04/09/2024
Within the framework of the EU4SUN project, Panama hosted an event where key stakeholders were able to discuss a common strategy to achieve food security in the region.
Countries of the Latin American and Caribbean region have gathered in Panama City in a space that seeks to strengthen coordination among decision-makers in the transformation of agrifood systems to ensure commitments to better nutrition and facilitate access to healthy diets.
According to the United Nations report on the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World (SOFI) 2024, food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean still exceeds 28%, with women and people living in rural areas being the most affected. In the region, 41 million people are unable to access the food necessary to meet their nutritional needs. At the same time, the cost of healthy diets reaches the critical figure of 4.56USD, making the nutritious food basket inaccessible to 54 million people.
In this context, the EU4SUN project has developed the “Regional Workshop in preparation for the next Nutrition for Growth Summit”, with the aim of outlining a diagnosis of the countries supported by the SUN Movement in Latin America and the Caribbean in relation to the commitments made at the Tokyo 2021 Summit and the goals on malnutrition established by the World Health Assembly.
FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, Mario Lubetkin, commented that in a world where 2.33 billion people are unable to access sufficient nutritious and safe food; and 187.6 million people live moderate and severe food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean, it is of great importance to achieve sustainability in the production, processing, transport, marketing and consumption of food, that is, in the entire agri-food system.
Alba Rodriguez, coordinator of the EU4SUN European cooperation project of the FIIAPP, indicated that ‘The political will for the zero hunger challenge needs laws and institutions that can implement it in each country, and also that can build joint solutions to this shared challenge’.
Brieuc Pont, Secretary General of the France Nutrition Summit for Growth 2025, explained ‘We are mobilising the international community to make the Paris Summit in March 2025 a success and to move forward on the issue of development policy for nutrition. The actions carried out by the European Union through EU4SUN are key to the strategy that will take us to the summit.
In response to this situation, the participants in this regional workshop considered some immediate actions as fundamental, such as the revaluation of marginalized and underutilized crop species, analyzing their nutritional value and their rescue in the diet, highlighting a new methodology to enhance the contribution of these foods, with an approach that addresses the triple nexus between climate change, the loss of food biodiversity and high rates of malnutrition.
The Regional Workshop held in Panama was attended by representatives of the Ministries of Health, Social Development, Environment, Education and Agriculture of the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as national institutes specializing in food, nutrition and public health, representatives of SICA and its specialized bodies (COMISCA, INCAP, SE-CAC, SISCA), international cooperation agencies, civil society, academia, non-governmental organizations, among others.
