FAO.org

Source: FAO Liaison Office in Brussels website

Blaise you are Chief of the Development Law service at FAO. But I suspect you don’t really do typical lawyer work. Can you tell us what exactly your service does?

The Development Law Service is like any other technical division of FAO. It provides technical assistance in strengthening food and agriculture legal frameworks to FAO Members at their request. This entails contributing and ensuring access to legal knowledge and information, providing legal training and capacity building and revising existing food and agriculture laws or drafting new ones.

What are the current priority areas of your office? 

Legal frameworks are essential for converting policies and international commitments to nationally binding requirements thus providing security and protection of rights and ensuring accountability and enforcement for non-compliance. FAO support for action on legal frameworks has been given by the 118th session of the Committee on Constitutional and Legal Matters (CCLM) and the 165th session of the Council. In this context, the Development Law Service has focused its attention in this biennium on responding to the call by the Director-General to action in order to support Members to improve their national legal frameworks for food and agriculture. This includes developing and improving subset legal databases, as it is the case with the largest open-access database on food and agriculture legislation – FAOLEX. It also includes supporting countries in the implementation, compliance with and enforcement of their food and agriculture legislation to ensure that these laws have the desired impact.

The Development Law service is not only active from FAO headquarters but around the world. How do you help Member countries and in which areas?

Legal technical support services are provided in all areas within the food and agriculture sector including land, water, forestry and fisheries and aquaculture. Such assistance is embedded and delivered through technical assistance projects (national, regional, global) formulated and delivered at the request of countries by a group of legal specialists based at FAO headquarters with the support of other experts drawn from a pool of legal specialists. Our Service also has three officers who help with outreach and provide quicker responses to requests for assistance and who are based in Santiago (for Latin America and the Caribbean region), Addis Ababa (for Africa; in particular for South and East Africa) and Dakar (for Central and West Africa).

There is a lot of discussion in Brussels and beyond about how to structure a comprehensive legislative framework for transformative agrifood systems. What is your take on this and how is your office contributing to assisting FAO’s major partners with breaking down barriers towards the implementation of such a framework?

Not many people see law as the first response for transformative agrifood systems, which naturally involves dozens of sectors requiring institutional cooperation, coordination and coherent interventions. Laws can help set up necessary institutional frameworks and force transformational change across different sectors. They do this by breaking down silos and legally requiring entities and individuals to work together in a coordinated and coherent manner to achieve the goals of a nation in ensuring sustainable agrifood systems. Failure to ensure that these essential actions are taken will be remedied or rectified in accordance with the law.

Watch Blaise Kuemlangan's video interview here