Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition (FSN Forum)

Thursday, 9 July 2020 @14:00 - 15:30 (UTC+2)

The Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak continues to spread throughout the Near East and North Africa (NENA) - Arab States region. The pandemic will have huge impacts on public health and represents already an unprecedented shock to economies, food systems and labour markets globally and in the NENA region, affecting rural poverty and resilience. It is estimated that an additional 8.3 million people in the region could fall into poverty. 

Given this broader impact, the consequences of COVID-19 pandemic require responses that go far beyond the health sector; including measures to assist people and protect them against falling into poverty due to the socio-economic impacts of the pandemic, highlighting the crucial importance of inclusive, comprehensive and stable social protection systems. Systems that respond to differentiated needs across population and income groups, are flexible to be scaled up quickly in times of crisis and contribute to the resilience of food systems. 

FAO highlights the importance of using innovation and digital applications in social protection as a way to ensure that people can maintain their livelihoods and sustain themselves in times of emergencies and beyond, especially in rural areas. This webinar will set the stage by looking at some of the promising digital and innovative solutions in social protection in order to limit the negative impacts of this crisis on rural poverty, resilience and food systems, including on food security and nutrition.

The webiminar will address the following questions:

• How the NENA region has been affected by the crisis? (Socio-economic impacts)
• What social protection initiatives have been implemented to support rural areas that can be scaled up and replicated? (Selected success country-cases from NENA, and other examples)
• How can governments and partners foster innovation and digital technology applications in social protection to build the basis for a more comprehensive and inclusive social protection system in the long-term?  

Opening remarks:

• Abdessalam Ould Ahmed, Assistant Director General and Regional Representative for the Near East and North Africa – FAO
• Rabah Arezki, Chief Economist for NENA Region – World Bank 

Speakers:

• Fabio Veras, Communications, Publication and Research Coordinator – IPC-IG, Overview of the social protection response to COVID-19 around the world and in the region for FSN. 
• Samman Thapa, Regional Social Policy Advisor for the MENA region – UNICEF, Overview of the child-sensitive social protection response to COVID-19 around the world and in the region. 
• Rodrigo Assumpçã, Social protection Management Information Systems specialist – ILO, Overview of the horizontal expansion of social protection to the informal and rural economy in Egypt or Tunisia.
• Chakib Abouzaid, Secretary General – General Arab Insurance Federation, Overview of the role of agriculture insurance as a response to COVID-19 in the region.
• Salma Zaky, Social Protection Officer & Marta Dabbas, Regional Digital Assistance Services Officer – WFP, Overview of digital technology applications in social protection in response to COVID-19 in the region. 
• Omar Benammour, Social Protection Officer – FAO ESP, Overview of FAO’s work on social protection in the region and the response to COVID-19: Example of Kenya, Tunisia, Sudan and Morocco.

Facilitated by: Omar Benammour, Social protection Officer – FAO

HOW TO ATTEND

Only registered participants will attend, please find the Registration Link here

Please note that the session will start on time on 09 July 2020 at 14:00 – 15:30 (UTC +2)

We invite all participants to kindly login 10 minutes before.

For more information please visit www.fao.org/neareast/events/view/en/c/1296227

For further inquiries please feel free to contact: [email protected] 

Virtual event, 28/05/2020 - 28/05/2020

As countries ease lockdown measures, a new set of challenges emerges for food production, processing, and logistics of supply chains. Some of these can provide opportunity for growth, given that policy-makers and value chain actors play their part. To mitigate COVID-19 impacts and to open new opportunities, countries need practical solutions on a range of issues including food supply, food and nutrition security, trade and markets.

The FAO webinar entitled “Lifting lockdowns – what next for food systems?” should serve as a platform for information sharing among countries and partners to address impacts of COVID-19 and challenges in the food and agriculture sector of Europe and Central Asia.

Please register to follow the virtual event through the Zoom conferencing platform, simultaneous interpretation in Russian is provided. The webcast will be streamed live on YouTube in English.

Opening Remarks

Vladimir Rakhmanin

FAO ADG and Regional Representative for Europe and Central Asia

Speakers

Maximo Torero 

Chief Economist, 

FAO

Khatia Tsilosani

Deputy Minister,

Ministry of Environmental Protection and Agriculture, Georgia

Taras Kachka 

Deputy Minister,

Ministry of Agrarian Policy and Food, Ukraine

Arman Khojoyan

Deputy Minister

Ministry of Economy, Armenia

Paulo Gouvei

Chief Policy Advisor

Copa Cogeca

FAO has implemented an array of tools to support policy analyses and assess the impact of COVID-19 on on food and agriculture, value chains, food prices, food security across the globe.

• Urgent policy measures
• Policy briefs
• Policy responses
• Big data | Daily updates
• Food policy warnings
• Crop calendars

Strengthening food production and distribution systems is key to fighting hunger and entails helping tackle diseases wherever they emerge in humans, animals, plants or the environment. The Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a global health crisis, and FAO is playing a role in assessing and responding to its potential impacts on people’s life and livelihoods, global food trade, markets, food supply chains and livestock. FAO believes this will allow countries to anticipate and mitigate possible disruptions the pandemic may trigger for people’s food security and livelihoods, avoiding panic-driven reactions that can aggravate disruptions and deteriorate the food and nutrition security of the most vulnerable.FAO is working closely with WHO, WFP, IFAD and OIE and other partners, harnessing broad networks to drive further research, support ongoing investigations and share critical knowledge.

The Committee on World Food Security (CFS) has launched a survey to collect experiences and good practices in the use and application of the CFS Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises (CFS-FFA).



This survey complements an earlier call for inputs issued in March 2019 and will contribute to monitoring progress on the use and application of the CFS-FFA, both from a qualitative and quantitative perspective.

The survey is available in English, French and Spanish and you are welcome to provide your answers in any of the six UN languages. Deadline is the 30 April 2020.

For additional information, please contact [email protected].