Israel champions newly launched FAO Food Coalition

FAO and the Government of Israel have signed a new Agreement to support the newly launched Food Coalition, which aims to mobilize financial resources, innovation and technical expertise, promote advocacy initiatives and establish a neutral space for dialogue among diverse and key stakeholders in support of countries most in need. Since the historic formation of the Food Coalition, Israel has been actively participating and committed voluntary financial contributions.

The Food Coalition supports innovative COVID-19 and post crisis initiatives, identified in the context of various synergistic lines of action (provided through action sheets). Not only is this to ensure food access, but also to increase the resilience of agri-food supply chains, and to transform agri-food systems to be more sustainable and equitable. In response to the current crisis, the Food Coalition will support existing and future FAO efforts to support countries to respond and recover from the pandemic. It will also direct focus to getting back on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals, especially SDGs 1 and 2 on eradication of poverty and hunger by 2030.

DDG Beth Bechdol stated “I am delighted that Israel will be supporting these vital initiatives. This is a much-valued contribution, which will go towards the essential task of mitigating the impact of COVID-19.” Ambassador Yael Rubinstein, Permanent Representative of the State of Israel to FAO said “Israel is excited to be part of the global effort to deal with concrete projects and steps that will help us achieve better solutions to solve the food problems we face now at an extreme level, as a result of C0VID-19.”

The Food Coalition has also established a web-based hub where Coalition members, donors, private sector and other key actors will have access to project-focused information and data as well as the funding gap on the ground, the type of assistance that would be required in order to facilitate mobilization of resources and expertise. In order to support the Food Coalition, FAO has mobilized extra budgetary voluntary trust fund resources and one of the partners of the Coalition is Israel.