Suggested issues to be addressed by CFS from 2016 on:
There is a belated urgency for CFS members to, once and for all, address and hopefully seek consensus on issues that have been chronically postponed as front-line issues.
Although the list is by no means complete, I refer to:
· Seeking a greater balance in CFS for both a food AND a nutrition focus; the latter has, more often than not, received shortschrift.
· The role, attention and funding that needs to be given to development centered on an agroecological approach (not forgetting fisheries).
· The replacement of the concept of food security by the concept of food sovereignty.
· A more coherent and aggressive strategy for CFS members to fight what amounts to a corporate take-over of agriculture, food and nutrition.
· A complementary strategy to unmask bad PPPs and their inherent conflicts of interest.
· The role of philanthrocapitalism in shaping policy and financing biased approaches to development.
· The unresolved issues of food and nutrition governance.
The list above hardly needs to add an ‘explanation why I propose them here’. The evidence is scattered now all over and all of these issues have come up in the post-2015 discussions.
This brings me to another key issue for the CFS to address starting in 2016, i.e., the monitoring of food and nutrition commitments made in the post 2015 years.
Last but not least, let me point out two key issues:
(i) I contend that after 10 years of experience with the Voluntary Guidelines it is time to critique ‘voluntarianism’ and refocus our efforts on regulation and accountability. CFS ought to play a central role in this.
(ii) CFS has done next to nothing proactively to advance approaching the food and nutrition problems from the human rights perspective. This cannot wait till 2016!
The challenge now is to peg activities to the ideas/issues here presented so they become part of the major workstream of CFS including recommendations to the HLPE. This is hardly the space to do this. I volunteer to be part of a group to embark in these discussions.
Claudio Schuftan, Ho hi Minh City
Dr. Claudio Schuftan