المنتدى العالمي المعني بالأمن الغذائي والتغذية

Dear fellows from the StC-HLPE

First of all, congratulations for the excellent work you have been doing in order to achieving high quality reports on relevant dimensions and aspects of food and nutrition security.

As far as I remember, there was an expectation of receiving a demand from the CFS to elaborate a HLPE report on how to improve social participation at national and sub-national levels in policy making, implementing and monitoring related to overcome hunger and all forms of mal nutrition, and to promote food and nutrition security. However, the request of the CFS whose draft scope is in e-consultation has been formulated to my view following a quite different and somehow biased perspective which could be noticed in its very title: The Multistakeholder Partnerships to Finance and Improve Food Security and Nutrition in the Framework of the 2030 Agenda.

I presume this has to do with building up the so-called multistakeholder platforms or partnerships aimed at engaging private sector and social organizations which are expected to mobilize financial and human resources to set in place actions (e.g. local ones) targeted at poor and vulnerable people, hopefully in interaction with governments. By looking at the proposed questions, one realizes that public policies appear as something “external” that platforms should dialogue with. Experiences in many parts of the world conducted by private foundations and similar organizations have been following exactly this perspective, often acting outside the institutional framework (or trying to build shortcuts to it). Analysts have already pointed out their lack of social participation, transparency and accountability. Furthermore, one would easily find examples of solutions biased towards private dynamics (e.g. seed industry). Huge controversies on public-private partnerships could  be found worldwide.

The point I want to make has nothing to do with supporting existing institutional frameworks or governance mechanisms which very often result from governments impermeable to social demands, restricted democratic procedures to sort out conflicts and  also a fragile civil society. My question is precisely the opposite. The core of the report should stress ways, means and requirements for setting in motion processes that could change the picture in relation to what is really central, that is, policy making, implementing and monitoring, including priorities guiding the destination of public resources. To be sure, private foundations and similar organizations are welcome, provided mechanisms for public governance of FNS and governments´ acting are the main points to be addressed.

In this sense, it is important to make clear that experiences like the Brazilian Council on Food and Nutrition Security (CONSEA), as well as similar ones in many countries around the world, has little to do, if anything, with the perspective proposed for the report. Councils are conceived as public spaces for social participation in the making, implementing and monitoring of food and nutrition security policies and programmes. Public spaces inscribed in the institutional framework of governmental acting. As you certainly know, this is one of the various possible models of what is called participatory democracy. I reckon this is the demand of social organizations, movements and networks engaged with the CFS Civil Society Mechanism, as well as at national level. An increasing number of academics are also directing their researches in this sense.

Having said that, I am confident the StC will be able to take into account this central question in the design of the report and the composition of the project team, though constrained by the way CFS has formulated its demand.

With my best wishes

Prof. Renato S. Maluf

Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Former President of CONSEA and former member of the HLPE StC