National leadership and action are crucial and
governments have the primary responsibility for assuring the food security of
their citizens, FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva recently told a
high-level meeting on the UN's vision for a post-2015 strategy against world
hunger. The UN's Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) deadline will pass in
2015.
"The Millenium Development Goals have pushed us
forward. But with 870 million people still suffering from hunger, the war against
food insecurity is far from over," Graziano da Silva said.
"The only effective answer to food insecurity
is political commitment at the national level, and reinforced at the regional
and global levels by the international community of donors and international
organizations," he said, adding that the world's attitude toward hunger
has changed profoundly.
"The right to food in the context of national
food security is now the agreed foundation for policy discussion
worldwide," he said.
The Director-General said that since the world
produces enough food to feed everyone, emphasis needs to be placed on access to
food and to adequate nutrition at the local level. "We need food systems
to be more efficient and equitable," he said.
He said that such progress will require significant
public and private investment in rural areas where over 70 percent of the
hungry live and where millions of people depend on agriculture for food and
employment including 500 million smallholder farm families.
However, he warned that despite the primary
responsibility of national governments to ensure their citizens are fed,
today's globalized economy means that no country acts alone.
"Actions taken by one country or company may
affect the food security of others [while] conflicts can lead to instability in
neighboring countries and regions," he said.
"Impacts on environmental and natural resources
are not purely national and it is virtually impossible to regulate markets and
activities at the national level alone."
As examples of multilateral efforts that contribute
to national efforts to reduce hunger and make development more sustainable, he
cited the strengthening of the Committee on World Food Security and the United
Nations Secretary-General's High Level Task Force on Global Food Security.
Another example is the Zero Hunger Challenge
launched by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon last June, at the Rio+20
Conference on Sustainable Development, he said.
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