Mr. Nadim Khouri, Deputy Executive Secretary, ESCWA, accompanied by Mr. Khalid Abu-Ismail, Chief of Section, Development Policy, ESCWA visited the FAO Regional Office for the Near East on 16 May 2013. The ESCWA mission met with the Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for the Near East Mr. Abdessalam OuldAhmed and discussed areas of collaboration between ESCWA and FAO regional Office. The two agencies parties discussed overall ESCWA-FAO collaboration, exchanged views on the recent strategic orientation in the two organisations and areas where collaboration would need to be strengthened and partnerships with other stakeholders need to be fostered.

Following this, a following meeting was arranged for the mission with professional staff in the Regional Office where more detailed discussions took place on specific areas of collaborative work in the region.

The key issues discussed included: i) collaboration in the context of the Regional UN Coordination Mechanism (RCM) and the Thematic Working Groups on food security, MDGs, climate change and statistics; ii) ongoing work for the development of joint knowledge product on food security and nutrition involving other organisations such as IFPRI, World Bank; iii) FAO water Initiative; iv) climate change and natural resource management; v) conflict, disasters and resilience in food and agriculture.