News from the partners

News from the National Alliances | News from the International Alliance | News from the partners | Rome food agencies

>>>Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition policies and Strategies
>>>The International Federation for Home Economics supports this year's WFD theme
>>>Action Aid launches campaign against Hunger
>>>Second Forum for Food Sovereignty held in Mali
>>>Interviews

The International Alliance Against Hunger is open to all, but particularly to institutions that are truly representative of the poor and hungry. International partners include the 60 million women in the World Association of Girl Guides and Girl Scouts, and equal number in the Boy Scouts, the business leaders of Rotary International, the volunteers of the global network of the Caritas Catholic service organization, as well as hundreds of local farmers organizations in the villages of the developing world, women’s support groups, university research teams, charitable foundations, food producers, and a People’s Caravan representing 100 grass-roots civil society organizations that traveled across eleven Asian countries in 2004 to raise awareness on food sovereignty issues.

The Alliance’s partners cross all economic, social and geographic lines, always with the common mission of working to eradicate hunger on our planet.

Global Forum on Food Security and Nutrition policies and Strategies

The FSN Forum is a global on-line community whose members exchange experiences, information and resources to find collective solutions to food security and nutrition (FSN) issues. It provides on-line discussions and solutions for members' queries and problems; databases and other sources of FSN information; news about opportunities for collaboration and capacity development, such as fellowships, training, conferences and internships; a one-stop venue for FAO work on FSN; and monthly newsletters and an annual CD-ROM of key resources. The Forum is driven by the needs and involvement of its members, and coordinated by a Secretariat in FAO's Agricultural Development Economics Division.

Membership is free of charge and open to anybody who could contribute to and benefit from this knowledge and resource sharing network. Potential members include researchers and academics; development practitioners from civil society, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and international agencies; and donors, planners, policy-makers and implementers at all levels. Interested people are invited to register on the Web-site

For more information about the FSN Forum please visit the Web-site or contact Ms Huyen Tran (huyen.tran@fao.org), FSN Forum Moderator.

The International Federation for Home Economics supports this year's WFD theme

The International Federation for Home Economics (IFHE) is an active member of the Ad Hoc group of International Non-governmental Organizations of the FAO who participates as a member of the International Alliance Against Hunger.

The IFHE on the occasion of the World Food Day stated its support to this year's theme issuing a press release in which linkages between the right to food and household food security are clearly established and their importance underlined.

“As the only worldwide Home Economics organisation IFHE supports the right to food with its international work. The IFHE is willing to make a contribution to the realization of the Millennium Development Goals, especially the eradication of extreme poverty and hunger. IFHE members all over the world are working on strategies to eradicate hunger and poverty and to ensure the access to healthy food for every person. Food security is one of the important themes in the practice and research of Home Economists. IFHE aims for the improvement of the quality of everyday life for individuals, families and households through the management of their resources and considering the aims of sustainable development. Mental, physical, psychological and emotional wellbeing is the basic infrastructure for all other forms of social and economic development. The progressive implementation of the right to food addresses eradicating hunger and poverty, and hastening and deepening the sustainable development process.”

For more information visit their website http://www.ifhe.org/

Action Aid launches campaign against Hunger

Chanting powerful mottos such as “UN: Put Food on the Table!” “The Poor must not be Ignored!” and “Hunger is man-made” the International Non-governmental organization Action Aid, active member of the International Alliance against Hunger launched it’s world-wide campaign against hunger known as HungerFree.

The campaign seeks to drive change by pushing governments to:

Introduce and implement laws that bring an immediate end to all deaths by starvation and ensure basic social protection
Enact and enforce laws that guarantee all women the right to own land.
Ensure that corporations are held accountable for abuses of the rights to food, water, land and seeds.

Action Aid bases its campaign on the fact that for over seven years have passed since governments committed to halving world hunger by 2015 and yet today hunger is still increasing in most parts of the world. Many activities around the world were held to raise awareness of the plight of over 850 million people who suffer from hunger. Through campaigns, street protests and sponsors HungerFree is starting to gain wide visibility.

For more information visit http://www.actionaid.org/main.aspx?PageID=677

Second Forum for Food Sovereignty held in Mali

"Food sovereignty is the right of peoples to define their own food and agriculture policies, to protect and regulate domestic agricultural production and trade so as to attain their objectives of sustainable development, to determine in what measure they want to be autonomous and to limit the dumping of products on their markets".

The village of Nyéléni in Sélingué , Mali welcomed participants, from 23 to 27 February 2007, in the World Forum for Food Sovereignty aimed at strengthening a global movement for food sovereignty. Africa was indeed chosen as the scenario of the forum to assess the progress made since la Via Campesina launched the concept during the first World Food Summit in 1996. Debate, social struggles and discussions have enriched the topic over the last ten years transforming the concept of food sovereignty into the main framework of action for civil society organizations and social movements.

In Nyéléni peasants/family farmers, artisanal fisher-folk, indigenous peoples, landless peoples, rural workers, migrants, pastoralists, forest communities, women, youth, consumers, environmental and urban movements, represented by 500 delegates from more than 80 countries, discussed discuss seven key thematic areas and set the agenda for the future:

Trade policies and local markets
Local knowledge and technology
Access to and control over natural resources for food sovereignty
Sharing territories and land, water, fishing rights, agriculture and forest use between sectors.
Conflicts and disasters, responses at local and international levels
Migration
Production models: impact on food sovereignty, people, livelihoods, and the environment.

Food Sovereignty as a concept is being used more and more by different stake-holders, often without really understanding or accepting its eminently political character. The objective of food sovereignty is to place at the centre of the food system those who produce, distribute and consume, taking a stand against the demands of markets and corporations. There is a need to prioritize local and national markets and strengthen small-scale agriculture, fishing and stockbreeding, in order to place food production, distribution and consumption on a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable basis.

The forum with its final statements reaffirmed the need for strengthening links between all sectors actively working on food sovereignty and to continue the struggle to make the voice of the actors heard at the global level. For more information on the forum visit the forum web site
http://www.nyeleni2007.org/

Interview

Interview carried out by the UN System Network on Rural Development and Food Security with Ms. Mercy Karanja, Development Policy Coordinator for the International Federation of Agricultural Producers (IFAP) and member of the More and Better Aid International Campaign,

In this interview, Ms. Mercy Karanja, shares her views on the milestones reached by the campaign, the outcomes of their most recent meeting and ways More and Better and the International Alliance can work together at national level. Read More...

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