World Food Summit: five years later: the 183 member countries of FAO will convene in Rome to evaluate the efforts made since 1996 to reduce world hunger by half

Five years after 183 heads of state made the commitment, in an action plan, to undertake all the measures necessary for the number of people suffering hunger to be reduced to half by 2015, the time has come to evaluate the progress made since then.

More than 100 state and governmental leaders, ministers and United Nations observers will meet in Rome from 10 to 13 June to analyse the results reached in the Action Plan of 1996, with the aim of enumerating obstacles encountered, and determining the best means to overcome them. The announcement of one sad fact will be the starting point for this analysis: the number of undernourished people is declining only by an average of hardly six million people per year, far below the index of 22 million people annually needed to reach the goal set in 1996.

At its core, the organization of the summit will have a series of plenary sessions (in English, French, Spanish, Arabic and Chinese) in which the heads of state, government leaders, ministers, etc. from around the world will have seven minutes to deliver their statements and initiate debate on world food security. At three round tables, the heads of the national delegations will conduct concrete discussions on the progress, obstacles and strategies to achieve the goals of the action plan, and afterwards they will report their conclusions to the press and public worldwide.

A number of bilateral meetings and panels of experts will complement the work of the official delegations.

The civil society has two main entry points to participate in this important event:

--On 12 June a Multistakeholder Dialogue (MSD) will be held, where representatives of civil society and other interested partners will meet with official delegations and, following the same format as for the round tables, will try to establish their positions and seek a commitment for joint action to pursue the 1996 objectives.

--In a parallel event from 8 to 13 June, hundreds of representatives from NGOs and CSOs from all over the world will meet to decide action strategies in the fight against hunger and to conduct a number of activities and seminars related to food security. The Forum for Food Sovereignty will present its conclusions in the official Plenary Assembly in the afternoon of 13 June.

The private sector will meet concurrently in a forum organized by the National Council of Economy and Work of Italy.

For more information, please visit: World Food Summit: five years later.