Statement to the Hundred and
Twelfth Session of the Council of FAO
Rome, Italy, 2-7 June 1997
Mr Chairman of the Council,
Excellencies,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you
to Rome for this Hundred and Twelfth Session of the
Council. This is a particularly important session, not
only because you will be providing the Organization with
general guidelines for its activities over the next years
and more specifically over the next biennium, but also
because this is the first session of the Council after
the World Food Summit. The commitments in the Summit Plan
of Action and the important responsibilities assigned to
FAO in the follow-up to the Summit have serious
implications for the Summary Programme of Work and
Budget.
Another focus of your deliberations
will be the present state of food and agriculture, where
recent trends are in some respects encouraging, although
we must not lose sight of the enormity of the problems
that remain to be resolved.
World production of staple foods rose
appreciably in 1996, the highest rates of growth among
the developing regions being those in Africa. Provisional
estimates for 1997 suggest that this growth in food
production will continue, not only for cereals, but also
for the main oil crops, cassava, meat and milk products.
World cereal production, which had reached record levels
in 1996 after a worrying downturn, could reach comparable
or even higher levels this year. Yet, for all their
expected increase in 1997, world cereal stocks will
probably remain below the security threshold of 17 to 18
percent of consumption.
At the same time, the present economic
situation offers a more favourable climate for food
security, with a modest increase in global production,
particularly on the part of the developing counties,
strong growth of international trade and a general fall
in inflation and interest rates. Economic conditions in
many of the low-income countries have been decidedly
better in the last two years, particularly in Africa. We
must now make sure that this improvement affects the
purchasing power of the least privileged population
groups and enhances their access to food.
The food situation however is still
marked by strong regional and local disparities due to
unfavourable weather, natural disasters or man-made
crises. Since January 1996, through its Global
Information and Early Warning System, FAO - often in
tandem with the World Food Programme - has fielded over
40 missions to evaluate harvests and food supplies in
thevulnerable and hardest-hit countries. These missions
have helped drum up emergency aid for millions of
victims. In one and a half years, I and the Executive
Director of WFP have together approved 23 emergency
operations, at a total value of some 860 million dollars,
to provide assistance to 15 million beneficiaries. In
Africa alone, 16 countries are currently facing
exceptional food crises and the prevailing situation in
the Great Lakes Region, in Iraq and in North Korea is
cause for continuing concern.
Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen,
The Committee on World Food Security
was appointed by the Summit to monitor implementation of
the Plan of Action and to track the progress being made
towards achieving the minimum objective of halving the
number of undernourished people in the world by the year
2015, at the latest. The Committee met in April and
agreed to a provisional procedure of establishing reports
for use in 1997 by governments, the United Nations
agencies and other international organizations involved
in the implementation of the Plan of Action. The
Committee also examined the amendments to the General
Rules of the Organization, which you will be looking at
before these are submitted to the Conference.
The Administrative Committee on
Co-ordination (ACC), which groups the executive heads of
all the organizations in the UN system, is charged with
ensuring inter-agency coordination in the follow-up to
the Summit. The joint FAO/IFAD proposal on the modalities
of such cooperation was approved at the last session of
the ACC in April in Geneva.
FAO will therefore draft a report on
the outcome and follow-up of the Summit for discussion by
the Economic and Social Council prior to submission to
the General Assembly.
Last March, FAO organized a Technical
Consultation on the Food Insecurity and Vulnerability
Information and Mapping System, which was attended by
experts and representatives of all the UN agencies
concerned, national institutions and NGOs. The outcome of
this consultation has already been endorsed by the
Committee on World Food Security and numerous actions
have already been initiated to put the short-term
components of the plan of work into effect.
The proposals in the Programme of Work
and Budget 1998-99 also include a new interdisciplinary
sub-programme which is aimed at consolidating and
reinforcing information and mapping activities. This will
help Member Nations develop and maintain a national
system enabling them to rapidly and accurately identify
population groups suffering from, or exposed to,
malnutrition, to determine the underlying causes and to
come up with remedial actions.
FAO conveyed the results of the Summit
to the Commission on Human Rights and concluded an
agreement with the United Nations High Commissioner for
Human Rights to work closely on better defining the right
to food as one of the basic human rights. The High
Commissioner plans to convene a meeting of experts on
this matter in July or August of this year.
The Organization was quick to engage
in the preparation of national strategies, in close
collaboration with member country experts, for
agricultural development towards the year 2010, the
objective being to take the commitments in the Plan of
Action from global to country level and to foster
cooperation with our development partners in their
implementation. This exercise began with the low-income
food-deficit countries and will subsequently be extended
to the other developing countries, those in transition
and to any developed country that may be interested. The
resulting documents are first submitted to the UN system,
the Bretton Woods Institutions and the regional
development banks before being presented to the ministers
of agriculture for broader consultation and formal
government adoption.
However, one of the most important
contributions expected from FAO forimplementation of the
Summit Plan of Action, particularly its Commitment 3, is
of course in the area of agricultural development. In
this connection, the Special Programme for Food Security
in the low-income food-deficit countries, which was
launched - with your agreement - well before the Summit,
will continue as one of the central pillars of FAO's
action in the field. After all, the 840 million people
suffering from chronic undernourishment live mainly in
the developing countries and in the countries in
transition. Two years after it was introduced, the
Special Programme is now operational in 18 of these
countries and is either being launched or under
formulation in seven others. The principles behind this
programme are well known; it aims to increase food
production and availability through the adoption of a
multidisciplinary and participatory approach that is
environmentally responsible and socially equitable. The
ultimate goal is of course to improve the living
conditions of the poorest sectors of the rural
population, particularly the women. The Special Programme
belongs to all the Member Nations that wish to take part
and to their farmers; FAO only intervenes upon the
express request of governments, particularly for
interventions financed by the Technical Cooperation
Programme whose criteria are strictly applied.
However, the aims of the Rome
Declaration are ambitious and require substantial
resources. But at a time of budget stringencies for
governments and international organizations everywhere,
we need to be innovative in our search for the funds
needed to implement the Summit Plan of Action. We have
therefore cemented our ties with our development
partners, the donor countries, the other UN agencies and
programmes, the international and regional financial
institutions, the decentralized institutions, the private
sector, the non-governmental organizations and also the
international and national research institutes.
As a result, I signed agreements in
January this year with the Presidents of the World Bank
and of the African Development Bank for the promotion of
rural development and food security in Africa. Under
these agreements, each bank has undertaken to look
favourably upon requests from Member Nations for the
funding of Special Programme pilot activities, up to a
ceiling of 1.5 million dollars per country. In the same
vein, discussions are at a very advanced stage with the
Islamic Development Bank and should lead to the signature
of a cooperation agreement on food security. Discussions
are also underway with the Asian Development Bank, the
Inter-American Development Bank, IFAD and the World Food
Programme for their participation in the Special
Programme. Elsewhere, the International Food Policy
Research Institute is the first member of the
Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research
to have decided to join the Programme, focusing
especially on the social and economic constraints.
Finally, South-South cooperation agreements are gradually
being put into place, with experienced technical experts
from developing countries being sent to work alongside
the beneficiary farmers of the Special Programme.
A number of parallel initiatives have
also been launched to rally civil society and the
decentralized institutions, and in so doing to build upon
the momentum that was generated by the Summit, which saw
the active participation of parliamentarians,
non-governmental organizations and representatives of the
private sector.
The slogan for this year's World Food
Day, "Investing in Food Security", reflects this
perspective of mobilization. The celebratory events
include the TeleFood operation, a worldwide audio-visual
programme designed, first, to hold the decisions taken at
the Summit in the public eye and, second, to invoke the
solidarity of all people concerned about the problem of
hunger in the world.
Determined government action is vital
to the success of this mobilization exercise which will
have the draw upon all strands of state and society if
the objectives of the Summit Plan of Action are to be
achieved. In this connection, the Plan calls upon
governments to launch national "Food for All" campaigns,
marshalling all stakeholders and their resources for
implementation of the intended measures. The first stage
of these campaigns should be for Member Nations to set up
a national forum comprising all development players and
partners, particularly the private sector,
non-governmental organizations, universities, research
institutes, parliamentarians, women's and youth groups,
the media and civil society.
It is encouraging to note that a
number of developed and developing countries have already
launched such campaigns. Other governments should follow
suit and establish such forums. FAO will, of course, help
them in any way needed.
Alongside all these efforts to round
up and coordinate forces for the follow-up to the Summit,
the Organization has also been pursuing its traditional
normative activities, which remain as important as ever.
Two examples where significant progress has been made in
recent months are:
- The revision of the International
Plant Protection Convention which allows countries to
take measures to prevent the introduction and spread
of pests and diseases, while at the same time ensuring
that these are reasonable and do not constitute unfair
barriers to trade. The revised text, the result of a
lengthy process of consultation, is before you for
finalization and submission to the Conference, as
recommended by the Committee on Agriculture. At the
same time, the Committee also recommended that the
Council and Conference adopt new standards for the
harmonization of plant protection measures.
- The Commission on Genetic
Resources for Food and Agriculture which has also held
two sessions in six months, mainly to pursue
negotiations on the revision of the International
Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources so that this
effectively mirrors the Convention on Biological
Diversity. The revision should facilitate access to
genetic resources, better define farmers' rights,
ensure the conservation and sustainable utilization of
genetic resources and provide for the equitable
sharing of resulting benefits. This is a very complex
area, but one in which substantial progress has been
made and in which early agreement is feasible, on
condition that the political will genuinely exists.
The review of the statutory bodies
and panels of experts is also on your agenda. Acting
upon the Council's recommendations for greater savings
and efficiency in governance, the Programme and
Finance Committees formulated guidelines for the
conduct and organization of meetings and recommended
changes in the calendars of Committees reporting to
the Council in Conference years. The overriding idea
is that they should contribute more fully towards
shaping the Programme of Work and Budget. At their
joint meeting in April, the Committees also examined
the Secretariat's proposals on the subject of the
review of the statutory bodies and panels of experts
that had been initiated by the Council in November
1995.
In this connection, the role of the
Secretariat is to provide information, highlight the
issues and help reach conclusions. But this exercise
falls essentially within the competence of the
governing bodies. The Programme and Finance Committees
in fact appointed a small working party, based in Rome
and chaired by the Permanent Representative of
Belgium, to look more closely at the recommendations
in the Secretariat's document and to provide the
Committees with further guidelines at their session in
September 1997.
The Council will therefore be able
to examine the Secretariat's proposals to complete the
review process and bring about an effective
streamlining of the statutory bodies and panels of
experts. The main concern is to turn increasingly to
'ad hoc' bodies with specific tasks and limited time
frames rather than to establish statutory bodies that
might, after a while, lose sight of their 'raison
d'être'.
Mr Chairman, Ladies and
Gentlemen,
The most important item on your
agenda is the Summary Programme of Workand Budget
1988-99. In accordance with the recommendations of the
Joint Meeting of the Programme and Finance Committees
in January, the Summary has been prepared on the basis
of zero real growth, and supplemented by two further
scenarios:
- a real growth option, reinstating
the technical and economic programme cuts made in the
1996-97 budget. The Programme and Finance Committees
had hoped that the corresponding sums could be
restored in the subsequent biennium. This scenario
implies an increase of US$ 11 million, all directed
towards high priority normative work;
- a zero nominal growth option,
which would require us to hold the budget at US$ 650
million, despite cost increases of US$ 39 million.
This would entail programme cuts.
This latter option has been
addressed in strict compliance with the Council's
criteria for the identification of activities to be
cut. The reductions have therefore been concentrated
as far as possible in the administrative areas, but
without of course being able to repeat the excellent
results of the 1996-97 biennium, when 70 percent of
the required savings of US$ 57 million were found from
gains in efficiency or cuts in the non-technical
chapters of the budget.
The preparation of a zero nominal
growth budget is underway, with every effort being
made to minimize damage to our programmes, mainly by
following the advice of the Programme and Finance
Committees on cost increases and the impact of the
exchange rate.
The issue of After Service Medical
Coverage needs careful attention. Any agreed move to
adopt accepted accounting practices on this matter and
fund the actuarial deficit that has accumulated over
the last 30 years cannot possibly be at the expense of
the Organization's technical programmes. Solutions to
this problem need to be explored, for instance by
spreading the cost over several biennia, as and when
contributions arrears are made available.
The Programme and Finance
Committees also asked me to identify activities that
would be eliminated if the budget were below the zero
nominal level.
We need at this point to query the
principle of applying blanket zero nominal growth in
1998/99 to all the specialized agencies. Also,
consideration should surely be given to the impact of
each agency's respective budgetary situation in
1996/97 - some had to take heavy cuts as compared to
the 1994-95 biennium and implement painful reductions
in personnel, while others experienced a distinct
improvement in funding over the same period.
Consideration should also be given to the fact that
the exchange rate impacts differently, depending on
whether an agency's budget is expressed in dollars or
in the local currency.
For FAO, the zero nominal growth
budget would mean a reduction close to 6 percent
before adjustment for the rate of exchange between the
dollar and the lira, and about 4.3 percent at the
present rate. The Council should therefore carefully
consider the implications of such an option for the
Organization's capacity to implement the
recommendations of the technical committees and the
decisions of the World Food Summit.
The Council's agenda is thus
particularly full and includes some difficult issues.
However, the Secretariat must receive the clear
guidelines it needs, in particular to finalize the
Programme of Work and Budget for the next biennium.
I wish you every success in your
work and hope that the representatives of Member
Nations and observers have a pleasant stay in Rome.
Thank you for your kind attention.
