Upholding integrated, participatory and inclusive food systems governance through the CFS and
UN Food System Summit processes

11 February 2021 

** Watch the recording of this session here. Videos with interpreted Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish are also available **

This side event at the 47th Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) brought together representatives and expert speakers from around the world to debate the institutional structures that will ensure the robust governance required for resilient, renewable, equitable, healthy, diverse food systems over the next year and beyond.

Panellists spoke to how there is widespread consensus that food systems must be governed holistically, with diverse stakeholders from across civil society engaged and meaningfully represented. Speakers called for questions of accountability, power and political economy not to be sidelined from conversations about how to reform systems, especially in the context of the UN Food Systems Summit.

A number of ideas were expressed on how to further strengthen the role of the CFS in the governance of global food systems, including the suggestion that outcomes of the Food Systems Summit are sent to the CFS as a way of operationalizing them. Importantly, speakers repeatedly called for human rights, especially of the vulnerable like women, Indigenous peoples, and small-holders, to be protected. Co-hosted by the Agroecology Fund, Dominican Republic, Global Alliance for the Future of Food, IPES-Food, and SDG2 Advocacy Hub, 320 people attended the session. 

Speakers:

• Amb. Céline Jurgensen, France
• Amb. Mario Arvelo, Dominican Republic
• Amb. Thanawat Tiensin, CFS Chairperson
• Jessica Vega Ortega, Global Indigenous Youth Caucus, Mexico; Vice-Chair – Indigenous Peoples, UNFSS Champions Network
• Michael Fakhri UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food)
• Olivier de Schutter, IPES-Food; UN Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights
• Paul Newnham, SDG2 Advocacy Hub
• Ruth Richardson, Global Alliance for the Future of Food
• Shalmali Guttal, Focus on the Global South – Civil Society Mechanism (CSM)
• Sofia Monsalve, FIAN International – Civil Society Mechanism (CSM)

A written summary of the side event outcomes can be found on the FAO website here.

** Watch the recording of this session here **