No peace without freedom from want
Sunday, 2016/08/28 | 16:16:02
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At Kenya conference, FAO leader highlights role of agriculture in preventing conflict, enabling recovery
Figure: Women in Kukareta, in Northeast Nigeria, are tending to their land on July 27. FAO is providing agricultural assistance to IDP households and host families during the ongoing rainfed cropping season.
FAO 27 August 2016, Rome/Nairobi - Food security and agriculture have an essential role to play in preventing conflicts and crises on the African continent, blunting their impacts and acting as engines for post-crisis recovery.
This was the central message of FAO Director-General José Graziano da Silva to African leaders and international development actors gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, today for one of the foremost summits on African development.
"Ending hunger and malnutrition, addressing humanitarian and protracted crises, preventing and resolving conflicts, and building peace are not separate tasks, but simply different facets of the same challenge," Graziano da Silva said at a side-event on ‘Peace and Food Security', hosted by FAO, at the sixth Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD VI, 26-28 August 2016).
Graziano da Silva was among the high level delegations who attended in the opening ceremony of TICAD VI, this morning, launched by the President of the Republic of Kenya and the Prime Minister of Japan. The conference --which brings together policy makers, UN agencies and financial institutions, among others -- aims to promote high-level policy dialogue between African leaders and their partners and mobilize support for African-owned development initiatives.
The link between conflict prevention and development is of particular importance in the region, which is host to nearly 60 percent of active UN Peacekeeping Missions. And whilst armed conflicts across Africa as a whole have decreased in recent years, this trend has been uneven across the continent.
"Much of FAO's work aims at promoting sustainable development and building the resilience of rural populations," Graziano da Silva said, giving concrete examples of countries where agricultural support helped secure the transition from wars to sustainable peace, including Angola and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
"By supporting agriculture and rural development, we help create jobs, provide income and boost youth employment. This can help prevent distress migration and radicalization, as well as mitigate disputes over depleted resources," he said.
No peace without freedom from want
In the Democratic Republic of Congo, FAO has worked with partners on the Disarmament, Demobilization and Reintegration (D-D-R) of former combatants by providing them with the agricultural skills, knowledge and supplies - an approach proven to lower the risk of ex-combatants rejoining militias once they are empowered with access to food and income-generating activities.
See more: http://www.fao.org/news/story/en/item/430312/icode/ |
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