OK, we want you to use your imagination for a second.

Pretend you’re in charge of an organization that has nearly 200 different member countries – some rich, some poor, some big, some small. And these countries want your organization to help them solve one of the world’s most complex and politically sensitive problems. Think that’s an easy job? Well, it’s not. It requires lots of patience, lots of transparency and lots of trust.

And you know what else it takes? A bureaucracy. A lot of people complain about bureaucracies. But if you can think of some way of organizing 189 governments to address the issues of global hunger and poverty without having a bureaucracy, you let us know, ok?

FAO has three main types of governing bodies. Let’s call them “the three C’s”.

First there’s…

. . . the FAO Conference

Every two years in November, delegates from all FAO member nations come together at headquarters in Rome. The FAO Conference is the highest governing body at FAO. It decides on the policies of the Organization and approves the Organization’s programme of work and the budget. It also elects the Director-General and votes on other important matters.

Who’s the current Director-General?

Each member has one vote.

Also attending the FAO Conference are observers from non-member countries, other UN organizations and non-governmental organizations. The Vatican, for example, has official observer status with the FAO Conference.

But we hear you saying, “You can’t run an organization by getting everyone together only once every two years”. That’s right. The Organization has to make important decisions between sessions of the Conference.

This brings us to the second ‘C’

The FAO Council

To review important matters between its regular sessions, the Conference appoints a smaller Council. The FAO Council meets four times between each session of the Conference and has 49 Members who serve three-year terms. Each region is accorded a fixed number of Council members:

• Africa has 12 seats
• Asia has 9
• Europe has 10
• Latin America and the Caribbean 9
• Near East 6
• North America 2
• Southwest Pacific 1

Now we come to the third ‘C”

The FAO Committees and other C’s

To help Conference and Council members make informed decisions about matters of policy and technical issues, the FAO constitution has established eight permanent committees:

• Programme Committee
• Finance Committee
• Committee on Constitutional and Legal Matters
• Committee on Commodity Problems
• Committee on Fisheries
• Committee on Forestry
• Committee on Agriculture
• Committee on World Food Security

The number of Members and the number of times they meet varies for each committee.

And that’s not all. Because many issues are of regional importance, the Conference and Council have also established other governing bodies to deal with specific issues. Some of these Commissions (hey, there’s another C!) may not have much bearing on your life, like say the Intergovernmental Group on Jute, Kenaf and Allied Fibres. But there are others that do affect you even if you don’t know it. Here’s one example:

General Fisheries Commission for the Mediterranean (Want to find out more? Why don’t you meet Alessandro Lovatelli). Oh, and by the way, during the years between Conference sessions, Member Governments in each major geographic region convene for the FAO Regional Conferences. These regional conferences make recommendations concerning priorities for FAO action in their region of the world.

Find out more about FAO’s Regional Offices. Click here.