Civil society groups to boycott UN Food Systems Summit

According to this story in the Guardian newspaper, hundreds of farming and human rights groups are planning to boycott the United Nations Food Systems Summit, which is due to take place in September 2021. The Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism, which represents civil society organisations working on food security, has raised concerns that the Summit may be too strongly influenced by corporate interests, lacks sufficient emphasis on human rights, and underestimates the extent to which food systems must be transformed. The Mechanism intends to set up alternative talks to run in parallel with the Summit.