Background

The COVID-19 pandemic has shocked the world, altered the way we think and operate, and transformed our predictions and expectations. Habits are changing and in order to recover from this crisis we must be resilient, acquiring knowledge and preparing ourselves to tackle the challenges that the pandemic has created.  

Through their legislative, budgetary and oversight functions, parliamentarians can play a crucial role as changemakers, addressing and mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 on food security - during both the containment and recovery phases - taking care of employment and local economies, and ensuring economic inclusion and the right to food for all.  

FAO, with the support of the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID), will support and engage parliamentarians through a series of virtual dialogues, in order to:  

• Encourage political dialogue between parliamentarians and their networks on key food security and nutrition challenges which have arisen during COVID-19;  

• Support concrete national parliamentary initiatives on the Right to Food in the context of COVID-19;  

• Enable mutual learning and knowledge sharing among parliamentarians through the dissemination of good practices and lessons learned to address and mitigate the impacts of COVID-19 on food security;  

• Enhance parliamentary actions to address the impacts of COVID-19 on food systems; 

• Strengthen parliamentarians’ capabilities to promote adequate legal frameworks which safeguard food security and nutrition during the COVID-19 emergency.