Ban Ki-Moon, the United Nations Secretary General, in Madrid on 4 April 2013 closed the High Level Meeting on Hunger, Food Security and Nutrition, which was part of the new Post-2015 Development Agenda.

Participating in this meeting were 32 countries, civil society organisations and all the UN agencies, featuring the intense participation of the FAO(United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization), WFP(World Food Programme), the UNDP(United Nations Development Programme) and IFAD(International Fund for Agricultural Development).

This without doubt shows strong UN support for the efforts being made by Spain during the last year and a half, in which Spanish Cooperation has carried out extraordinarily active work at a multilateral level.

In July 2011, the UN Secretary General launched the debate on the Post-2015 Agenda with the presentation of the annual report “Accelerating the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals”.

This report, in addition to presenting the general principles of the Post-2015 process, promoted an inclusive, transparent and open process of consultation, with the participation of all stakeholders.

This process features the holding of national consultations (in 100 developed countries) and thematic consultations on 11 themes: inequality, health, education, growth and employment, environmental sustainability, governance, conflict and fragility, population dynamics, food and nutrition security, energy and water.

Spain, along with Colombia, was chosen as the host country for the Global Consultation on Hunger, Food and Nutrition Security, under the leadership of the FAO and WFP.

This thematic consultation on food safety is the result of months of hard work in close cooperation between Spain and the United Nations. In November 2012, the meeting began in Madrid with an electronic consultation on “Hunger and food and nutrition security”, and on 11 February 2013 in Rome there was an informal consultation as part of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) of the FAO.

To this we need to add the “Multisectoral Approach for Food and Nutrition Security” Workshop, organised by the Fund for the Achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDG-F), with support from the Government of Spain, and held in Madrid on 7 and 8 March 2013.

This whole process, led by the UN Secretary General, has served to reflect on the achievements, remaining challenges and next steps on the part of all stakeholders as regards the Millennium Development Goals.

During the High Level Meeting of 4 April 2013 in Madrid, there was an attempt to connect food security with other emerging priorities from the new agenda, including health, water and employment, as well as the existing economic and environmental barriers to adequate food and nutrition security.

The meeting also adopted the “High-Level Consultation of Madrid” report, which contains the main recommendations and contributions made throughout the various consultations.

In addition to this High-Level Meeting, Spainalso has a seat on the Working Group of the UN General Assembly on the Millennium Development Goals, with the objective of integrating the main challenges of sustainability in the Post-2015 Agenda, without neglecting the MDGs. On 14 and 15 March 2013 the first working meeting was held, in which the Secretary General of International Development Cooperation, Gonzalo Robles, was the representative of the internal group made up of Spain, Italy and Turkey.

Thus, Spanish Cooperation is participating in the forefront of the definition of the two most important elements (MDG and SDG) for the new Post-2015 Agenda.

This, together with other initiatives, such as the signing of the agreement with the WFP to establish a humanitarian logistics platform in the port of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, confirm the significant role played by Spain in the initiatives and processes developed by the UN system.

JAVIER SOTA(@ MejorAyuda), Coordinator of the Monitoring and Evaluation Programme of Spanish Cooperation in the FIIAPP Foundation and member of the CECOD Executive Committee.

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