High level expert forum on food insecurity in protracted crises
13-14 September 2012, FAO Headquarters, Rome
Objectives
The Forum provided a space for consultation and policy dialogue to increase understanding and strengthen collaborative efforts among stakeholders. A key outcome of the Forum were basic elements for the elaboration of an Agenda for Action for Addressing Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises, detailed in the final report. These elements, as well as an outline plan for consultations and negotiations to develop an Agenda for Action, were discussed at the 39th Session of CFS in October 2012.
Participants
The Forum was aimed at policymakers, aid agencies, donors, civil society and the private sector. With over fifty participants, food security experts and practitioners from food insecure, crisis-prone countries were key contributors.
Organizers
The HLEF was held under the auspices of the CFS and was organized by the Rome-based agencies (FAO, IFAD, WFP), with assistance from the HLTF co-ordination team and in close collaboration with the HLEF Steering Committee.
Agenda
High Level Expert Forum on Food Insecurity in Protracted Crises
13th-14th September, FAO – Rome, Italy
Provisional Agenda (Subject to Change)
Day One - 13 September - Red Room, FAO
8.30 – 9.00
Participant Registration
9.00 – 10.00
Welcome & Opening Remarks
10.00 – 12.00
Panel 1: Causes and consequences of food insecurity in protracted crises.
Moderator:
Dan Maxwell (Tufts, Feinstein Institute)
Panelists:
Francesca Bomboko (g7+)
Henk-Jan Brinkman (PBSO)
Mahalmoudou Hamadoun (CILSS)
Rami Zurayk (American Univeristy of Beirut, CSM)
12.00 – 13.30
Lunch + Side Event on Somalia (Iran Room - B116 h 12.15)
13.30 – 15.30
Panel 2: Political and governance opportunities and challenges: catalysts to create change
Moderator:
Sue Lautze (FAO)
Panelists:
Nathan Belete (World Bank)
Luka Biong Deng (Kush Institute)
Matthew Arnold (Asia Foundation)
Joseph Schechla (HIC - HLRN, CSM)
15.30 – 16.30
Coffee Break
16.30 – 18.30
Panel 3: Resilience of individuals, households, communities and local institutions in protracted crises.
Moderator:
Francois Grunewald (Group URD)
Panelists:
Patricia Justino (IDS)
Gregory Gottlieb (USAID)
Amadou Allahoury Diallo (L’Initiative 3N)
18.30 - 18.45
Closing Remarks
19.00
Aperitivo for HLEF Participants (FAO Terrace)
Day Two - 14 September - Red Room, FAO
9.00 – 9.30
Participant Registration
9.30 – 10.00
Reflections on Day One
10.00 – 12.00
Panel 4: Building partnerships to break cycles of recurrent or protracted crises: Lessons from experience.
Moderator:
Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval (OECD)
Panelists:
Martin Bwalya (NEPAD)
Abla Benhammouche (IFAD)
Luca Alinovi (FAO)
Christine Van Nieuwenhuyse (WFP)
12.00 – 14.00
Lunch Break
14.00 – 16.45
Panel 5: The way forward: Elements for an agenda for action.
Moderator:
David Nabarro (UNDP / HLTF)
Panelists:
Amadou Allahoury Diallo (L’Initiative 3N)
Esterine Fotabong (NEPAD)
Francesca Bomboko (g7+)
Razan Zuayter (APN, CSM)
Mahalmoudou Hamadoun (CILSS)
Philippe Thomas (EC)
16.45 – 17.00
Close of High Level Expert Forum
Side Events
Presentation by Mr Sikander Khan, UNICEF Representative in Somalia
Since late 2011, FAO Somalia, UNICEF Somalia and WFP Somalia have joined efforts to promote a medium-term strategy to enhance household and community resilience in Somalia. The objectives of this strategy for the three agencies are to better align programmes and to coordinate interventions to bring about more resilient outcomes for beneficiaries.
This strategy requires multi-year and comprehensive approaches as well as multi-sectoral partnerships and collaboration. This requires a “paradigm shift” focused on investing now to empower households and communities to reduce, mitigate and manage their risks in order to reduce the need for emergency assistance the medium and long terms.
This Side Event reviews the rationale and motivation for adopting a joint strategy on household and community resilience and presents some of the early lessons the organizations have learnt from this ongoing experience. An analysis of the relevance of resilience strategies in the context of Somalia is followed by an outline of the key strategic changes proposed under the FAO–UNICEF–WFP strategy and of the process adopted by the three agencies for moving towards concrete implementation of the strategy on the ground.
The objective of this event is to provide HLEF participants with more information on this experience as well as to identify interesting aspects of resilience programming that could be part of HLEF immediate actions recommendations.
Panelists and moderators
Luca Alinovi
Dr. Luca Alinovi is the Officer-in-Charge and Senior Emergency and Rehabilitation Coordinator of the Food Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Somalia. Previously, Alinovi served as a senior Economist, of the Agricultural and Development Economics Division of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. . An Italian national, he has an MSc from the Università di Firenze, Faculty of Tropical Agriculture (Agricultural Economics) and a PhD in Agricultural and Natural Resources Economics.
Matthew Arnold
Dr. Matthew Arnold is an academic and aid worker specializing in conflict resolution and post-conflict reconstruction and has extensive field experience in assorted parts of Asia and Africa. Currently he works as a Senior Program Officer for The Asia Foundation and is based in Bangkok but covers South and Southeast Asia. Matthew received his doctorate from the London School of Economics and has written extensively about post-conflict transitions in Sudan, South Sudan and Timor-Leste as well as conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and Thailand. His research has appeared in leading academic journals and he has co-authored two books, Militias and the Challenges of Post-Conflict Peace and South Sudan: From revolution to independence.
Nathan M. Belete
Mr Belete, an Ethiopian national, is a development professional with almost 20 years experience in Africa and Asia. He is currently based in Nairobi, Kenya as the Sector Leader for The World Bank’s Sustainable Development Department to Eritrea, Kenya, Rwanda, and Somalia as well as the Global Center on Conflict, Security and Development. Concurrently, he represents the World Bank in the various ongoing drought response initiatives in the Horn of Africa. Prior to this, he was based in the World Bank’s offices in New Delhi (2008-2011) and Beijing (2004-2007) with responsibilities for managing investments in agriculture and rural development. Before 2000, he held various positions in Washington and throughout Africa with World Vision and UNICEF. Mr Belete's area of expertise is in rural development policy. He holds a Bachelor of Science in International Business from Messiah College in Pennsylvania and a Master Degree from Cornell University's School of Agriculture and Life Sciences in New York where he was an Institute for African Development Fellow.
Abla Z. Benhammouche
Senior Country Programme Manager, IFAD
With more than twenty years of work experience in international development assistance, Ms Benhammouche has a broad range of skills and expertise supporting international organisations in engaging fragile and conflict-affected countries for their recovery and subsequent development. She is a seasoned development expert with particular experience in supporting countries challenged by rural poverty and food insecurity in protracted crises. This involves working with stakeholders in conflict prevention and post-conflict reconstruction, paving the way toward sustainable development. Her expertise also includes working within the UN system and the international community, as well as engaging with the highest levels of Government. She is skilled in mobilising resources and brokering financing arrangements with international financial institutions and bilateral agencies.
Francesca Bomboko
Francesca Bomboko has been working in the statebuilding and peacebuilding field since 1990, when she co-founded the Bureau d'Etudes, de Recherches et de Consulting International. The Kinshasa-based research center, and opinion poll organization was the first of its kind in DRC. BERCI has produced numerous public opinion polls of ordinary Congolese regarding their perspectives on important, social and political issues. Since 2011, she is advising the African Union Panel of the Wise (made of former African Presidents) on critical issues regarding peace and security in Africa, and member of the Steering Committee of the Columbia University Conflict Prevention Center. She holds a bachelor degree in social psychology from Barnard College of Columbia University, a master in Public health from Columbia University, a Master International politic from the University Libre de Bruxelles (CERIS), and a Master Business management from Namur, Belgium.
Henk-Jan Brinkman
Henk-Jan Brinkman is chief of the Policy, Planning and Application Branch of the Peacebuilding Support Office in the United Nations Secretariat. Between 2006 and 2010, he was senior Adviser for Economic Policy in the World Food Programme, based in New York, and chief Economic Analysis and chief Food Security Policy and Markets in the Office of the Executive Director of the World Food Programme in Rome, Italy. From 2001 to 2006 he was a Senior Economic Affairs Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, where he advised Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette on economic, social and environmental issues. Between 1989 and 2001, he was in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, where, inter alia, he contributed to the World Economic and Social Survey. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City. He is the lead author of WFP’s World Hunger Series – Hunger and Markets, and author of Explaining Prices in the Global Economy: A Post-Keynesian Model. He holds Dutch citizenship.
Luka Biong Deng
Luka Deng is the Executive Director of Kush Inc. He is a recognized expert on the affairs of the greater Sudan, poverty, vulnerability, famine, civil wars, and state building. He served as a national Minister of Sudan and as a Minister in the Office of the President of South Sudan. He also worked as a Senior Economist for the World Bank. He received his Doctor of Philosophy from the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) in UK. He also earned a Master of Arts in Economics and a Master of Business Administration from Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium. He has written scholarly articles published in international journals such as the Journal of Eastern African Studies, the Journal of African Affairs, the Journal of Disasters, the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) Bulletin, the Oxford Journal of Forced Migration, and the Journal of Civil Wars.
Martin Bwalya
Mr. Martin Bwalya, now, Head of CAADP in the NEPAD Agency trained as farm machinery design and management Specialist worked many years in the field on development and design of farm machinery with a focus on animal and tractor drawn zero tillage equipment. He went to further work with the African Conservation Tillage Network (ACT) at the Harare, Zimbabwe and Nairobi, Kenya offices as Executive Secretary. This involved promotion and coordinating networking and knowledge management across Africa in support of up scaling of sustainable land and water management, in general, and conservation agriculture, in particular. Mr. Bwalya joined the NEPAD Agency in 2007 as Senior Land and Water Management Specialist and NEPAD focal point for the TerrAfrica Partnership. Work and responsibilities has included coordination functions as well as technical backstopping to country and regional programmes and initiatives on sustainable land and water management and related aspects including climate change.
Amadou Allahoury Diallo
Trained in Niger, France and Burkina Faso, Amadou Allahoury Diallo is a specialist in irrigation and food security with thirty years experience. He has been involved for at least fifteen years in water management for food security and agriculture development issues in Sub Saharan Africa. He has participated in many high level expert panels at regional and global levels. Mr Allahoury Amadou Diallo worked for New Partnership for African Development in Johannesburg from 2007 to 2009 and then as a consultant for the regional office of FAO in Accra (2009-2011). Since October 2011, Mr Diallo has been the High Commissioner at Niger President office for the national strategy for Food Security and Agriculture development called 3N Initiative ''Nigeriens feeding Nigeriens''. The 3N aims to address the root causes of the food insecurity in Niger and build resilience in tandem with humanitarian response.
Gregory C. Gottlieb
Gregory C. Gottlieb was named Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for the newly established Bureau for Food Security in November 2010, where oversees development activities associated with Feed the Future, the U.S. Government’s global hunger and food security initiative. Mr Gottlieb most recently served as the Mission Director in Namibia since August 2008. Immediately prior, Mr Gottlieb served as Senior Deputy Assistant Administrator for Humanitarian Assistance. He has more than 25 years of experience with the U.S. government, NGOs, and the UN, primarily in the field of humanitarian relief. Mr Gottlieb began his USAID career in 1988 as the Disaster Response Coordinator in Malawi, subsequently serving in Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya. In 1999 he established the first regional USAID Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance in Africa while serving as the Senior Regional Advisor in Kenya.
François Grunewald (moderator)
Engineer in agriculture science and specialised in rural economy and Associate Professor at Paris XII University, François Grunewald spent 30 years in development, emergency and post disaster rehabilitation projects in Africa, Asia (Cambodia, Laos, Thailand), Central Europe, and Central/Latin America. He worked with NGOs, UN agencies and ICRC. In 1997, he became chair of a French research, evaluation and training institute, Groupe URD (Urgence-Rehabilitation-Developpement) for which he carried out several research and evaluation work for the European Union, ICRC, the UN and NGO. He wrote several books and articles on complex emergencies and the management of socio-natural disasters. François Grunewald has been, among others, team leader for the evaluation of the response to Bar el Ghazal Famine in 1998, of the Post Mitch inter NGO evaluation from 1999 to 2001; the DFID UNICEF evaluation of the response to the Darfur Crisis, the evaluation of the French response to the Tsunami, the IASC evaluation of the International response to the crisis in the Horn of Africa; and many evaluations after the Haiti earthquake.
Mahalmoudou Hamadoun
Dr Hamadoun has been the Food Security Programme Coordinator - Fight against Desertification-Population - Development CILSS system since October 2011. From February 2006 to September 2011, Dr Hamadoun was an expert in Natural Resource Management - responsible for rural land and pastoralism at CILSS. Prior to joining the CILSS, Dr Hamadoun was Head of the research program at the University of Mali Bukari: Coordination of research on land tenure and decentralization in a context of economic liberalization: inter-university program between the University Bukari Mande, the University Namur (Belgium) and the University of Notre Dame de la Paix in Brussels, Belgium.
Patricia Justino
Dr Patricia Justino is an internationally recognised expert on the analysis of conflict. She is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Development Studies, was a recent visiting fellow at Harvard University (2007-2009) and has studied in Coimbra (Portugal), Cambridge and London. She has also worked extensively on the measurement of poverty, inequality and vulnerability, has conducted innovative research on social protection in situations of political instability and has been lead researcher in projects funded by the British Academy, DFID, the European Commission, the ESRC, the UK Leverhulme Trust, the World Bank, FAO, UNDP and UN Women. Over the past five years, Dr Justino has led two major research initiatives on the micro-level analysis of conflict and violence. She is co-director of the Households in Conflict Network, and director of MICROCON, a major EC-funded research programme.
Sikander Khan (side event)
Before being appointed as the UNICEF Representative in Somalia in September 2011, Mr. Sikander Khan served as the Representative of UNICEF Iraq in Baghdad from August 2008 to July 2011. During this time, he refocused UNICEF's programmes from primarily saving the lives of millions of children affected by the war and violence towards early recovery and development. He managed the re-orientation of UNICEF's programmes to assist Iraqi partners to overcome challenges including outdated social policies, limited governmental technical capacity and dilapidated social service infrastructures. There were three main areas of focus: supporting the modernization of government policies, helping strengthen the institutional capacity of the government counterparts and developing programmes in areas where children were in extreme deprivation. Mr. Khan oversaw the relocation of UNICEF's office from Amman making it easier to work effectively with key partners.
Sue Lautze (moderator)
Sue Lautze holds a doctorate in Development Studies from Oxford University, a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University and Bachelors of Arts in Agricultural Economics and Managerial Economics from the University of California at Davis. Her career in humanitarian work spans 25 years of operations, advocacy and research in Africa, Asia and Europe. A co-founder of the Tufts University Feinstein Centre, her work has focused on the implications and consequences of violent conflict and disasters on livelihood systems, national disaster risk management policies and cash-based humanitarian responses. She joined FAO in 2011 and has worked with the Government of Ethiopia, UN agencies, donor governments and the private sector. A Fulbright scholar, she is the author of numerous papers, studies and peer-reviewed articles.
Estherine Lisinge-Fotabong
Mrs. Estherine Lisinge-Fotabong is the current Director of Programme Implementation and Coordination Directorate of the NEPAD Planning and Coordinating Agency (NPCA). She was the UNEP Country Liaison Officer for South Africa and the Environment Adviser to the NEPAD Secretariat. Mrs. Fotabong has a Master Degree in Law and a Second Master Degree in International Affairs specializing in International Policy and Practice. Before joining UNEP, she held several positions including: Assistant Lecturer in Law at the University of Soa, Yaoundé, Cameroon; Director of Policy and Strategy; WWF Central African Regional Programme Office, Biodiversity and NEPAD Programme Officer with UNEP-DGEF.
Dan Maxwell (moderator)
Dan Maxwell has been on the faculty of the Feinstein Center at Tufts University since 2006, where he leads the research program in food security and livelihoods in complex emergencies and teaches courses in food security and humanitarian studies. From 2008 to 2011 he was the chair of the newly formed Department of Food and Nutrition Policy in the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts. Prior to coming to Tufts, he was the Deputy Regional Director for CARE International in Eastern and Central Africa, based in Nairobi from1998-2006. In addition to his primary responsibility for the oversight of Country Offices, he was responsible for program development, emergency preparedness and response, monitoring and evaluation and technical support for ten countries in the Great Lakes and the Greater Horn of Africa. From 1995 to1998, he was a Rockefeller Post-Doctoral Fellow the International Food Policy Research Institute. Prior to completing his PhD he worked for Mennonite Central Committee for ten years in Tanzania and Uganda. His recent research has focused on food security and livelihoods in protracted crises, impact assessment of livelihoods and disaster risk reduction programming, and food security measurement.
David Nabarro CBE FRCP (moderator)
Born in London in 1949, David Nabarro trained as doctor, worked for six years in child health and nutrition programmes in Iraq, South Asia and East Africa, taught for six years at the London and Liverpool Schools of Tropical Medicine, and served as Director for Human Development in the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). In 1999 he was selected to lead Roll Back Malaria at the World Health Organization (WHO): in 2003 moved to WHO’s Department for Health Action in Crises and in September 2005 he joined the office of the UN Secretary General as Senior Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza. In January 2009 he was also asked to coordinate the UN system’s High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis and in October 2009, Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, appointed David Nabarro as his Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition.
Christine van Nieuwenhuyse
Ms. Christine van Nieuwenhuyse is the Director of the WFP Liaison Office in Brussels since September 2011. Previously she served as WFP Representative and Country Director in the occupied Palestinian territory. Prior to this post she was the WFP Deputy Regional Director in Dakar covering West and Central African Region. She held several field positions in different WFP offices in West-Africa and was Deputy Country Director in India. She has also been posted at WFP Headquarters in Rome as a Senior Programme Advisor for the Policy Department and Nutrition Service. She has more than 25 years of experience with WFP, primarily in the field of humanitarian assistance, food security and nutrition. A Belgian national, Ms. Christine van Nieuwenhuyse holds a Masters degree in International Public Law from the University of Louvain, Belgium, and a post graduate degree in Nutrition from the University of Montpellier, France.
Joseph Schechla
Joseph Schechla specializes in economic, social and cultural rights and international law affecting land and productive resources in conflict, occupation and war. His work covers a range of prolonged conflict and occupation cases involving displacement and population transfer. Since 2000, Mr Schechla has coordinated the Cairo-based global and Middle East/North Africa programs of Habitat International Coalition’s Housing and Land Rights Network (HIC-HLRN) of CSOs specialized in the human rights to adequate housing, water and land. As a researcher and trainer, Mr Schechla manages HIC-HLRN to build capacity in human rights methodologies for investigation and advocacy. He also has served as program coordinator from the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Palestine (1998–2000) and representative of OHCHR in Tunisia (2011).
Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval (moderator)
Since mid-2005, Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval has served as Head of the Policy Division in OECD’s Directorate for Development Co-operation and provided leadership for work in conflict and fragility, governance, capacity development, environment, gender equality and policy coherence, with the more recent addition of work on aid for trade and food security. Previously, Ms. Trzeciak-Duval served in the Office of the OECD Secretary-General as Special Advisor and Co-ordinator of Policy Coherence for Development and, before that, headed OECD’s Division for Agricultural Policies in Non-Member Economies. Between 1991 and 1997, she was Head of the OECD’s Russia and Newly Independent States Unit and was responsible for the programme with economies in transition. Before joining the OECD in 1991, Ms. Trzeciak-Duval completed a 20-year career at the World Bank working on development policy issues.
Philippe Thomas
Philippe Thomas is Head of the sector Food Crisis within the European Commission, for the "Rural development, Food security and Nutrition thematic unit" (Directorate General Development and Cooperation). He trained as economist and as veterinary doctor and worked for 20 years in several sub Saharan African countries with food security, animal and human health and also public expenditure issues. He has been working for the European Commission for the last 9 years and 13 years for the French Minister of Foreign Affairs. Among his responsibilities, he is in charge of the EU Food Facility and of issues related to the link food crisis and development (LRRD, resilience, DRR, etc.).
Razan Zuayter
Razan Zuayter holds a BSc and Masters in Agriculture from the American University of Beirut. She is the founder & president of the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), an organization that focuses on the protection of natural resources in the context of conflict. Razan is the initiator and co-founder of the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty (ANFS). She is a member of the Civil Society Mechanism / CFS at FAO and the WA focal point at the IPC, under which she founded in 2003 the Working Group on Conflict in the Context of Food Security. She is currently coordinating the CSM/CFS WG on Protracted Crises and has written several articles and given many presentations on the topic.
Rami Zurayk
Rami Zurayk is a Professor at the Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences at the American University of Beirut and a social activist within Arab civil society. He studied at the American University of Beirut and at Oxford University (UK). He has published over 120 research articles and technical reports on issues at the nexus of agriculture, environment and politics. He writes a weekly column in the Arab daily Al-Akhbar. His latest book Food, Farming and Freedom: sowing the Arab Spring was published by Just World Books.
Steering Committee
Dr Brian Baldwin
Senior Operations Management Adviser: including management of PBAS and allocations for countries in post-conflict and programmatic approached for fragile states. Manager of IFAD’s HIPC programme including management of debt in countries in crisis. Ex-country portfolio manager for Pakistan, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Cambodia and Philippines all of which addressed in-country civil strife and fragility with country level stakeholders in public sector, private sector and civil society. Co-Chair Global Donor Platform for Rural Development and participant at Busan HLF December 2011.
Henk-Jan Brinkman
Henk-Jan Brinkman is chief of the Policy, Planning and Application Branch of the Peacebuilding Support Office in the United Nations Secretariat. Between 2006 and 2010, he was senior Adviser for Economic Policy in the World Food Programme, based in New York, and chief Economic Analysis and chief Food Security Policy and Markets in the Office of the Executive Director of the World Food Programme in Rome, Italy. From 2001 to 2006 he was a Senior Economic Affairs Officer in the Executive Office of the Secretary-General of the United Nations, where he advised Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Deputy Secretary-General Louise Fréchette on economic, social and environmental issues. Between 1989 and 2001, he was in the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, where, inter alia, he contributed to the World Economic and Social Survey. He holds a B.A. and an M.A. in economics from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands and a Ph.D. in economics from the New School for Social Research in New York City. He is the lead author of WFP’s World Hunger Series – Hunger and Markets, and author of Explaining Prices in the Global Economy: A Post-Keynesian Model. He holds Dutch citizenship.
Giancarlo Cirri
Giancarlo Cirri, a Swiss national, is the Acting Director of Policy, Planning and Strategy for the World Food Programme. Giancarlo joined WFP in 1995 and served in Yemen, Algeria, Cameroon, and Sao Tome and Principe (overseeing Gabon) before becoming a Country Director in Niger, Mauritania, and Yemen. Giancarlo joined the Policy Division as Head of School Feeding in 2011 before assuming responsibilities as the Deputy Director of Policy.
Hafez Ghanem
Hafez Ghanem – who holds a PhD in Economics from the University of California, Davis – is a development expert with extensive experience in policy analysis, project formulation and supervision and management of multinational institutions. He has worked in over 21 countries in Africa, Europe and Central Asia, Middle East and North Africa and South East Asia. He joined the Brookings Institution in 2012 as a senior fellow in the Global Economy and Development program to lead the Arab economies project. During the period 2007-12 he worked at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) as the Assistant Director-General responsible for the Economic and Social Development Department. This Department is responsible for FAO’s analytical work on agricultural economics and food security, trade and markets, gender and equity, and statistics. Prior to joining FAO, he spent twenty-four years on the staff of the World Bank where he started as a research economist and then senior economist in West Africa and later South Asia. In 1995, he moved to Europe and Central Asia where he was Sector Leader for Public Economics and Trade Policy.
David Nabarro CBE FRCP
Born in London in 1949, David Nabarro trained as doctor, worked for six years in child health and nutrition programmes in Iraq, South Asia and East Africa, taught for six years at the London and Liverpool Schools of Tropical Medicine, and served as Director for Human Development in the British Government’s Department for International Development (DFID). In 1999 he was selected to lead Roll Back Malaria at the World Health Organization (WHO): in 2003 moved to WHO’s Department for Health Action in Crises and in September 2005 he joined the office of the UN Secretary General as Senior Coordinator for Avian and Pandemic Influenza. In January 2009 he was also asked to coordinate the UN system’s High Level Task Force on the Global Food Security Crisis and in October 2009, Ban Ki-Moon, UN Secretary General, appointed David Nabarro as his Special Representative for Food Security and Nutrition.
Kostas G. Stamoulis
Kostas G. Stamoulis is currently Director of the Agricultural Development Economics Division in FAO Headquarters and Secretary of the Committee on World Food Security. Before joining FAO in 1989, he was Assistant Professor of Agricultural Economics at the University of Illinois in Urbana Champaign. From 1985 to 1987 he was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of California at Berkeley. His work includes issues related to the role of agriculture in rural development and rural poverty reduction in developing countries; the impact of changes in food systems on smallholder farmers and on rural poverty; the linkages between the agricultural sector and the rural non-farm economy. Stamoulis has also carried out work on the assessment of the role of macroeconomic and exchange-rate policies on agriculture and the rural sector and the interdependence between exchange rate, financial and commodity markets. Stamoulis holds a degree in Economics from the Economics University of Athens (Greece), a Master’s Degree in Agricultural Economics from the University of Georgia (USA) and a Ph.D. in Agricultural and Resource Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.
Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval
Since mid-2005, Alexandra Trzeciak-Duval has served as Head of the Policy Division in OECD’s Directorate for Development Co-operation and provided leadership for work in conflict and fragility, governance, capacity development, environment, gender equality and policy coherence, with the more recent addition of work on aid for trade and food security. Previously, Ms. Trzeciak-Duval served in the Office of the OECD Secretary-General as Special Advisor and Co-ordinator of Policy Coherence for Development and, before that, headed OECD’s Division for Agricultural Policies in Non-Member Economies. Between 1991 and 1997, she was Head of the OECD’s Russia and Newly Independent States Unit and was responsible for the programme with economies in transition. Before joining the OECD in 1991, Ms. Trzeciak-Duval completed a 20-year career at the World Bank working on development policy issues.
Razan Zuayter
Razan Zuayter holds a BSc and Masters in Agriculture from the American University of Beirut. She is the founder & president of the Arab Group for the Protection of Nature (APN), an organization that focuses on the protection of natural resources in the context of conflict. Razan is the initiator and co-founder of the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty (ANFS). She is a member of the Civil Society Mechanism / CFS at FAO and the WA focal point at the IPC, under which she founded in 2003 the Working Group on Conflict in the Context of Food Security. She is currently coordinating the CSM/CFS WG on Protracted Crises and has written several articles and given many presentations on the topic.
