Brief CSM Report on the FFA on Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises | The Arab Group for the Protection of Nature


 

Brief CSM Report on the FFA on Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crises

Civil society organizations (CSOs) from several regions have welcomed new commitments at the global level that promise to improve international actors’ approach to ensuring food security and nutrition for people caught in protracted crises around the world.

 

Through the Civil Society Mechanism(CSM) of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), a CSO delegation successfully negotiated with states, specialized Rome-based UN agencies, private sector and other stakeholders, making great strides in a three-year effort to define more-appropriate standards for concerted actions in the field and the bureaus for all parties involved in ongoing—and likely future—protracted crises.

 

These achievements are enshrined in the final draft of a framework document dealing specifically with the issues of food insecurity in protracted crises. However, these gains have implications for other fields of endeavor to meet human needs and progressively realize human rights in these trying circumstances.

 

The Character of the Document

  • Ensuring that resilience is not seen as an overarching goalwithout the indispensable complements of international cooperation and assistance, accountability for the underlying causes of protracted crises, and remedies for those affected. Rather, the document is more comprehensive, reflecting an examination of root and underlying causes of food insecurity and undernutrition and ways that prevent and resolve such causes. The need of addressing "underlying causes" is mentioned in several places including the Introduction (paragraph 3, 6) ,the Objective of the FFA  (paragraph 8) and as a separate group of Principles (paragraph 30–33);
  • Integrating a human rights approach through several inclusions to ensure that the FFA will not be restricted to divergent humanitarian and developmental approaches alone, but also accompany the constant preventive and remedial human rights norms at the same time. Without the human rights dimension, the document could have turned into a response tool without its corresponding normative framework. Human rights are incorporated:
    • In the overarching values (paragraph 15).
    • as one of the three main fields that need to achieve policy coherence - human rights, development and humanitarian assistance  (paragraph 16);
    • in the entirety of principle 4 that is dedicated to human rights

(paragraph 26).However, some state delegations opposed inclusion of all the three aspects of obligation "respect, protect, and fulfill" in the heading of the principle.

  • "Prevention" was absent from the document until CSM delegates managed to integrate it in several areas, including:
    • The Purpose (paragraph 9);
    • As a component of resilience building (Paragraph 21):"Resilience boosts the capacity to absorb, prepare for and prevent humanitarian disasters, crises, and long-term stresses."  
    • The principles section (paragraph 30) "Policies and actions should, where possible, contribute to resolving, and preventing, underlying causes of food insecurity and undernutrition in protracted crises."

Introduction

  • The CSM delegation succeeded at including the issue of foreign occupation as a root cause for food insecurity and undernutrition in crises situations, and as a situation that needs particular attention when ensuring safe and unimpeded access to humanitarian and food aid(paragraphs 3& 25). In addition other articles related to the issue of occupation were including the access of affected communities to their natural resources and respect of international human law, with an explicit mention of the Geneva Conventions (paragraphs26 & 32).
  • Success in including climate change as an underlying cause of food insecurity and undernutrition (paragraph 3). Climate change was mentioned in three other instances (paragraphs 29 & 32), including also in the promotion of access to finance for adaptation. However, state delegations resisted integrating the issue of climate-change mitigation.
  • Success was achieved in clearly identifying main reasons behind the failure of policies and programs in protracted crises situations, including the undermining of local capacities, institutions and priorities by externally driven interventions; a lack of commitment to support small-scale food producers, and vested commercial, political and institutional interest (paragraph 7).

 

Stakeholders

  • Apart from ensuring previously that stakeholders are clearly listed in the FFA , including CSO, farmers, consumer organizations, communities and members of affected populations, the CSM delegation managed to:
  • Add the words “or impacting” to the chapeau: “The Framework is intended for all stakeholders who may have a role in improving or impacting food security and nutrition in protracted crises…” so as not to seem that all stakeholders necessary “improve” food security and nutrition in protracted crises;
  • Include “political , peace keeping and peace building actors”;
  • Change one of the stakeholders from financing to financial institutions;
  • Include smallholders,although state delegations resisted adding “landless” to its definition in the relevant footnote.


 

Principle 1

  • Despite strong reluctance of some large states, success was achieved in integrating policies that foster local food systems as a main component of supporting resilience, including in subparagraphs that:
    • Encourage“policies and actions aimed at strengthening sustainable local food systems, and fostering access to productive resources and to markets that are remunerative and beneficial to smallholders";
    • Encourage local food procurement and engagement of local organizations in the implementation of humanitarian food assistance and livelihood programmes;
    • Highlight the importance of building food reserves at community, national and regional levels.
  • Removing an article that encourages “sustainable adaptation” for people’s displacement and including one that supports durable solutions in general, including return to place of origin if possible.
  • Remove several iterations of “free, competitive markets” in this principle and elsewhere where that principle might contradict local food systems and small producers in the context of protracted crises. 

Principle 2

  • CSM managed to include stress on the importance of food safety regulationsalong the entire food chain to prevent contamination and food-borne illness, as well as the need to strengthen the capacity and participation of local food producer and consumer organizations to improve food safety in protracted crises. 

 

Principle 3

  • Integrating a subparagraph consistent with international human rights law that prevents the use of food as a tool for political or economic pressure, and another that stipulates the need to refrain from adopting unilateral actions incompatible with international law, including the UN Charter, which endanger nutrition and food security, as stated by the 1996 Rome Declaration.

 

Principle 4

  • As mentioned earlier, this principle came as a result of CSM efforts, mostly negotiated in the first session in July 2014. However, two main inclusions were achieved in the final rounds of negotiation:
    • Mention of the Geneva Conventions,
    • Mention of the need to promote the protection of indigenous peoples affected by, or at risk of protracted crises.

 

Principle 6

  • This principle was negotiated in the 2014 session where the CSM delegation was able to include the need to analyse and examine the underlying determinants of food insecurity and malnutrition and the need for analyses to be country owned.

 

Principle 7

  • Imposing articles emphasizing the need for affected countries to own programs and oblige cooperation partners to work through country institutions to avoid undermining them or creating parallel systems.
    • Re-instating—with difficulty—the words "strengthen country ownership" in the heading of principle 7;
    • To ensure country alignment, reinstating the following subparagraph in the same principle (iv): "Coordinating and aligning support amongst stakeholders, who participate as cooperation partners, with national policies and actions for food security and nutrition, as developed through country owned multi-stakeholder and multi-sectoral platforms and processes."

Principle 8

  • Including—amid considerable resistance and with the help of one government delegation (Egypt)—the issue of debt reduction and relief;
  • Deleting the proposed objective of “debt sustainability,” with its potential for precluding debt relief and lending in times of need.

Principle 9

  • Including the following subparagraph in the principle to set the link between peacebuilding and tenure rights: “Taking steps by all stakeholders, and in all types of protracted crises, to respect the existing rights under international law of members of affected and at risk populations, and their ability to access and use their natural resources.”

Principle 10

  • Reinstating reference to the CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible governance of Tenure, Fisheries and Forestsin the Context of National Food Security (Tenure Guidelines),particularly the relevant contexts and the Guidelines on Sustainable Smallscale fisheries Fisheries:“Respecting legitimate tenure rights of individuals, farmers, smallholders, small-scale food producers, indigenous peoples and members of affected and at risk populations, in line with the Tenure  Guidelines, in particular, but not limited to, the contexts of climate change, natural disasters and conflicts, and in line with the “Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication.”

Challenges and Omissions 

  • The action orientation of the FFA:
    • The original Action Plan was replaced with another, shorter, diluted section titled “Dissemination, Use and Learning.” The terms application and implementation were very difficult to include. There was no support to having subparagraphs on the role of specific stakeholders, UN bodies, the CFS, etc.  
    • There was a very strong unwillingness by governments to add monitoring to this section. This left only two mentions of monitoring in the document:
      • In the introduction to the principles (paragraph 18) “The Principles for action are intended to guide the development, implementation and monitoring of policies and actions…”
      • In principle 7 (vii): “States are responsible for the progressive realization of the right to adequate food in the context of national food security. All levels of government should establish and lead multi-stakeholder, multisectoral platforms and processes for coordinating the development, implementation and monitoring of policies and actions, as appropriatepolicies and actions to improve food security and nutrition in protracted crisis situations.”
    • The previously negotiated sections describe which stakeholders are responsible for which actions. The newly negotiated ones do not. There is a problem in clarity and consistency. 

 

  • The CSM delegation did not prevail in preserving the reference to “extraterritorial obligations” into the FFA. Related to that self-executive obligation of states, however,the Framework includes the following subparagraph in principle 4: “States, parties involved in conflict, and other stakeholders should consider how their policies and actions could impact food security and nutrition in other regions and countries affected by protracted crises and consider relevant appropriate actions”;
  • Reference to the “do no harm” principle was very difficult to include. The only relevant statement was included in principle 8: “Working to ensure that food security and nutrition related interventions do not exacerbate tensions or conflict”;
  • In a late-night session on the last day off negotiations, certain states (e.g., USA and Canada) opposed reference to peoples sovereignty over their natural resources, despite the principle being enshrined in both binding treaties and several instruments of declaratory law; however, through technical negotiations invoking international law instruments, including General Assembly resolution A/RES/64/292 (2010) on “The Human Right to Water and Sanitation,” “the right to access” resources was preserved by citing “existing rights under international law of members of affected and at risk populations, and their ability to access and use their natural resources” (principle 10). Nonetheless, CSM insists that interpretation of the FFA must align with the prohibition enshrined in the common Article 1.2 of the two Human Rights Covenants: “In no case may a people be deprived of its own means of subsistence”;
  • Reference to agroecology was not possible to include, apparently because delegations were not sufficiently familiar with the concept.
  • Reference to transitional justice (TJ) or its components met opposition by governments for ostensibly the same reasons, in addition to a particular reluctance on the part of some African government delegations because of their expressed position that TJ formed a device for disproportionately conferring the continent’s leaders to prosecution at the International Criminal Court.
  • There was resistance from the governments to include reference to the Universal Health Coverage and the World Health Assembly nutrition targets.