70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly - 3rd Committee - Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food

 

 

Key speaking points of FAO

70th Session of the United Nations General Assembly - 3rd Committee

Interim report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food

Delivered by the Director of the FAO Liaison Office to the UN, Carla Mucavi

23 October, 2015, United Nations

 

 

FAO would like to welcome the interim report of the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, which highlights the importance of decisive action on climate change to eliminate hunger and move forward to achieve the realization of the human right to adequate food for all.

 

FAO praises the report for it places particular emphasis on the most vulnerable, including women, children, people with disabilities, as well as those who live under socioeconomic discrimination.  

 

FAO within its mandate focuses its efforts in the promotion and implementation of well-designed social protection programmes to break the vicious circle of poverty and hunger by reducing the poverty gap between earned incomes and the poverty line. In the context of complex climatic shocks, public programmes, such as social protection and resilience building, should be increasingly prioritized, in particular to ensure increasing food and nutrition security for the most vulnerable and marginalized populations. FAO also stands behind the importance of eradicating extreme poverty and hunger sustainably by boosting both public and private investment, particularly for farmers, to raise rural and agricultural productivity and incomes.

 

FAO agrees that efforts should be made to address both adaptation and mitigation to climate change, to ensuring food security. FAO also appreciates the description of agroecology in the report, and how it relates to the right to food. Agroecological practices are one way to answer the combined crisis of natural resources degradation, climate change and food security.

 

Let me conclude by saying that making agriculture and food systems more resilient, sustainable and ready to counter-balance the impact of climate change, should be an overarching political and development priority of all, to guarantee the full enjoyment of the human right to adequate food across the world.