New FAO Framework to bolster focus on food security and food systems to help sustain peace

Civil wars and conflicts have increased markedly in the past decade, leading to the recent reverse of a steady trend towards reducing hunger.

They take their heaviest toll on rural communities engaged in agriculture. Wheat output in Syria has fallen by 40 percent and processed-food output in Iraq suffered a double-digit decline. In Sierra Leone’s civil war in the 1990s, 70 percent of livestock were destroyed and oil palm and rice production fell by more than 25 percent. In Burundi, research shows that an individual’s exposure to violence made them almost one-fifth less likely to grow coffee even four years after the war ended.

Agriculture and food systems are remarkably resilient, but as FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva told the United Nations Security Council, “when these systems are lost, they are almost impossible to rebuild.”

In response to these challenges, FAO has developed a new Corporate Framework to support sustainable peace in the context of Agenda 2030 allowing the agency to transform its engagements in conflict-affected situations into deliberately focused, strategic and evidence-based approaches geared to supporting sustainable peace.

In synthesis, it guides FAO to craft its interventions in a conflict-sensitive manner that can contribute to the prevention of the outbreak, escalation, continuance and – importantly – the recurrence of conflict.

The Organization is committed to work “on, in and through” conflicts. As outlined in the Framework, this approach comprises, respectively, actions to minimize, avoid and resolve conflicts where food, agricultural and natural resources may be drivers; saving lives, protecting food systems and productive assets and building resilience in the midst of conflict, and seeking always to advance sustainable development including poverty reduction and managing natural resources in a conflict-sensitive manner throughout a conflict cycle.

FAO supports rural communities in coping with conflict. FAO has promoted participatory approaches to strengthening land tenure in the wake of civil wars in Angola, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique and now Colombia. Agriculture projects help reintegrate former combatants as part of Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, and the Philippines.

Often working with partner UN organizations, FAO is contributing to sustaining peace in Afghanistan, the Lake Chad Basin, Myanmar, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen, amongst others – all conflict hotspots today. Such work consists of helping set up dairy systems, providing seeds and farming inputs, devising shock responsive and risk informed social protection schemes and even supporting local peace deals to allow for livestock vaccination programmes to continue – a FAO specialty that has produced historic results including the elimination of Rinderpest at a time of armed conflict across East Africa.

As agriculture is the primary economic sector in most conflict-affected states today, its importance is especially strong even beyond the basics of food security. It can be an engine of stabilization and recovery and contribute to the social fabric of trust.

Original source: FAO
Published on 7 August 2018