Live from South Sudan, FAO Shares Insights into Work for Zero Hunger
After presenting the initial June 10 offering in our Summer Food Series, Sustainable Food Systems in New York and the World, we are pleased to see that the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations (FAO) has published its own coverage of the event, contributing an overview of Meshack Malo’s comments in highlighting the history and special efforts that FAO regularly makes to resolve issues around hunger globally. Following are some excerpts from the article.
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Kicking off its Summer Series dialogue sessions on food systems, the United Nations Association of New York convened a digital dialogue with the Rome-based Agencies (RBAs) working for Zero Hunger and food security, with FAO’s Representative in South Sudan, Meshack Malo, sharing milestones and challenges from a country-level context.
Connecting live from the Abyei Special Administrative Area, which is situated between South Sudan and the Sudan and is an area with no final boundary determined between the two countries, Meshack Malo, FAO Representative in South Sudan, provided a holistic walkthrough of FAO’s history and purpose, and how its far-reaching mandate across many of the SDGs is manifested on the ground.
Malo spoke of FAO’s roles and responsibilities and of the Organization’s value added, in a country that finds itself at the crossroads of protracted climate and humanitarian emergencies and economic shocks, all of which have taken a toll on rural and agricultural livelihoods and food security levels.
Speaking of South Sudan and other countries facing famine-likely situations due to the compounded impact of humanitarian emergencies, conflict and climate extremes, he said that food aid and food support “constitute the better part of these countries’ economies.” A key challenge in these contexts, he added, is ensuring that agri-food systems are rehabilitated so they can remain inclusive to ensure that no one is left behind.
With every SDG depending to some degree on food security, sustainable and equitable agri‑food systems stand to bring great human progress and socio-economic prosperity, while their absence can be a fundamental cause of poverty, conflict and overall low human development. In this respect, Malo spoke of the peace-food security nexus, which is at the forefront of FAO’s efforts on supporting short-term food security needs and catalyzing long-term development and prosperity.
“Peace is a fundamental factor in order to ensure that there is sufficient food production,” he said, pointing to how a lack of peace can affect farmers and entire communities in a host of ways, oftentimes interfering with the agricultural season and directly affecting their livelihoods and food security. This, in turn, can contribute to upward trends in the number of internally displaced people and of refugees seeking protection across the country’s borders.
“That fundamental relationship between peace and food security and food security and peace is important. There will never be food security without peace and also no peace without food security,” Malo remarked.
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