MIRRA – Meeting of the Parties concerned on food security and nutrition in protracted crises

05/04/2018

MIRRA participated in a meeting on food security and nutrition in the context of the extended crises on Thursday morning in cooperation with ESCWA, FAO and the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty, in the presence of concerned Jordanian governmental institutions and institutions.

The participants discussed the effects of wars and conflicts on agriculture and food security and discussed the possibility of developing a framework for action on food security, nutrition, protracted crises and the most important challenges facing agriculture and food security in Jordan, as it is affected by the conflicts surrounding it.

The participants stressed the importance of supporting local production, agricultural sector and local markets for their importance, enhancing access to local markets and supporting Jordanian farmers.

The Director-General of the National Center for Agricultural Research and Extension, Dr. Nizar Haddad said during the meeting, which was attended by a number of officials of the ministries of agriculture and the environment and an expert from FAO, the need for further assessments of the underlying causes of malnutrition and malnutrition and support agricultural research and reduce waste in agricultural resources such as land and water and improve efficiency Use.

“Sovereignty over food is the only way to have sovereignty over a political decision and it is a right for peoples, communities and nations to define their policies on agriculture, work, hunting, land and adequate food,” said the founding member of the Arab Organization for the Protection of Nature, That the most important means of achieving sovereignty over food in the Arab world is “to raise strategies from the level of regional cooperation to the level of integration strategy on achieving food security in the context of protracted crises, wars, conflicts and occupation.”

The network has for the first time identified occupation and war as a major cause of food insecurity, in parallel with the need to prevent the use of water and food as a weapon to pressure peoples and nations and to provide food support to the affected peoples from the production of their small farmers.

The representative of the Food and Agriculture Organization in Jordan, Talal Al Fayez stressed the importance of food and nutrition security in light of the crises, occupation and conflicts plaguing the Arab region, calling for cooperation to achieve food security, whether public sector, civil society, local, private sector, academia, food producers and international and regional organizations.

He said that crises have a direct impact on the region as a whole and not just on Qatar or another, stressing that there will be no food security or development if there is no effective action to stop conflicts and wars and to achieve a just and sustainable peace.

Al-Fayez pointed out that about 76 percent of the world’s 65.6 million forcibly displaced people come from five countries in the Arab region: Iraq, Libya, Sudan, Syria and Yemen, excluding Palestinian refugees, noting that “despite the absence of conflicts and direct wars in Jordan, “The impact of the crises on food security and the economic and social situation in it is still significant by virtue of its location adjacent to three Arab countries affected and close to it.”

He called for linking humanitarian assistance to development programs and conflict resolution processes and within the framework of the food security and nutrition program in the extended crises launched by the Committee on World Food Security.

The Executive Director of the Arab Organization for the Protection of Nature, Maryam Geagea, spoke about the Committee on World Food Security, pointing out that the Arab Network for the sovereignty of food represents the civil society of the Arab region in this committee, where the network led the global civil society delegation in the negotiations on the issue of crises.

For his part, the representative of the World Food Program and the country director Majid Yahya stressed the program’s interest in the Arab region, its food security and the need to stop all forms of conflicts and armed conflicts in order to allow for human development.

“The Arab countries are the least fortunate in development and face great challenges in the area of food security because of the decline in agricultural production,” said Kamil Hamati, an adviser to the Asqua Organization in Beirut.

“One in nine people in the world is starving, with a total of 815 million hungry,” said FAO Chief Technical Adviser Rene Verdwin. “Armed conflicts in the Arab region are negatively affecting food security and hunger has doubled, Seventy-80 per cent of Syrians and Yemenis suffer from acute food shortages, at a time when the cost of the war in Syria is $ 226 billion.

MIRRA Team

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