From left to right: Chiara Cirulli and Giorgia Paratore from the CFS Secretariat; Lara Lobo, Alternate Permanent Representative of Brazil to FAO, WFP, and IFAD and Rapporteur of the policy convergence process; and Adriana Herrera, CFS Secretary; Rome, July 2024.
©FAO/HLPE-FSN Silvia Meiattini
Jody Harris
The United Nations Committee on World Food Security (CFS) is the global body where states develop and endorse guidance on how countries should address the major global issues of food insecurity and malnutrition. Through an agreed multi-year programme of work, country representatives and other regular participants (including civil society, financial and research institutions, foundations and business representatives) debate, negotiate, and ultimately release policy guidance on a range of issues underpinning food systems.
The CFS is unusual in terms of global political bodies in that it explicitly builds the use of research and evidence into its daily work. Its scientific advisory body, the High Level Panel of Experts on Food Security and Nutrition (HLPE-FSN), is the United Nations' body for assessing science related to food security and nutrition. Almost all workstreams of the CFS start with an independent, comprehensive and transparent synthesis of existing research, published in an HLPE-FSN report that ends with evidence-based recommendations. These recommendations are then submitted to a year-long round of negotiation and re-drafting by representatives of CFS member states and other CFS participants (known as convergence), to end up with a set of voluntary policy guidance that can be endorsed.
The CFS programme of work determined that the 2023 HLPE-FSN report (the 18th in the series) should focus on the topic of ‘reducing inequalities for food security and nutrition’ (a topic originally proposed by the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM); the governments of South Africa, Hungary, and Indonesia; and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD)). Along with six colleagues, I was a member of the team of academics who gave their time to draft the report, which was an enriching but intense year of work. The HLPE-FSN report was launched in June 2023, and I returned to Rome in October 2024 to see the negotiated voluntary guidance discussed and endorsed.
In watching this unfold in the CFS plenary room, ably presented by the diplomat from Brazil, Lara Lobo, Alternate Permanent Representative of Brazil to FAO, WFP, and IFAD, who had led the policy convergence process, I certainly felt proud to have had some academic input into the process. But I noticed some differences in the final version of the CFS voluntary guidance compared to the recommendations originally put forward in the HLPE-FSN report, so I was also moved to understand how our recommendations, based on the evidence, had been adjusted through the political process of convergence.
I’m an academic, so I needed to see this on paper to get a sense of what had changed. Back at home, I copied the two sets of recommendations beside each other and systematically worked to compare the two versions. The first thing that was evident was the number of recommendations: in the evidence report, the HLPE-FSN had suggested 43 recommendations under several headings; the post-convergence version had kept the headings, but the number had increased to 58 recommendations. In both versions, that’s a lot of recommendations – but a complex issue such as inequality and its underlying inequities has a lot of issues to address!
The second thing that stood out was how the recommendations were phrased, including the actual language used. The HLPE-FSN report had very explicitly taken a justice framing, using words infinitely debated and nuanced in academic work: ‘marginalization’ as the active process of exclusion and dispossession of certain population groups, rather than ‘vulnerability’ as a passive form devoid of responsibility; ‘inequity’ as the set of socio-political processes holding certain groups of people back, more than ‘inequality’ as the observed outcomes of these processes. The post-convergence version had reversed this use of language in both cases; but it had also significantly increased reference to human rights, an approach that is related to, but not the same as, equity and is better established in UN processes. In general, the endorsed recommendations used wording and turns of phrase that are known as UN ‘agreed language’: while the HLPE-FSN report had stayed true to the academic findings, the political process had interpreted this into wording already established in UN negotiated outcome documents, to facilitate agreement across states.
The third thing that stood out was that in a few cases, topics for recommendation had been added or removed, reducing reference to the original evidence report. Some HLPE-FSN recommendations are missing altogether in the final guidelines (for instance referring to subsidies, or targeting based on marginalization); some post-convergence recommendations cover topics not envisaged by the original HLPE-FSN (for instance supporting the ‘solidarity economy’, or addressing child labour); and sometimes while the topics remained, the nuance of wording was different (for instance around action on debt). The CFS voluntary guidance also had more specificity on who should be undertaking each action (governments, civil society, funders...), for more practical implementation.
When I originally read the CFS voluntary guidance developed through the policy-convergence process of negotiation, I was dismayed that some of the evidence had been left behind – in leaving out or adding in issues, and in changing the language used to talk about them. So, I decided to talk to those involved in the negotiation process to better understand it, including colleagues from the HLPE-FSN Secretariat and from the CFS working group guiding and participating in the negotiations – and these discussions were highly instructive for someone usually involved in the ‘evidence’ rather than ‘policy’ side of the coin.
Participants in the negotiations were mostly from a sub-set of CFS member countries or constituencies with a larger interest in issues of inequity and inequality, who wanted to shape how the final guidelines ended up. They met as a group three times over 2023 and 2024 to negotiate different drafts, but there were hundreds of bilateral side meetings and calls in-between, where different factions clarified their red-lines, and those coordinating the process sought to smooth deliberations and keep the process moving forward through negotiation.
The issue of ‘intersectionality’ is emblematic of the negotiations, and the issues inherent in bringing evidence into an eclectic policy space such as the CFS. In the academic world, intersectionality refers to the ways that different inequities interact – for example, a young woman of a minority ethnic group might be multiply disadvantaged because of her age, gender and race and how these issues affect each other in a certain society. In the policy world of the CFS, there were many states that supported this framing, and in fact use this framing in their own development policies. But there were also states for whom the idea of intersectionality opened doors to ideas that clashed with their values or religions, such as notions of LGBTQ+ rights, and therefore found the word itself problematic. In the end, ‘intersectionality’ did not appear in the CFS voluntary guidance, so states are not currently guided on what to do in addressing instances where inequities interact.
What is lost in this process is some connection to the evidence as reviewed by the HLPE-FSN, and so the CFS perhaps ends up with a set of actions that might miss important issues for food security and malnutrition – but bringing evidence to policy is not a precise art, and evidence will always be interpreted in light of existing values and beliefs and the discretionary actions of states. What is gained in this process is legitimacy – through the use of agreed language, and through inclusive negotiations – and therefore a set of actions that are more likely to be used and even built upon by states. The classic diplomatic aim of ‘everyone being equally unhappy’ with the outcome signaled ultimate success in the negotiations.
The CFS is to be commended for so explicitly drawing on knowledge and evidence of such a range through the HLPE-FSN process, and so transparently negotiating the final guidelines. I hope that this article brings even more transparency to this process, so that those involved in future rounds (whether as academics, or as policy negotiators) know what to expect, and can plan accordingly!
Jody Harris was an HLPE-FSN drafting team member. She is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) exploring the practice, politics and ethics of food and nutrition policy, where she co-leads the Food Equity Centre.
Referencing this report: HLPE. 2023. Reducing inequalities for food security and nutrition. Rome, CFS HLPE-FSN.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of CFS nor its HLPE-FSN.
