are disconnected. They are not addressing the crisis we are facing. And they are very often also fragmented, not only within the countries themselves, but there is a current fragmentation that is increasing among countries.
So the question here today to the panel, to the CFS Member States present here, is, are we going to address the structural barriers to respond to the food crisis? Because food system transformation can only happen if the structural barriers, the structural constraints are addressed.
We, as CSIPM have been putting forward the responses that we need, and the measures that we need in order to address these structural barriers. I will mention four of them. For a long-term food system transformation, they are: breaking food import dependency and supporting domestic food provisioning, transforming food systems through agroecology and territorial markets, implementing food sovereignty and limiting corporate power. And finally ensuring human rights and democratic multilateralism. So my question is, are we going to address this structural barriers here in the CFS, the body, to ensure policy coordination to respond to this food crisis?
Thank you so much.
- https://www.foodsystems4people.org
- Analysis report Risks of the increased systemic corporate capture fueled by the UN Food Systems Summit (UNFSS) and its follow-up. (Liaison group, 2022)
- Briefing paper “Exposing corporate capture of the UN Food Systems Summit through multistakeholderism” (Food Systems 4 People, 2021)
The CFS50 Plenary Session was adjourned as Tyler Short explains in the following video.
These online publications provide an analysis of what is at stake:
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