- Statement delivered by Lisa Shahin during CFS 52 agenda item II on Coordinated policy responses to the food crisis – the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2024.
- Lisa Shahin is a CSIPM Coordination Committee member facilitating the participation for the West Asia sub-region. Member of the Arab Group For The Protection of Nature and Arab Network for Food Sovereignty.
Transcription
For the past year, we have witnessed the use of starvation as a weapon on full display, as a genocide unfolds right before our eyes. Alongside the indiscriminate bombing, the Israeli occupation has targeted Gaza’s agricultural sector, destroying over 80% of local food systems. They have blocked the entry of aid, food, and water. Farmers and their families are being targeted and killed, land and water poisoned by white phosphorus. The roots of Palestinian food sovereignty eradicated.
Gaza is now experiencing the fastest onset of famine in post-war history. But let me be clear: this did not start last October. It is, in fact, an intensification of a long-standing, systematic strategy of collective punishment, ethnic cleansing, and weaponization of food.
Likewise, in Lebanon, the Israeli occupation has intensified its attack on agricultural lands, employing a scorched earth policy, destroying everything in its path, including crops, livestock, and infrastructure.
In Yemen, the suspension of most food aid has left 17 million people facing crisis-level or acute food insecurity.
In Sudan, more than half the population are experiencing crisis levels of hunger. In Congo, 23.4 million people are facing Crisis and Emergency levels of food insecurity, the combined populations of New York, London, Paris and Rome together.
Yet, we are still asked to remain “diplomatic”, avoiding any mention of this genocide, or any other conflict, in our discussions. But what has being “diplomatic” achieved? It has led to impunity and a systemic failure of people, international law and the right to food.
We cannot continue to ignore or remain silent about the structural causes that have brought us to this point. Settler colonialism, occupation, wars, and protracted crises.
Even worse, member states continue to ignore their extraterritorial obligations and are complicit to genocide under International Humanitarian Law, by financing, arming, and fueling the war of starvation in Gaza.
We have the Right to Food guidelines and the Framework for Action in Protracted Crises, adopted by member states in this Committee. Yet, there has been little to no political will to implement these commitments.
We, as most affected communities, will not remain silent in the face of your inaction and impunity. We demand an end to the genocide and the weaponization of food. We demand Member States to take decisive action.
We recall that the CFS was reformed in 2009 – in response to a global food crisis – to fight fragmented action. But today again – or still – we find ourselves in a severe, global multifaceted food crisis and this Committee has to do its job. Coordinated policy responses have never been more needed: the credibility of the entire UN system is at risk. The CFS is the most legitimate space for this objective due to its inclusiveness—particularly of those most affected—its human rights framework, and the evidence base from the HLPE.
For this reason, we welcome the summary report on the workstream on “Collaborative governance for coordinated policy responses to emerging global food crises”. This platform workstream enables the CFS to reach out to other UN spaces with which collaboration must be built to find solutions to the underlying causes of food crises, bridging gaps between Rome, Geneva and New York. Among the key topics proposed for attention in coming meetings in the summary report, the CSIPM prioritizes: protracted crisis and peace-building, debt burdens (connecting with the 2025 Financing for Development Conference), trade and overcoming food import dependency, and climate change and biodiversity (in collaboration with the Rio COPs). We insist that it is necessary to ensure interpretation for this workstream since it is intended to provide priority voice for most affected countries and constituencies – precisely those who cannot be expected to express themselves in English.
As always, the CSIPM brings to the CFS the ‘voices from the ground’ of our constituencies: smallholder and peasant farmers organisations, pastoralists, fisherfolk, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth, agricultural and food workers, consumers, landless, and urban food insecure. In our meetings over the past days we have shared the intersectional crosscutting problems we are facing and the solutions we propose. We have denounced conflict and violence in all its forms including the violated rights of workers, Indigenous Peoples and other constituencies. We have denounced the specific impact of the weaponization of food on women, as the main food providers for their families and communities. We have denounced corporate-led pressure to ‘modernize’ our food production, promoting industrial, export-oriented agriculture rather than the food sovereignty of our peoples. We have called out untenable urban sprawl. We have exchanged our experiences with the impacts of climate change and the need to promote our peasant agroecological principles.
For us, land, oceans, rivers, forests, seeds and all of nature are the very basis of life, but they are also contested resources. Land and ocean grabs and unequitable land distribution are root causes of increased food insecurity. We therefore welcome and support Colombia’s proposal to organize a second International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development, as part of the commitment towards the realization of the Right to Food, further advancing the uptake of CFS products, such as the VGGTs.