Madrid high level consultation participants want to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition by 2025

“When I was born, four out of five Koreans lived in rural areas, but very few of them actually owned the land they farmed. Most were very poor, and many experienced hunger. The war years, of course, were especially dire. The United Nations helped come to the rescue, not just militarily but with sacks of grain and other forms of sustenance. When small farmers finally gained access to land and inputs, they were able to move beyond subsistence and contribute to the country’s progress. Today, the Republic of Korea is ranked 12th on the Human Development Index. There is a message for the world in Korea’s achievement: Hunger and malnutrition can be eliminated. With the right policies and investments, we can make dramatic progress in one generation – not in some distant future but in our own lifetimes.”

Thus stated UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon, when he formally accepted the result of the Global Consultation on Hunger, Food Security and Nutrition in the Post 2015 Development Framework, at the closing ceremonies during the High Level Meeting in Madrid, Spain on April 4. The meeting was the third and final phase of the Global post 2015 consultation on the said theme. Participants responded to a working document entitled “Food Security and Nutrition for All: A Vision and Building Blocks for a Global Agenda,” which represented the results of the first two phases of the consultation.

The participants during the high level meeting said that the common vision of ending hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in a sustainable manner by the year 2025 is both a moral and political imperative and called for a bold and effective action to achieve this vision. They acknowledged that the critical agents of change are women and men small producers and their organizations, family farmers, fishers, livestock keepers, forest users, workers, entrepreneurs, and indigenous peoples, as well as consumers at all levels.

AFA Secretary General Esther Penunia, in her intervention, suggested to include in the “building blocks for a development agenda” ensuring rights to fisheries, forests and seeds, in addition to land rights; to prioritize investments on sustainable agro-ecological approaches and in motivating the youth to go into agriculture; to establish market rules that are fair to small-scale producers, and to strengthen at all levels policy and program coherence among all departments related to food security and nutrition. She mentioned that the celebration for the International Year of Family Farming in 2014 may be an opportunity to strengthen such coordination.

The meeting was co-hosted by the Governments of Spain and Colombia, and led by FAO and WFP. It was attended by representatives from national governments, intergovernmental organizations, UN systems, private sector, NGOs and producer organizations such as La Via Campesina, World Farmers Organization, Pan African Farmers Organization, World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers, and the Asian Farmers’ Association.

Click here for the Joint Chair and Co-leads Synthesis Report

Click here for the Remarks of the UN Secretary General

Click here for the Vision and Building Blocks for the Global Agenda

Click here for AFA intervention

Click here for the Summary Report from IISD