[30/11/2009] GENEVA / BRUSSELS – The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food was in Rome for the World Summit on Food Security.
©FAO/Alessandra Benedetti
Back from Rome, the Special Rapporteur recapitulates the situation: “We now have a historic opportunity to fix the system of global governance, in order to ensure that the past trends are reversed. If we fail to seize this moment, we will be judged harshly by those who will succeed us: the generation which will inherit the world we are shaping will simply not understand. We must start the year 2010 not only with a functioning CFS but also with a genuine agenda to address the gaps in international governance. The real work starts now!”.
Prof. Olivier De Schutter talked with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, commending Brazil’s efforts to reach an ambitious reform of the Committee on World Food Security.
The Special Rapporteur told delegates gathered in plenary session that the Declaration of the Summit was ‘far from perfect’, because it was weak on issues such as the production and use of agrofuels, speculation by commodity index funds, and the market failures in global supply chains. Despite these gaps, the Special Rapporteur said he was ‘convinced that this Summit and the Declaration it has adopted ‘may signal a new and promising era of global cooperation in achieving food security’. He highlighted in particular the accountability improvements that could be done thanks to the reform of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), which is the major achievement of the Summit. Prof De Schutter also commended the significant support to the right to food that was given by several countries in their speeches, including India, Egypt, El Salvador, as well as the very strong support by the Pope.
The Special Rapporteur had also been invited by the FAO to give the 26th Frank L. McDougall lecture to open the FAO Conference which started directly after the Summit. Frank L. McDougall was one of the founders of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the U.N. For the past fifty years, notable figures from academia and the development community deliver this lecture covering critical issues of global concern relating to food and agriculture. Previous speakers include Norman E. Borlaug, Indira Gandhi and Boutros-Boutros Ghali.
In his lecture, Prof De Schutter demonstrated how the obligation “to respect, protect and fulfil” the right to food provided much needed guidance for current food security issues such as reinvestment in agriculture, large-scale land acquisitions, and the accountability of States. He also made specific calls to scale up agro-ecological modes of production and to reduce meat consumption in western diets in order to meet the challenge of climate change.
Prof De Schutter met with a number of delegations and stakeholders, notably with Kanayo Nwanze, the President of the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). He also addressed members of parliaments at a session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union dedicated on the global food security crisis, and intervened twice at the Parallel Forum organized by civil society organizations, where he discussed progress of global governance and challenges ahead.
| ReadPDF | Speech in Plenary Session: “The Role of the Right to Food in achieving Sustainable Global Food Security” (English) (18 November 2009) |
| ReadPDF | Twenty-sixth McDougall Memorial Lecture. Opening of the 36th Session of the FAO Conference “The Right to Food and the Political Economy of Hunger” (18 November 2009). The McDougall lecture is also available in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian and Spanish. |
| ReadPDF | “A Call for Coherence and Responsibility: Realizing the right to food by improving global governance” Message of Mr. Olivier De Schutter, Special Rapporteur on the right to food (6 November 2009) |
| YouTube | Message of the Special Rapporteur in advance of the World Summit on Food Security (6 November 2009) |