In the context of the 33rd session of FAO Regional Conference for the Near East (NERC), calling for “Promoting Food Security, Blue Growth and Empowerment of Small-Scale Farmers and Women in NENA Region.” This biennial policy process took place at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, 9–13 May, where civil society actors issued a declaration of their observations and commitments as a contribution to the regional conference.

In the declaration, civil society expressed about support and solidarity to oppressed Palestinian people and their suffering from Israel’s uprooting practices and policies, and aggressions that have dispossessed generations of Palestinian men and women of their land, water, fisheries and other natural resources.

Also, the civil society declared its support and solidarity to the marginalized farmers, peasants, pastoralists and fisherfolk, who have lost their means of subsistence as result of the war and armed conflict in the region. The organizations stressed that the pursuit of Framework for Action for Food Security and Nutrition in Protracted Crisis should be implemented with its pursuit of accountability and strengthening accountability processes for underlying causes of food insecurity that try people’s resilience, whether those causes are domestic or extraterritorial in nature.

Related to the implementation of FAO`s regional priority activities on resilience for food security and nutrition, small-scale agriculture for food security and development and water scarcity, the declaration stressed the need for greater specificity of programming, conceptual clarity, and engaging civil society and other stakeholders to advance its objectives.

Finally, the declaration put a set of obstacles affects our collective resilience in sustaining food security, food sovereignty and nutrition, and mentioned a set of recommendations to the national governments in to adopt coherent public policies that ensure effective measures and positive actions toward achieving sustained food security, food sovereignty and nutrition, and calling civil society for measures to ensure resilience of persons and communities to sustain food security/food sovereignty and nutrition.

Download the Declaration of Civil Society Organizations at the 33rd FAO Regional Conference for NENA.