Nobel Laureates Alliance for Food Security and Peace

Graça Machel

South Africa

Graça Machel is a former First Lady of South Africa and a human rights activist for women’s and children’s rights. She is the widow of Nelson Mandela, freedom icon and a former president of South Africa, who was awarded the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize for the peaceful termination of the apartheid regime.

Why this Alliance?

The Nobel Peace Laureates Alliance for Food Security and Peace was established by the FAO Director-General in May 2016 to work jointly with FAO to build a virtuous relationship, where food security supports peacebuilding, and peacebuilding reinforces food security. The Alliance is an advocacy group of Nobel Peace Laureates that aims at amplifying FAO’s contribution to conflict prevention and to giving visibility at the work of the Organization in post-conflict countries in the context of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

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Facts
and figures

Post-conflict countries with high food insecurity are 40 percent more likely to relapse into conflict within a 10-year time span.

Agriculture accounts for two-thirds of employment and one-third of gross domestic product (GDP) in countries in protracted crises.

Since 2000, 48 percent of civil conflicts have been in Africa, where access to rural land underpins the livelihoods of many, and where in 27 out of 30 interstate conflicts land issues have played a significant role.

Every day in 2014, conflicts and violence forced about 42 500 people to flee their homes and seek safety either internally or across borders. Few refugees (only 1 percent) have returned, less than at any point in the past 30 years.

In 2014, children constituted 51 percent of the refugee population, the highest percentage in more than a decade.