Did the UN Food Summit provide solutions for marginalized groups?

Last week, the United Nations held its long-awaited Food Systems Summit while a coalition of groups — including farmers and Indigenous people’s organizations — who had decried the UNFSS’s lack of inclusion, simultaneously held a virtual counter event, the Global People’s Summit on Food Systems. Though the UNFSS was criticized as insufficiently inclusive by GPS delegates and others, marginalized groups that took part said the summit opened dialogue between different players within global food systems and resulted in inclusive policies on paper, which need to be implemented in the same spirit at the national level. Elizabeth Nsimadala, president of the Pan-African Farmers Organization said she had noticed “a shift by almost all the actors on centralizing the role of Producers in Food systems” — but that it remains to be seen whether this will be carried forward in the implementation. “We would like also to see investments allocated in the sector for this transformation to happen,” she said. Indigenous peoples rights activist and Summit Advisory Committee member Myrna Cunningham told Devex that the summit opened dialogue between different participants in the global food system — and added that she hopes it will result in more participation of Indigenous peoples in national implementation plans and dialogue around scientific solutions for Indigenous food systems. “As [a] farmers organization, we believe in the saying that nothing [is] for us without us.” --— Elizabeth Nsimadala, president, Pan-African Farmers Organization “We would like to see more governments joining … the coalition on Indigenous people’s food systems,” she said. “We would like to see more exchange between academia, scientific institutions in the different countries relating with Indigenous people’s organizations to improve the interscientific dialogue that have a lot to do with Indigenous people’s food systems.” Still, on the eve of the summit, U.N. human rights experts criticized the event for leaving the most marginalized and vulnerable people behind. “The Summit claims to be inclusive, but it left many participants and over 500 organizations representing millions of people feeling ignored and disappointed. Despite the occasional use of human rights language in Summit material, human rights were not properly woven throughout the Summit’s preparations,” they said in a statement. Despite the criticism, the U.N. insisted that the summit was inclusive. Speaking at a U.N. press briefing, U.N. Deputy Secretary-General Amina J. Mohammed described the summit as a “people solution summit,” adding that people see themselves in the SDGs and the summit was meant to reflect that. “In terms of inclusiveness, I don’t know of a more inclusive process,” she said. “The Summit process gave rise to several multi-stakeholders’ initiatives led by civil society, farmers, women, youth and indigenous groups that Member States commit to in order to deliver on the priorities, needs, and gaps identified in national pathways,” the U.N. stated in a press release. Cunningham said that Indigenous people organized more than 30 independent dialogues and received input from more than 300 organizations across seven socio-cultural regions. Nsimadala added that the UNFSS secretariat also provided technical and financial support for farmers’ organizations to self-organize at different levels, which resulted in a global producer’s joint declaration that was presented at both the presummit and the summit itself. But Sylvia Mallari, global co-chairperson of the People’s Coalition on Food Sovereignty — one of the organizers of the GPS — said the U.N. merely paid “lip service to the people.” “It was just as we expected,” she said. “While branding itself as the ‘People’s Summit’ and even the ‘Solutions Summit,’ the UNFSS did not listen to the voices of marginalized rural peoples, nor forward real solutions to the food, biodiversity, and climate crises.” Indigenous peoples and smallholder farmers who took part in the process said they believe their voices were incorporated in the outcomes and that the summit provided an opportunity for some much-needed dialogue. Cunningham told Devex that Indigenous people participated in the advisory group in the 18 months of preparation leading up to the summit. She added that during this time they were “able to shift a lot of the conversation” and cited the inclusion of food as a human right as one of the results of their efforts. The UNFSS culminated in the introduction of five key action areas to transform food systems. The first — nourish all people — highlights that “all people at all times should have access to sufficient quality and quantities of affordable and safe food.” “I believe that the best space to open dialogues on the issues that we are concerned about is the multilateral space,” Cunningham said. “The summit offered the possibility for that dialogue. And if we do not participate in the dialogues well we are not going to change things.” The UNFSS resulted in nearly 300 commitments from people all over the world, including 148 institutional commitments aligned to the summit’s announced action areas, according to the U.N. Cunningham said, though the summit resulted in a wider recognition of Indigenous food systems, Indigenous organizations would have liked to have seen more member states making reference to them, adding that only about seven of 160 member states did so. Though GPS organizers dismissed the UNFSS as “anti-people and pro-corporate,” Cunningham said including the private sector opened the possibility for further exchange. “We do understand that industrialized food systems have a lot to do with deforestation, and with a lot of some of the problems that we are facing … but we do believe that we need to be at the table where things are being discussed,” she said. “If not, we are not going to influence and we are not going to change.” Nsimadala put it more succinctly: “As [a] farmers organization, we believe in the saying that nothing [is] for us without us,” she told Devex. “Secondly, if you want to fight an enemy, [you] have to fight when inside to understand all the tricks.”