New FAO chief moves on global hunger eradication

Jos Graziano da Silva, the new Director-General of Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) said on Thursday that he was pushing for a renewed focus on food security, offering to scale up FAO support available to low-income and food deficit countries - especially those facing protracted crises.
"We will create teams that draw together the Organisation's skills in policy advice, investment planning, resource mobilisation, emergency response and sustainable development," the Director-General said in statement issued here by the FAO. Graziano da Silva said the total elimination of hunger and under-nourishment from the world would be his top priority.
He said that with a term in office of only three and a half years there was no time to lose. FAO would begin by scaling up its support to a number of low-income, food deficit countries, especially those facing prolonged crises. He said that one billion people were estimated to suffer from chronic hunger in the world and many countries were far from achieving the Millennium Development Goal to halve that number by 2015.
"Ending hunger requires the commitment of everyone: neither FAO nor any other agency or government will win this war alone", said Graziano da Silva, adding that he wanted to work "in the most transparent and democratic way" with member countries, United Nations agencies the private sector, civil society and other stakeholders.
Hunger eradication was the first of five strategic priorities he intended to pursue at FAO, Graziano da Silva said. The others were: move towards more sustainable systems of food production and consumption; achieve greater fairness in the global management of food; complete FAO's reform and decentralisation; and expand South-South co-operation and other partnerships.
"We need to rebuild trust between the Secretariat and Member States to move forward, and I plan to do so by promoting a transparent and constructive relationship with Member States and FAO Governing Bodies", he remarked. He added that one of the FAO's main challenges was to be more efficient and responsive.
He said he would look for ways to strengthen the organisation's technical work and reduce administrative costs. The DG also emphasised that he would strive to make FAO more effective and responsive by administrative cost-cutting and efficiency gains. He stressed that efficiency savings would not cut into FAO's technical work and he would try to use them to strengthen the Organisation's direct assistance to countries.
"I am convinced that the Organisation can make a significant and growing contribution to food security and sustainable food production and consumption in the world," he concluded. The FAO was one of the first UN agencies to be created after World War II, with the understanding that the ensuing peace had created the conditions necessary to ensure humanity's freedom from hunger.
The FAO is also the first UN agency that Pakistan joined just three weeks after its independence in 1947. FAO Head Jose Graziano da Silva was the eighth person to head the organisation since its establishment. The new DG succeeds Jacques Diouf of Senegal, who held the post from 1994 to 2011. Graziano da Silva's term runs from January 2012 through July, 31, 2015.