The Guardian reports that hundreds of farmers’ and human rights groups are planning to boycott the United Nations Food Systems Summit this year.
This week the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism – a group of more than 500 civil society groups with more than 300 million members – said they would boycott the summit and set up a parallel meeting.
“We cannot jump on a train that is heading in the wrong direction. We are questioning the summit’s legitimacy,” said Sofía Monsalve Suárez, head of Fian International, a group working for the right to nutrition.
“The summit appears extremely biased in favour of the same actors who have been responsible for the food crisis. ”
In a separate initiative, 148 grassroots groups from 28 countries, which make up the People’s Coalition on Food Security, wrote to the UN to urge it to sever the “strategic partnership” with the World Economic Forum, the organisation that hosts the annual Davos economic summit for the global elite.
Timothy Wise, senior adviser at the US-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy, said the UN has missed a trick by not giving a wider hearing to farmer-led groups, whose initiatives are successful and important.
The article quotes a letter from UN special rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhri, to Agnes Kalibata.
