Open Call for Engagement to Respond to the UN Food Systems Summit

Dear all,

Organizations of those most affected by hunger, malnutrition and ecological destruction are launching this invitation to join forces to challenge the upcoming UN Food Systems Summit (FSS) which is expected to take place in September 2021.

At the current juncture, the need to radically transform unhealthy, unjust and unsustainable food systems towards food systems based on human rights and shaped around food sovereignty and agroecology is more urgent than ever. We believe that the Summit is going into a problematic direction, and have therefore expressed our concerns in a collective letter co-signed by nearly 550 organizations to the UN Secretary General in March 2020, which still remains unanswered.

The way in which the preparations for the Summit have evolved over recent months further increases our concerns, as it does not correspond to a rights-based, legitimate and inclusive multilateral policy process. The undue corporate influence on the Food Systems Summit and the lack of transparency and clarity of its preparation process has raised profound concerns in the participating organizations of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSM) for relations with the Committee on World Food Security (CFS). They have therefore decided to launch a call for engagement to a process of building joint strategies around essential issues for the life and wellbeing of our peoples and communities: food, health, nature, peoples’ sovereignty, and economic, social, gender and climate justice.

This call invites other movements, networks and organization, either directly concerned with food and its many dimensions or engaged in interrelated domains of our lives, to join forces in a collective process to challenge the FSS. We believe it is important to organize ourselves based on our own principles of autonomy and self-organizations, independently from the Summit and create our own space of convergence to deepen our analyses, articulate our proposals and mobilize for our solutions.

There is no predetermined format for potential action yet. If your network/organization is willing to join this collective convergence and movement-building process, please express your interest here. Should you like any additional information to consider your participation, please do not hesitate to contact us at the following email address: call4actionfss@gmail.com.

While this call will remain open over time so that others may decide to join us at a later stage, we would invite initial expressions of interest by 28 October. A virtual planning meeting will then be organized in early November.

Kind regards,

Saúl Vicente on behalf of the Liaison Group

 

 

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