APN | Zoom

20 April 2026

Razan Zuayter, representing the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty (ANFS) and APN, addressed the ministerial session of the 38th FAO Regional Conference for the Near East on 20 April, calling for a fundamental rethinking of regional cooperation based on genuine agricultural integration and climate justice. She argued that food and water can no longer be viewed as merely technical or economic issues, but have become central to questions of sovereignty, peace, and political stability across the region.

In her remarks, Zuayter stated:

"We have listened carefully to the interventions of all participating delegations. It is important to recognise that the peoples of this region have historically interacted positively with one another, resulting in a shared culture and civilization under the umbrella of the great Islamic faith. No component of this region can erase another.

Our foremost demand is the building of peace among the countries of the region. This can only be strengthened through genuine regional agricultural and economic integration - not loose cooperation, but true integration at the highest level. Such integration will enable us to achieve sovereignty over our food and natural resources, and consequently over our political and sovereign decisions.

How can we fail to unite against the use of food and water as weapons of war when we all agree that access to food and water is a fundamental right and that weaponising them is illegitimate? Yet we have stood by while a genocide, ecocide, and catastrophic man-made famine has devastated cherished parts of our region, including Palestine and Sudan.

How can we allow Israeli settler colonialism to openly declare its ambitions to occupy not only Palestine, but also parts of Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq, while pursuing these objectives through regional wars? How can we allow the alarming large-scale land grabbing across the region to be carried out without even the most basic standards of transparency and good governance?

Finally, we must all strive to achieve climate justice. Our region should no longer bear the burden of reducing emissions when it contributes only 5–6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, while countries of the Global North—home to just 10% of the world's population—account for approximately 45%.

Climate justice means asserting our right to sustainable development, our right to adaptation and compensation, and our right to sustainable agriculture that reduces our dependence on food imports and frees us from being one of the world's largest food-importing regions.

As civil society organisations, we stand ready to work alongside you to achieve these goals."