14 Oct CFS and Land Grab: Negotiations in process

The renewed Committee on World Food Security’s role is to promote greater policy convergence and coordination, including the development of international strategies and voluntary guidelines on food security and nutrition on the basis of best practices, lessons learned from local experience, inputs received from the national and regional levels, and expert advice and opinions from different stakeholders.
The Committee is discussing recommendations on the Policy Roundtables  and addressing the land tenure and international investment in agriculture; including appreciation of the ongoing work on the Voluntary Guidelines on Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land and other Natural Resources and the Principles for Responsible International Investment that Respects Rights, Livelihoods and Resources.
This is a first real test of the CFS: Will countries in the renewed CFS make the necessary political commitments and steps forward to address the very important issues of land tenure?
Major points of contention:

• timeline
• language around implementation/application/use with respect to the  voluntary guideline
• Special Rapporteur to the Right to Food just proposed language linked to the Voluntary guidelines “with a view to supporting initiatives at the national and regional level”

As FIAN declared in the Plenary, countries must make a real effort to takle these issues in the next year. Anything less than that will result in a weak CFS.