Luxembourg Adresses Food Security with UN Agencies in Rome

On Wednesday 26 July 2023, Luxembourg’s Minister for Development Cooperation and Humanitarian Affairs, Franz Fayot, engaged in bilateral exchanges with the heads of three UN agencies based in Rome, focusing on food security and global challenges.

Minister Fayot paid a working visit to Rome with the main objective of meeting the leaders of the three UN agencies based there, namely Cindy McCain, Executive Director of the World Food Programme (WFP), Qu Dongyu, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Alvaro Lario, President of the International Fund of Agricultural Development (IFAD).

Minister Fayot first had an interview with the new Executive Director of the WFP, Cindy McCain, who took office on 5 April 2023. The minister welcomed the deepening of the long-standing partnership between Luxembourg and WFP, a key humanitarian partner for Luxembourg in recent years, according to the Luxembourg Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The Luxembourg Development Cooperation and the WFP have notably strengthened their collaboration in the field of innovation and the commitment of the private sector to respond to current humanitarian challenges, a partnership which has had a highlight this year with the organisation of the Humanitarian Innovation Pitch Event in Luxembourg on Thursday 29 June 2023.

Discussions with FAO's Qu Dongyu focused on the global lack of food security and the worrying levels it has reached as a result of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. Minister Fayot highlighted the finalisation of a reconstruction and rehabilitation project in the Ukrainian agricultural sector with FAO and highlighted the need to work together to advance the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goal "Zero Hunger" (SDG 2). In this context, Minister Fayot spoke of the importance that Luxembourg attaches to projects in the fields of agriculture and food security, devoting over 10% of its public development aid to them.

Food security and the mobilisation of resources to be able to fight against hunger were also the subject of discussions between Minister Fayot and Alvaro Lario. As part of the consultations for the Thirteenth Replenishment of IFAD's Resources (IFAD13), they discussed, among other things, IFAD's mission to transform rural economies and food systems to make them more inclusive, productive, resilient and sustainable, and how Luxembourg has contributed to it in recent years. Luxembourg’s development cooperation thus, among other things, launched an innovative financing mechanism in 2019 in partnership with IFAD, the European Commission and the "Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa" (AGRA). This mechanism, entitled the Agri-Business Capital Fund (ABC Fund) aims to mobilise public and private funds to finance agricultural value chains in developing countries to stimulate growth, develop new markets as well as preserve and/or create employment opportunities in rural areas for young people and women.

Finally, Minister Fayot also spoke at the UN Food Systems Summit +2 Stocktaking Moment, which aimed to report on the progress made since the summit on food systems of 2021 and their contributions to the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. In his speech, the minister reiterated Luxembourg's commitment to contribute to the search for innovative and urgent solutions to mobilise the resources necessary for the implementation and transformation of food systems.