Statement on the Final Draft of the Ministerial Declaration of the high-level segment of the 2022 session of
the Economic and Social Council on the annual theme “Building back better from the coronavirus disease
(COVID-19) while advancing the full implementation of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development”

The figures of the latest State of Food Security and Nutrition report released on 6 July are a clear warning
signal about the failure to reach the 2030 targets. We are seriously concerned that instead of changing
course, the international responses to the current food crisis are pushing to deepen the very same policies
that got us here. Paragraph 14 of the final draft of the declaration, for instance, calls for preserving and
strengthen global value and supply chains for food and agriculture. In other words, it repeats the mantra of
“keep global trade open” that the UN has been reciting in the past months as the main response to multiple
crisis. It is also concerning to see that paragraph 14 places at the same level the need to support sustainable
food systems as the call for strengthening global value chains. In fact, this response does not acknowledge
that global food supply chains are extremely fragile and vulnerable to shocks, that the control over global
food supply chains is concentrated in the hands of few countries and few corporations and that global trade
has fostered fossil-fuel based food systems.

Download the full statement here