Dr. Naseer Homoud Goodwill Ambassador and Director of Middle East office for the Intergovernmental Institution for the use of Micro-algae Spirulina against Malnutrition (IIMSAM), the Permanent Observer to the United Nations Economic and Social Council while sending cables on congratulations to the United Nations and FAO for organizing the World Summit On Food Security scheduled to held from November 16- 18, 2009 in Rome asserted “ world community is building high hopes on this proposed summit which is organized to draw immediate attention of governments and related organizations on alarming rates of hunger amid shortage of food supplies for our fellow human beings. As we all are aware that food security is multifaceted in character and therefore necessitates concerted action by stakeholders at all levels”.


The FAO World Summit on Food Security will discuss putting into place a more coherent and effective system of food security, including rules and mechanisms to ensure adequate incomes for farmers, mobilizing investments into agricultural infrastructure and access to inputs, and a mechanism for early reaction to food crises. The Summit agenda will also include roundtables on: financial and economic crisis and food security; global governance of food security; agriculture and the Copenhagen conference on climate change; support measures for farmers; and an early reaction fund for food security.


Heads of state and government will be asked by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations to reach a broad consensus on the total and rapid elimination of hunger when they gather for the World Summit on Food Security in November. Dr. Naseer supported the demand of FAO to agree to increase agriculture’s share of official development assistance to 17 per cent, the level it was in 1980, from the current 5 per cent. Poor countries need the development, economic and policy tools required to boost their agricultural production and productivity. Investment in agriculture must be increased because for the majority of poor countries a healthy agricultural sector is essential to overcome hunger and poverty and is a pre-requisite for overall economic growth. The gravity of the current food crisis is the result of 20 years of under-investment in agriculture and neglect of the sector. Directly or indirectly, agriculture provides the livelihood for 70 percent of the world's poor.

IIMSAM believes that promise in the Millennium Development Goal to reduce hunger and poverty by half by the year 2015 can only be redeemed by serious thinking, planning and action. Dr. Naseer further added “when we look the other side, there are impending challenges for the mankind. The global challenge of climate change has to be kept in mind while formulating policies for countering the menace of global food crisis”.

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