The UN's "Pact for the Future," is essentially a recommitment to the Sustainable Development Goals with additional focus on AI, governance and reforming the UN Security Council and climate finance. It has a section on food security which journalist Thin Wei Lin shows has been eroded throughout the negotiation process.
Summary
The UN's "Pact for the Future," adopted in September 2024, focuses on addressing global challenges through five key areas: sustainable development, peace and security, digital cooperation, youth empowerment, and reforming global governance. It includes commitments to nuclear disarmament, preventing AI-driven arms races, boosting youth participation in decision-making, and strengthening international financial systems to better support developing nations and address climate change.
The pact has been billed as “bringing multilateralism back from the brink” by UN secretary general António Guterres, and by others as essentially a recommitment to the SDGs with some additional extras.
IPES-Food panel member and secretary general of human rights organisation, Sofia Monsalve Suárez criticised the 30-page document for the lack of focus on food. Out of a 30-page document, 3 paragraphs focused on food.
Journalist for Lighthouse Reports, Thin Wei Lin, analysed previous versions of the text in her newsletter and found that the text on food had been diluted significantly.
In May, section 3c said: “Fundamentally transform food systems for the benefit of people, planet and prosperity so that everyone has access to safe, affordable and nutritious food, addressing the drivers of food insecurity and promoting sustainable and resilient food.
This was dropped for a weaker version.
In September, the section said: “Promote equitable, resilient, inclusive and sustainable agrifood systems so that everyone has access to safe, affordable, sufficient and nutritious food.”
Wei Lin says this change in terminology is important: “To me, food systems encompass a wider range of actors and activities, including the policymaking process, where agrifood systems, a term used mainly by the U.N. food and agriculture agency FAO, seem to have a narrower focus on agriculture and related activities.”
“There were six mentions of food insecurity, but hunger and food security is being used, repeatedly, to keep up support for polluting, intensive, large-scale agriculture and it concerns me that we are playing right into this.”
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