Thank you Independent Chairperson of Council for providing me the opportunity to speak here today as Chairperson of the Committee on World Food Security.

Excellences, distinguished delegates, dear colleagues,

Allow me to first express my solidarity with, and condolences to, the families of the victims of the ongoing war.

Conflicts are recognized as one of the most important causes of hunger and food insecurity. The first strategy to fight hunger is peace.

As CFS Chairperson, and adhering to the recent Resolutions of the General Assembly, I add my name to those the urgent appeal to end the war in Ukraine that has a systemic effect in global food security, and of course of all wars and conflicts across the globe.

In addition to the heavy humanitarian toll, this conflict is further damaging the food security situation for all countries, and for all communities, which was already seriously compromised by the COVID-19 pandemic, other conflicts, climate change and rising food prices.

Once again, it is the most vulnerable, excluded and the poorest who will pay a high toll.

Excellences,

The CFS is the platform we –member states of the United Nations- created to facilitate global policy coordination. The Committee was born of the food crisis of the early 1970’s, and reformed for responding to the global crises of 2007-2008 and future crisis.

Now, 12 years after its reform, what will the CFS offer in this time of severe crisis?

Perhaps its greatest strength, CFS is the global multilateral platform dedicated to food security and nutrition that includes not just 133 governments as of today, but all relevant UN agencies and Bretton Woods institutions, civil society, private sector and research organizations, and its independent High Level Panel of Experts, among others.

The CFS provides multi-stakeholder, multi-sectoral, integrated deliberations and responses. Foremost, grounded deeply in human rights, the CFS’s platform gives voice to the poor and excluded who are the ones who are hardest hit.

Colleagues,

The best the CFS must offer is its space, its platform, its nature, its mission focused on making the right to adequate food, at all times and everywhere, a reality.

The Committee will provide its platform for policy coordination on the responses to this crisis.

In close coordination with the efforts of the rest of the international community, and very especially with the Secretary General´s Global Crisis Response Group and the RBAs, the CFS will take up its responsibility in the next weeks and months to fully serve its mandate.

As the Chairperson of the Committee, I will strive to make the CFS platform serve as the space in which the international community, our governments and stakeholders meet, share, discuss and coordinate the policy responses needed in the coming weeks and months for ensuring availability, access, stability, utilization of nutritious food, people and stakeholders´ agency and sustainability.

Thank you.

Read the remarks in Spanish