A/HRC/9/23
page 24
specifically to the most vulnerable. It should not only focus on boosting the supply of food, but
also contribute to ensuring compliance with the right to adequate food, including in its nutritional
aspects. Health, education, trade and the environment - not agriculture alone - should therefore
be part of any effort to improve international coordination towards meeting this objective. The
aim should be to ensure household food and nutrition security, which implies more than adequate
food intake; it also demands attention to health services and proper care for the vulnerable.
Indeed, one likely impact of the current food crisis is that it will create to more low-income, net
food purchasing households, whose dietary diversity will be reduced in their effort to maintain
consumption of staples. This has serious public nutritional health implications, including
micronutrient malnutrition especially of women and children. Special efforts are therefore
required to address both food security and general nutrition security; otherwise the benefits for
the realization of the right to food for good nutrition are less likely to accrue for the most
vulnerable groups. The important expertise of the Standing Committee on Nutrition should be
drawn upon in order to ensure that this dimension is adequately taken into account.
50. A global partnership for food and agriculture has the potential to improve accountability
with regard to the follow-up to commitments made by countries, particularly concerning
contributions to official development assistance and the use of such contributions (including
levels and predictability of assistance, and the earmarking of a certain proportion of it and of
national budgets to the needs of the agricultural sector in accordance with local conditions and
needs), and with regard to the impact of policies pursued at the national, regional and
international levels on the right to adequate food. If indicators and benchmarks are to be relied
on in measuring progress towards meeting the objective of world food and nutrition security,
they should be based on the different components of the human right to adequate food be
disaggregated in order to measure the impact of the policies pursued on all vulnerable groups,
particularly women, children, indigenous peoples, displaced persons and refugees, as well as
small-holders and rural landless labourers.
51. If a scientific body is to be established as part of a new global partnership for food and
agriculture, the experts appointed to that body should be carefully selected in order to ensure
their full independence and impartiality. It is also crucial that we build on the expertise of the
important expertise accumulated within the Rome-based agencies of the United Nations (FAO,
the International Fund for Agricultural Development and the World Fund Programme), and that,
in any area already covered by the International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science
and Technology for Development, the latter research be taken as the departure point. Not only
would there be little point in repeating that enterprise; offering to do so would raise the suspicion
that the conclusions reached by the Assessment have been set aside because they are
inconvenient.
52. If a new global fund is to be established as part of a new global partnership for food and
agriculture, it should serve the existing agencies working in these areas. Any competition for
resources should be avoided. However, a new fund could have the added value of including in its
mechanisms the global reinsurance fund (see paragraph 44 above); it could also serve to manage
the virtual international reserve which could be established in order to meet the urgent needs of
countries without disrupting markets, and to finance international buffer stocks as a part of
international commodity agreements.
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