Global Policy Forum

Presentation for FES/Global Policy Forum on The Right to Food:
How Can the UN Respond to the Global Food Crisis?

By Frederic Mousseau

Before exploring ways forward on how should the UN respond to the high food prices crisis, I would like to briefly come back to two aspects of the current food crisis.

First, people are hungry today because they don't have enough money to buy the food they need. This may be stating the obvious but it is important to notice that people's dependency on and vulnerability to market fluctuations has dramatically increased over the past thirty years. This is partly due to the reduced share of subsistence agriculture and increase of exportable cash crops and urbanization. It is also important to note that beyond high food prices, many consumers and producers are also adversely affected due to the seasonal fluctuations on market prices.

- Another aspect is people's uneven vulnerability to shocks and market fluctuations. The poor are protected in a number of countries (e.g. minimum income in France, public distribution systems in Indonesia or India…), which make them less vulnerable at anytime, including in periods of stress due to inflation like now. But many countries lack these safety nets. This is due to lack of resources, bad governance, unwillingness of governments but also the removal of most safety nets as well as the regulation function of the States under structural adjustment programmes. This also leads to more instability and volatility in agricultural markets and often less support for farmers .

- These two elements make the current crisis exceptional and unprecedented: high food prices today don't mean the same as 30 years ago. It is with these dimensions in mind that we should reflect on the role of the UN to deal with the current crisis:

This should give a sense of urgency to deal with the problem.

- One must differentiate contexts, taking into account the existence of safety nets and the ability of governments to protect their citizens. International support must be targeted to those countries where States are unable or unwilling to deal with the problem.

- Beyond safety nets, the problem of vulnerability and dependency of countries and people on others for their food supply must put food production and smallholder agriculture at the centre of the response.

- So let's look now at the role the UN can or should play in response to the crisis.

The International Financial Institutions, which are affiliated to the UN system, have a role to play to address the problem they have partly created. Their directors are now calling for more trade liberalization, but they must allow policy space for governments to support and protect consumers and producers and to enhance domestic food production.

1. The UN system has a key role to play and a wide capacity and expertise, which is not as exploited as it should. The aid system designed to fight hunger is not fit for purpose and rather the result of a history, which included dumping practices and a strong export agenda for rich countries. This is what gave the World Food Programme (WFP) the important role it has today (it is the largest humanitarian organization) but also its narrow mandate on just food deliveries. This is also one factor that led to some marginalization of FAO and IFAD, like agriculture and small holders in the development agenda.

2. Rising hunger is a worldwide and structural problem that requires different types of responses. National governments have the primary responsibility to address hunger, through resource transfers, public policies and investments. Humanitarian types of responses run directly by UN agencies are required in countries where governments don't have the ability or the willingness to deal with the problem.

3. In most countries, the UN assistance must support governments and local administration to design and implement national strategies of prevention and response. Existing arrangements in some countries (eg the Disposit if National de Reponse in Niger where the Government is leading an action plan involving all key stakeholders) may show the way forward.

4. In terms of concrete responses, the provision of food or cash is important, along with other measures that can support people's purchasing power and protect livelihoods. WFP but also UNICEF and UNDP are in a position to play an important role here.

5. The immediate provision of food or cash is not good enough. Having safety nets in place means that one needs to establish or re-establish systems of mitigation and risk reduction, which include food reserves, grain banks, resource transfers to vulnerable groups, etc… Many would be protected by market fluctuations today if some of these mechanisms were in place. The UN system can play an important role here and help in terms of funding, management, procurement, storage, etc. And for ensuring the missing link between food production and distribution.

6. Also, direct assistance as well as aid for food imports, are very immediate measures, which must be complemented by parallel actions in the agricultural sector. The only way forward is to diversify livelihoods, boost and enhance domestic food production. Therefore, emergency response must also include a massive support to agriculture in favour of smallholders. If assistance is limited to food aid and food imports, the dependency on food imports may remain unresolved and be perpetuated.

7. These recommendations have implications for the UN system, especially given the reforms and strategic thinking that are taking place in the Rome based agencies and programmes:

Given the strong relation of the different levels of response, the principles of coherence and improved effectiveness enunciated by the Paris declaration and the One UN approach, FAO, IFAD and WFP should work more closely together in support of national strategies of response. This should include need assessment, funding requirement, communication and direct programme implementation.

- Regarding funding, it is a pity that the only amount of aid money that is being talked about is the WFP funding gap. The UN should have more leadership and come up with plans and numbers, which will come from a direct engagement at country level to assess the support needed by each country and government.

- WFP is currently preparing a new strategy plan, which will have to look beyond the sole distribution of food. In many countries affected by chronic hunger, WFP keeps on distributing food every year, often to the same people. Oxfam praises the move by WFP to broaden its toolbox with cash and vouchers rather than just deliveries. But the programme should also shift towards less delivery and more capacity building of governments, local administration as well as communities themselves for the establishment of safety nets and risk reduction mechanisms.

- WFP funding mechanism (the programme is financed by project, with a percentage of overheads calculated on aid deliveries) should then be revised accordingly in order to think more in terms of quality than just quantities delivered.

- FAO and IFAD have been somehow marginalized in the aid system over the past two decades; they are both under reform and review but one must recognize these organizations as essential to help developing countries to fight hunger and they should play a leading role in response to the current crisis.

- Even before this crisis, it had become clear that winning the fight against hunger requires substantial changes in the way the aid system is designed and functions. The current food price crisis makes it just more relevant and even more urgent to address problems that were already there and which have undermined the world's ability to make progress towards the Millennium Development Goals.

We now to take up our responsibility to urgently put the aid system back on track.