NEFSALF Bulletin January 2016 1

Our story: from training to practice

Issue No. 25 January 2016

for collaboration among participants from community, market, knowledge, civic and government sectorsCity and environs agriculture and livestock keeping enhance urban food security and improve the well-being, income, skill and knowledge of those who practice it.

Tel: 254 20 4443219/26/29email: info@mazinst.org

PO Box 14550 Nairobi 00800Website: www.mazinst.org

(from left to right) Presentations at the assembly: Davinder Lamba(Mazingira Institute),Nancy Makora (Razak Housing Cooperative Society,Kibera), Lucky Muya(vegetable producer,Komarock) and Emmanuel Obed (Poultry farmer, Ngong)

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Nancy Makora: Razak Housing Cooperative Society, KiberaNancy was trainee during the October 2013 course. She talked of her journey into urban food production as part of the urban housing process. Nancy is a member of RAZAK Housing Cooperative Society in Kibera. The cooperative was registered in 2012 with each member saving ksh. 2000 per month. They later registered with NACHU and raised individual member contributions to Ksh. 8000 per month. with support from NACHU, RAZAK Housing Cooperative Society joined hands with Progressive and Royal bought 18 acres of land along Kangundo Road about 40 km south-east of the Nairobi City centre and built a 2 bed roomed starter house. The whole package of a 40x 80 feet plot, house and (from left to right) Presentations at the assembly: Davinder Lamba (Mazingira Institute), Nancy Makora (Razak Housing Cooperative Society, Kibera), Lucky Muya (vegetable pro-ducer, Komarock) and Emmanuel Obed (Poultry farmer, Ngong) water costs Ksh. 600,000 to be repaid over fi ve years. All the 161 members of RAZAK were given their houses by March 2015. They hope to put up a school and community centre on the land. The next phase for the group is located at Brookshine along Kangundo Road.

Nancy moved into the area in 2013 and has kept goats and chicken on her plot using the knowledge and skills that she got during the training. She is the contact person in recruit- ment of PHC members into the NEFSALF course.

Lucky Muya: vegetable producer, Komarock Lucky Muya is a food producer in Koma, Matungulu Sub County of Machakos county. Lucky previously worked as a casual la-bourer at one of the supermarket chains in Nairobi but opted out and enrolled in the October 2013 course. Lucky lives in Kayole, a high density neighbourhood in Eastlands area of Nairobi. One month after the training course, Lucky bought 150 chicks from a chick hatchery in Nairobi. He sold the lot and made a profi t. Later he brought in another 100 chicks from the Kenya Agriculture and Livestock Research Organization (KARLO). However his busi-

The NEFSALF bulletin is about sharing what urban and peri-urban agriculture is all about and the challenges faced in trying to make the urban population food and nutrition secure.

This issue number 25 has the lead story of three members of NEF-SALF who narrated their individual journeys after training in the NEFSALF course dubbed “our story from training to practice.”The bulletin has also reports on local and international work done by Mazingira Institute such as publications in the local newspapers that inform the public on right to food, implementing the Right to Food enshrined in Kenya’s Constitution.

We also cover international visitors to local urban farmers and talk about our participation in international meetings including the Dakar regional meeting on Agro Ecology in Sub- Saharan Africa; the 42nd Session of the Committee on World Food Security and Nutrition that took place Rome, Italy; our presence at the International Planning Committee (IPC) on Food Sovereignty at MARAG in India and the active involvement and interaction with the civil society activities on the sidelines of the 10th Ministerial meeting of the World Trade Organization that took place in Nairobi in December 2015.

ness went under after brokers invaded the market and brought prices of whole chicken down. His problem was compounded when he bought chicks from a farmer whose incubator was not hygienically up to standard and this introduced infections into his farm. He therefore reverted to natural methods of incubation using hens. He became innovative and would hatch two batches of chicks from one hen within two months.

Early last year Lucky Muya thought of better ways to man- age and utilize the dry land. He started by harvesting water through water pans and growing vegetables using the little water that he had harvested during the rainy season. He grew peas, tomatoes and onions. An added innovation was growing of courgettes in polythene bags. This enabled him to control usage of water which is scarce in the area. During the harvest period mid this year, he used to harvest 150kg of courgettes per day. He uses ma-nure from his sheep, rabbits and cows to grow the vegetables. He uses old gunny bags sown together as shaded net to reduce heat stress and reduce water loss. Lucky has gone through a cycle training and transformation.

Davinder Lamba, Executive Director of Mazingira Institute summed up Lucky’s journey by stating: “Knowledge which comes from practice is different from academic knowledge in turn

improves practice”. Gladys Nakhulo, Extension Offi cer,Home Economics,Westlands Sub County and Peter Kariuki,Fisheries Extension Offi cer, Kajiado County summed up Lucky’s work as innovative and handy for rural and urban areas.

Emmanuel Obed: producer, Ngong Emmanuel is a poultry farmer in Ngong, Kajiado County. Emmanuel was a trainee in the October 2010 NEFSALF course. Prior to training he used to buy chicken from the Shauri Moyo market, popularly known as Burma market along Jogoo road in the Eastlands area of Nairobi walk to the city centre and sell from door to door within offi ces.

After the training course Emmanuel was given backyard space where he kept his fi rst broiler chicken but on the day of arrival most of them died from fl oods on that day. Two weeks later more chicken died due to a disease outbreak. He then bought a few mangoes and sugar and made mango jam which he sold at a profi t of Ksh. 300. He was later employed by an information and data company but resigned and went back to food production.

In 2011 Emmanuel started pig production in Isinya, a semi arid area close on the outskirts of the Kenyan capital and

NEFSALF Bulletin January 20162

Young farmers in Kibera.

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Gladys Nakhulo (Left) Agricultural Extension, Westlands Sub County addresses the participants. Looking on is Nancy Karanja , farmer in Ruai.

The right to food in KenyaArticle 43 of the constitution establishes Kenyans’ right “to be free from hunger and have adequate food of acceptable quality”. Article 21 provides that measures have to be taken by the state to achieve the progressive realisation of rights guaranteed by Article 43 or required under international trea-ties. This article looks at how Kenya is doing with respect to its obligations, especially in relation to urban areas.

The right to food is part of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Political Rights (ICESR) and is a fun-damental aspect of human dignity. Dignity “does not come from being fed. It comes from providing for oneself,” as a leading expert on the right to food has said. Government’s obligations are to respect, to protect and to fulfi l the right to food. Respect means government must not prevent people from having access to food. Protect means it should ensure others do not deprive them of that access, and fulfi l means it should strengthen people’s access to and use of resources to obtain food (especially land, supportive laws and extension services). If people cannot access food for some reason, the state is obliged to provide them with food for survival. It must fi nd out which areas and groups are vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition and act on this.

International debate on the right to foodThere is a tension between the corporate growth model of food production and the rights of small producers and con-sumers. In 2012, the Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food said millions more are food insecure globally due to econom-ic changes and population growth. Emerging economies need to protect the rights of land users, especially minorities and vulnerable groups. Smallholder agriculture needs protection, while soil and water degradation must be stopped by shifting to agricultural practices that are eco-friendly.

The Committee on Food Security (CFS) – the United Nations forum overseeing policies concerning world food security – includes a Civil Society Mechanism with representatives from all regions including Africa, and from sectors includ-ing smallholder producers, fi sherfolk, pastoralists, indigenous peoples, the urban food and nutrition insecure, migrants and agricultural workers. Since the 1990s, the Food Sovereignty Movement has promoted the rights of people who produce, distribute, and consume food to control the food system, rather than the corporations and market institutions that have come to dominate it globally.

Key issues currently affecting peoples’ food and nutrition se-curity globally are lack of access to food causing malnutri-tion, and obesity caused by eating the wrong types of food. Thus rather than simply the right to food, it is now referred to as the “right to adequate food and nutrition”.

Kenya has to domesticate these understandings as it strives to implement the right to food.

Urban food and nutritionMany residents of African cities live in informal settlements and can hardly afford to buy food. Over three quarters of low-er income urban people are food insecure in Southern Africa according to the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN), and people living in urban slums are among the most malnourished groups in Kenya, with half the children under three being stunted. Yet Kenyan statistics often refer to urban areas in general having better levels of nutrition and disregard disparities between food wasted in the kitchens of the rich (who consume 3,330 calories per day) and the poor-est who only get 918 calories per day on average – about half what they need. Another study found nearly half Nairobi slum households suffer from both adult and child hunger.

Implementing the Right to Food enshrined in Kenya’s Constitution

Some get only one meal per day and the cost of buying meat, fi sh or even milk and eggs is prohibitive. The AFSUN study found 96 per cent of the food intake of the urban poor was starchy staple foods. Those among them who were food inse-cure (the large majority) had access to only fi ve out of 12 food groups measured, two of which were sugar and beverages. This causes obesity and poor health, including vulnerability to the so-called “life-style” diseases such as diabetes.

Forty per cent of African urban households are thought to practice urban farming, mostly to supplement their diet and save on food expenses. But many, especially urban livestock keepers, also sell part of their production, such as milk and eggs, which provide useful extra income. Fresh produce from urban agriculture also contributes to good health and nutri-tion. Children in urban households consuming animal source foods (ASF) are healthier, indicating urban livestock-keeping is a good thing. Around 20 per cent of Nairobi households farm in the city and seven per cent keep livestock. This adds up to 200,000 households, while thousands of cattle, sheep and goats were counted in the 2009 census.

Most of these belong to middle-income households however. They have backyards and can farm more easily than the poor who live in crowded informal settlements and usually farm in open spaces. Poor people are constantly losing access to a place to grow crops or keep livestock, which means their right to adequate food and nutrition is under threat from compet-ing land uses. Planning urban open spaces for low-income households, especially female-headed households, to grow crops and keep livestock is a priority in realising the right to adequate food and nutrition.

How well is Kenya doing?Things are moving on the right to food and adequate nutri-tion in terms of institutional and legislative change. In 2011, Kenya published its National Food and Nutrition Security Policy, and in 2014 a Food Security Bill was introduced in the Senate. The policy outlines a framework for food and nutrition security, and the bill establishes an institutional framework for implementation, proposing a Food Security Authority and County Food Security Committees. Progressive measures included are food subsidies where needed, as well as food distribution mechanisms for deprived and vulnerable areas, to be identifi ed and managed through the national and county institutions. But, notably, land access for food production is less prominent. Also, the language of rights is absent.

A national Urban and Peri-Urban Agriculture and Livestock

Policy is currently stalled, as is the Food Security Bill, but Nairobi has just passed an Urban Agriculture Promotion and Regulation Act. Other counties are likely to follow suit as the Urban Areas and Cities Act (2011) requires development of urban agriculture plans. The National Urban Development Policy is still being validated through county consultations. The National Nutrition Action Plan 2012-2017 has a budget of Sh70 billion to scale up nutrition interventions by various ministries including health, agriculture, water and irrigation, fi sheries development, and national planning and develop-ment. But it focuses more on corporate approaches to nutri-tion than the direction outlined by the Special Rapporteur on the right to food which emphasises small farmers and their rights.

The tension between large-scale corporate investment in food and the rights of small producers and consumers is be-ing played out in the Kenyan context. Despite norms estab-lished by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights over half a century ago, and despite the Bill of Rights entrenched in the constitution of 2010, they are seldom used in Kenyan bills and policies. Kenya is not alone in this, Brazil being per-haps the only country to have adopted a rights approach in its “Zero Hunger” policy and legislation.

This article by Diana Lee-Smith and Davinder Lamba appeared in the Katiba Corner of the Star Newspaper, 2nd January, 2016.

Report of NEFSALF Women’s Hub

Report of NEFSALF Women’s Hub was given by the chair Ms. Elizabeth Kamari. She mentioned that they started as a merry go round and graduated to table banking. They have approached UWEZO fund for their second loan. The fund is available only to women and youth groups all over Kenya.

Members of the NEFSALF women Hub introduce themselves to the forum.

Visit by Eric Tusz-King, Rooftops Canada Rooftops Canada, longtime partner with Mazingira Institute asked Sustainable Solutions Group (SSG), a worker-owned co-operative also in Canada, to assist it in improving the envi-ronmental policies and practices for Rooftops Canada and its partners in four countries in East and Southern Africa. Along with Rooftops Canada’s primary purpose to help its partners provide good quality incremental housing, its co-operative values also engages it with cross-cutting concerns of urban agriculture/food security and social justice for the home own-ers and their wider communities. The three sites Eric Tusz-King with SSG visited during the month of November with Kuria refl ect those commitments.

currently supplies the pigs to Farmers Choice Ltd on contract. At the time of the NEFSALF forum he had about 50 pigs on the farm. But his main production line is poultry and has kept 3000 broiler chicken. He also produces tilapia fi sh through use of hydroponics farming system. Crops like capsicum and kales are also grown on the farm.

Emmanuel also set up and registered a limited liability company called EMURQS Ltd (Enhanced Management of Underutilized Resources for Qualitative Solutions) that deals with marketing and advisory services to farmers within and around Nairobi. He told participants during the NEFSALF forum that only 30% of the poultry demand in the city is met and that the best items to produce and market are poultry, pigs and kales. In closing Emmanuel said that “we the youth have the potential but do not have the capacity to meet that potential.”

NEFSALF Bulletin January 2016 3

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Eric listens to Francis Wachira as he explains about his urban farming at Maringo Estate a high density residential area in Eastlands, Nairobi.

Eric shares his experience with Susan Njuguna CEO of the Elroi Children’s home, Komarock Estate, a middle income residential area in Eastlands Nairobi.

Eric visits Boniface (left) in Soweto,Kayole (a high density residential area in Eastlands), Nairobi.

The Regional meeting for Africa was held in Dakar Senegal from 5-6 November 2015 as a follow up of the Agro Ecology (AE) Symposium on Food Security and Nutrition held in Rome in September 2014.

The meeting in Dakar brought together participants from Sub Saharan Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and North America. The meeting was hosted by the FAO and the Government of Senegal with support from Government of France and several international foundations. Participants came from FAO, governments, small scale food producers, Fisher folk, indigenous people, pastoralists, urban people, academia, research institutions and private sector.

IPC preparatory meeting Day one (3rd November) was a preparatory meeting of International Planning Committee on Food Sovereignty (IPC) to re-emphasize the political position of the IPC (based on our vision of agro ecology and food sovereignty during International Forum on Agro ecology held in February 2015 in Nyeleni, Mali.). The IPC meeting was chaired by Elizabeth Mpofu from Zimbabwe. Elizabeth indicated that Agro Ecology is the only solution to solve food problems as we face challenges of climate change and IPC wants to “build the African Voice”in food sovereignty. The issues discussed were strengthening of IPC in Africa and mechanisms for sharing information. Participants at the meeting came from Senegal, Uganda, Mali, Ethiopia, Benin, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria Rwanda and India.

The IPC meeting acknowledged the growing support to IPC and the space provided to discuss Agro Ecology at the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The meeting discussed four themes: AE as the path towards Food security and nutrition; AE and the use of resources in context of climate change; AE social innovation, livelihoods and technology; and public policies including legal/institutional frameworks to promote AE

Here is a snapshot of what was said:• Industrial agriculture is causing climate change and the

model has failed yet “we have the solution”• Farmers practice AE because it gives them autonomy that

leads to livelihoods.• Pastoralists have coping mechanisms based on sound prin-

ciples of AE• Constitutions say “right to food” so all other policies and

institutional frameworks should say “right to food”.• The fear of Genetically Modifi ed Organisms (GMOs) is

the loss of food sovereignty and control and the takeover by market forces. Participants demanded “communities not corporations” and “Food Sovereignty and not just Food Security”.

Building the African voice in food sovereigntyReport on the Regional Meeting on Agroecology in Sub-Saharan Africa.Dakar Senegal

Civil society preparatory meeting Day two on (4th November) was a preparatory meeting with civil society participants. The event was organized IPC and Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSAR) to bring up ideas, suggestions, recommendations and demands during the FAO seminar on AE. The agenda was to come up with a shared vision of AE in Africa and protect AE space.

In summary, meeting noted that:• Participants were clear of what is not AE. “It is not

Industrial Agriculture”• AE is not new and has been there for generations and ex-

ists within framework of food sovereignty. • AE was built through sharing of local knowledge, focuses

on local seeds, reclamation of ecosystem and diversity.• AE builds local economy and dynamism of local markets • Women and youth are the future of AE.• The concept is vulnerable to co-optation by market forces • Policy systems and extension programmes do not have

space for AE

Participants noted the need for a common vision of AE, access to information on AE and inclusion of AE in public policies. Participants stressed the need to use the terms ecosystem “functions” instead of “services” (services are susceptible to human abuse and there will be need to create market for services) and the term “rights holder” (to stress the Human rights component) instead of “stakeholder”

Naseegh Jaffer (front left) shares his views on the Seminar session with other IPC members during the tea break at the Regional Meeting on Agro ecology

The FAO seminar with governments The FAO seminar with Governments was held on 5 and 6th November at the King Fahd Palace Hotel Dakar, Senegal. The aim was to encourage dialogue around the scientifi c basis and the experiences of implementing Agro ecology.

The meeting had the following specifi c objectives:• To enhance better understanding of agroecology in the

African context;• To help to assess the current status of agro-ecological ag-

ricultural development, identify challenges in the adoption of agroecology and future opportunities for its develop-ment in Sub-Saharan Africa including access to technol-ogy and productive resources, social inclusion, delivery of support services, value chain, including processing and marketing in the context of food and nutrition security;

• To exchange and share knowledge, experience, encoun-tered problems, and available technologies and methods in order to learn from each other’s experience and lessons on agro-ecological agriculture;

• To strengthen and develop regional and possibly sub-re-gional networks /forum on Agro-ecological agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa, and to better link it with similar net-work all over the world;

• To identify priority action, relevant policy options and recommendations for advocacy and promotion of agro-ecological agriculture in Sub-Saharan Africa;

The conference was opened by the Senegalese Minister of Agriculture and Rural Equipment, Papa Abdoulaye Seck ,on behalf of his President who echoed his support for family farms, which represent nearly 70% food production systems.

The FAO Director General, José Graziano Da Silva in a Video message said that “Agro ecology offers a promising and innovative solution. Most importantly, it recognizes the central role of millions of smallholder and family farmers”.

The Regional Seminar on AE in Latin America and the Caribbean was held in Brasilia Brazil from 24 to 26 June 2015 while the Asia meeting was held in late November 2015 in Bangkok, Thailand.

The meeting came up with several recommendations among them the creation of an African Fund for Agro ecology.

Civil Society concerns during the Regional Meeting on Agro ecologyThe term AE is becoming popular and a growing concern echoed by the civil society and grassroots organizations is that it may be used against interests of small scale food pro-ducers, fi sher folk, indigenous people, pastoralists and other “right holders”. We in Africa know that AE promotes ‘control within diversity’ and encourages innovation at local levels. We also know that there are many local AE examples all over Africa that are based on principles of ecological and social resilience.

However, although these small holder food producers are the ones that feed Africa and other parts of the world, they are increasingly under threat from industrial agriculture through loss of food sovereignty that forms the core of our African agriculture.

The civil society demanded that the governments, research institutions, private sector and donors redirect their resources, knowledge and skills towards AE for food sovereignty.

Some of the civil society participants after the closure of the Regional Meeting on Agro ecology in Dakar Senegal.

Constitutions say “right to food” so all other policies and institutional

frameworks should say “right to food”.

NEFSALF Bulletin January 20164

The civil society held side events from “no new issues” to hard-liners such as “down WTO”. Mazingira institute and partners organized an Opening Event dubbed “The Nairobi Ministerial and beyond:Food Security on the negotiating ta-ble” on Tuesday 15th December, 2015 at the Hotel Sentrim 680,Nairobi.About 38 people from Europe, Asia Africa, North and South America attended. The opening event was organized by a diverse set of groups of Africa and India and international networks and was an introduction to likely out-comes of the Nairobi ministerial, and the future of food secu-rity at the WTO.

The event was organized by SEATINI, Mazingira Institute, Third World Network (TWN), Our World is not for Sale (OWINFS), Right to Food Campaign, Kenya Small Peasants Forum. Davinder Lamba CEO Mazingira Institute welcomed the guests to the meeting. Speakers during the event includ-ed Yash Tandon (SEATINI Kenya); Justus Lawi Mwololo (KESSFF),Timothy Wise (Tufts University),Jane Nalunga (SEATINI ,Uganda);Deborah James (OWINFS) and Abhijit Das (Centre for WTO Studies, IIFT).The meeting was moder-ated by Biraj Patnaik (Right to Food Campaign, India). Jane Nalunga (SEATINI ,Uganda); indicated that there was lack of political willingness in Africa to address the food issues yet policy distortions at the WTO are making Africa more fragile. Africa is liberalizing heavily while the European Union and North America are subsidizing heavily. Abhijit Das (Centre for WTO Studies, IIFT).mentioned that over the last decade, the Indian government has procured food stocks but no ex-ports yet the developed world argument is that the food stocked can distort the international market. Timothy Wise (Tufts University) indicated that in America they experi-enced price shift from price support to subsidies. He men-tioned that if you shift the cost of production by farmers through price subsidies by governments then you lower the cost of agri business.

Deborah James (OWINFS) shared with the meeting on the new Issues” (investment, competition, transparency in gov-ernment procurement, e-commerce etc).She indicated that free trade displaces local trade. She gave an illustrative case of where Kenya cannot buy maize from Western Kenya to feed people in Eastern Kenya. This is not allowed under exist-ing WTO rules yet USA can export maize to Eastern Kenya.” We need food sovereignty not food aid” she concluded.

In his speech Yash Tandon gave the audience three options fi rst” kill WTO down with WTO, second reform WTO and third dump WTO”. In his concluding remarks he said that WTO cannot be reformed and all development is resistance so “we don’t dump, we don’t reform we resist”. Speakers from the audience cautioned the meeting that WTO is interfering with agriculture sovereignty and right to food.

A follow-up of the WTO meeting was an article by Biraj Patnaik & Timothy A Wise they sent to Food Tank. “Defending the Right to Food at the World Trade Organization” The au-thors cautioned that “This is not the time to abandon the de-velopment mandate embodied in the WTO’s Doha Round”.

DemonstrationsThe CSOs organized demonstrations against WTO with Messages such as “No to WTO Yes to food Sovereignty; Down Down WTO among others.

Printed by Colourprint Ltd.

Bulletin Team Davinder Lamba, Kuria Gathuru,

Onyango Oloo & Macharia Wairia (Design)

Published by Mazingira Institute, supported byRooftops Canada/Abri International, with assistance from

Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development CanadaAffaires etrangeres, Commerce et Developpement Canada

The opinions expressed in this bulletin are not necessarily those of the agencies supporting the publication.

The plenary during the CFS 42 at the FAO Headquarters in Rome Italy.

The 42nd Session of the Committee on World Food Security and Nutrition (CFS) was held in Rome, from 12-15 October 2015. It was organized under the theme ‘Making a Difference in Food Security and Nutrition,’ The CFS 42 was opened on Monday, 12 October by the Chair Gerda Verburg Netherlands Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome.

Over 1000 representatives of CFS stakeholder groups from governments, civil society, private sector and philanthropic foundations, international and regional organizations, re-search and fi nancial institutions and observers attended the session.

Mazingira Institute attended as a member of Habitat International Coalition which is represented at the CSM. The Chief Executive Offi cer of Mazingira Institute, Davinder Lamba attended the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) Coordination Committee meeting 8th and 9th October, CSM Forum 10 and 11 October and the CFS 42 from 12th to 16th October. Kuria Gathuru attended the Civil Society Mechanism (CSM) preceding meetings (CSM Training meet-ing 7th October, CSM Coordination Committee meeting 8th and 9th October, CSM Forum 10 and 11 October and the CFS 42 from 12 to 16th October.

Apart from the main the plenary, which is held annually and is the main decision-making body, there were several side events organized by Civil Society Organizations CSOs) and the private sector.

The Chair Gerda Verburg Netherlands Ambassador to the UN Agencies in Rome, drew the delegate’s attention to the massive work ahead in the light of the 2030 Sustainable Development agenda towards zero hunger. She mentioned that Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are central to CFS work. “The Sustainable Development Goals, other-wise known as the Global Goals, build on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), eight anti-poverty targets that the world committed to achieving by 2015.” ( https://sustain-abledevelopment.un.org/?menu=1300.

Speakers from government, civil society and private sec-tor emphasized the need to meet the SDGs “not only on time but ahead of time” and called for a new kind of part-nership against hunger and malnutrition. The Civil Society

Towards Zero Hunger: Report on the 42nd session of the Committee on World Food Security and Nutrition, Rome, Italy

Banner for one of the side events organized by CSOs at the CFS 42 in Rome Italy

Mechanism (CSM) reminded the plenary that small scale pro-ducers produce 70% of world food and second CFS should “work in crises and on crises”.

The meeting also launched new areas of work, such as the role CFS will play in nutrition and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda), and adopted its Multi-Year Programme of Work (MYPoW) for the next bien-nium, including Open- ended Working Groups (OEWGs) on nutrition and on the SDGs.During the plenary, speakers de-scribed CFS as the most inclusive intergovernmental platform to address SDGs on hunger and malnutrition, including shar-ing good practices and addressing policy issues. Amb. Amira Gornass of The Republic of Sudan was elected as the new CFS Chair for 2016.

CFS was established in 1974 as an intergovernmental body to serve as a forum in the UN system for review and follow-up of policies concerning world food security, including production and physical and economic access to food. CFS underwent a reform in 2009. The reform aimed at making CFS more effective by including a wider group of stakeholders and increasing its ability to promote policies that ensure food security and nutrition for all.

CFS now serves as an inclusive international, intergovernmental and multi-stakeholder platform. Its mandate is to: coordinate a global approach to food security; promote policy convergence; support and advise countries and regions; coordinate at national and regional levels; promote accountability and share best practices; and develop a global strategic framework for food security and nutrition. The framework of the reformed CFS broadens participation and aims to: give a voice to all stakeholders in the world food system; be inclusive and encourage an exchange of views and experiences; build on empirical evidence and scientific analysis; and monitor the effectiveness of actions towards reducing hunger. (http://wsww.iisd.ca/food-security/cfs42/html/enbplus184num8e.html)

The International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC) held its meeting at GOPNAAD, Mera village, Gujarat India from 30th August to 3rd September 2015. The event was organized by MARAG and IPC.

Day oneDay one was spent on introduction of the facilitation commit-tee and participants including presentation of IPC global and regional networks, a shared analysis of the political context, and an evaluation and future challenges.

Day two Day 2 was spent on presentation of IPC working groups namely land, fi sher livestock, indigenous peoples, agro ecol-ogy and seeds and biodiversity.

Day three Day 3 was spent on discussions on the relationship with FAO while day four was spent on the CFS and CSM processes and priories of the working groups. The last day was a hands-on meeting with FAO representative and a fi nal press release and evaluation.

Day one The four day meeting indicated that IPC is an evolving al-liance of different people with no statutes binding them yet they feed more than 70% of the world. Participants were from 11 organizations that are part of IPC. They reiterated their ap-preciation to the CFS of the FAO for continued support. The meeting also reaffi rmed its support to the Nyeleni Declaration on Food Sovereignty of February 2015.

Report of the meeting of International Planning Committee (IPC) on Food Sovereignty held in Marag village Gujarat, India

Right to food and the World Trade Organization MC 10, Nairobi.The World Trade Organization (WTO), Ministerial Conference was held in Nairobi from 15 to 19 December 2015. It was the fi rst to be held in Africa since the WTO was founded in 1995. About 7,000 delegates attended the confrence. The Conference was chaired by Kenya’s Cabinet Secretary for Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Amina Mohamed.and opened by Kenya’s President His Excellency, Uhuru Kenyatta.

WTO is an international intergovernmental organization deal-ing with the formulation and implementation of international trade rules. It also deals with the arbitration of trade disputes between its Members. The trade initiatives were dubbed the “Nairobi package” At the end of the WTO MC 10 the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) or the Doha Round survived.

(https://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/mc10_e/nairobipackage_e.htm).

Prof Yash Tandon (second left) addresses the opening event at 680 Hotel Nairobi.