World Food Day – Asia-Pacific Regional Dialogue on Joint Action for COVID-19 Response and Recovery
Date and time: 16 October 2020, 13:00-15:30 Bangkok time (GMT+07:00) – via Zoom.
Every year, FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific celebrates the importance of World Food Day. This year, given the COVID-19 global pandemic and the disruptions it has caused to livelihoods and food security, our celebrations are muted,yet within this context, the World Food Day itself is more important than ever.
While the spread of the coronavirus has seriously disrupted food security and livelihoods for millions of people in this region, we also find ourselves far off-track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals to end malnutrition and poverty.
This World Food Day’s theme, ‘Grow, Nourish, Sustain. Together – Our Actions are our Future’, underscores the need to immediately and urgently respond to, and recover from, the impact of COVID-19 on our food systems and the billions of people that rely on them.
What more appropriate day, than World Food Day
FAO’s Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific will host, virtually, on this day an interactive discussion on the ways forward
– to examine FAO’s Asia and the Pacific Regional COVID-19 Response and Recovery Programme – and to hear from you
about ways we can work together. Indeed, we already work together in many areas – and we have some good practice case studies to share.
The Webinar will be joined by other resource and development partners specially invited from across Asia and the Pacific, including representatives from Governments, the private sector and civil society.
The event will begin with a video message from Her Royal Highness Princess Maha Chakri Sirindhorn of Thailand, the FAO Special Goodwill Ambassador for Zero Hunger in Asia and the Pacific.
The FAO Asia-Pacific Regional Dialogue on Joint Action for COVID-19 Response and Recovery will convene virtually, and by invitation only.
PROVISIONAL AGENDA

Speakers' Biographies
- Mr. Kyaw Swe Lin, Director General,Department of Planning, Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Irrigation, The Republic of the Union of Myanmar
- Ms. Pauline Seenan, Team Leader Climate, Humanitarian and Resilience, Foreign Commonwealth & Development Office, Pakistan
- Mr. Folkert de Jager, 1st Secretary Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to Bangladesh
- Mr. Anang Noegroho Setyo Moeljono, Director for Food and Agriculture,, Ministry of National Development Planning, Republic of Indonesia
- Mr. Elias de los Santos Ferreira, Director General, General Directorate of Statistics, Timor Leste
- Mr. Vinod Ahuja, FAO Representative in Mongolia
- Mr. Ivan Cossio Cortez, Head of the South East Asia and the Pacific Sub-regional Office, Country Representative to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea
Action Sheets
- Addressing the impacts of COVID-19 in food crisis contexts
- Data for decision making
- Economic inclusion and social protection to reduce poverty
- Boosting smallholder resilience for recovery
- Trade, intra-regional trade and food safety standards
- Preventing new pandemics in Asia and the Pacific
- Food systems transformation
Multimedia
- FAO COVID-19 Response Video
- Food Heroes (video)
- Food Heroes (presentation)