Global fight against poverty and hunger is far from over. Statistics of undernourished people is still strikingly large – one in every nine people living on earth does not have enough food to lead a healthy active life.
Against this backdrop, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations in recent years has started engaging with parliamentarians and other non-state actors alongside the governments to double the efforts in fight against hunger.
As part of that initiative, for the first time in South Asia, the UN FAO initiated a move yesterday to engage with the parliamentarians in Bangladesh through a workshop. Previously, the UN agency helped shaping up such alliances of parliamentarians in two other countries in Asia – Japan and the Philippines.
Bangladesh Parliament and FAO jointly organized the workshop on “Engaging with Bangladesh Parliament on Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security to Achieve SDGs under the Challenge of Climate Change” at Hotel InterContinental Dhaka.
Evidence has shown that food security and nutrition indicators have significantly improved in countries where food and nutrition programmes and projects are grounded on appropriate laws, policies, strategies and sound investments. Here comes the critical role of parliamentarians in advancing food security and nutrition agenda.
On Monday’s workshop, attended by a good many numbers of Bangladeshi parliamentarians, the FAO Representative in Bangladesh, Robert D Simpson, delivered welcome speech with Senior Secretary of Bangladesh Parliament, Dr Zafar Ahmed Khan presiding over the first session.
Addressing the first session of the workshop as chief guest, the Speaker of the Bangladesh Parliament, Dr Shirin Sharmin Chaudhury, said one in every seven people in Bangladesh are in hunger and climate change fallouts are negatively affecting agriculture.
She emphasized on investing more on agricultural research and development and help develop stress-resistant crop varieties.
Jean-Leonard Touadi, Coordinator for Parliamentary Alliance Partnerships Division of FAO, gave an overview of the work of FAO with parliamentarians to achieve SDGs.
He said with Bangladesh, FAO is developing such alliance building with parliamentarians in three Asian countries – Japan and the Philippines being the other two. For instance, he said, its alliance with Japanese parliamentarians resulted in good work on food losses and wastes.
In the second session of the workshop, Jean-Leonard Touadi also gave a talk on “Introduction to Discussion on Possible Ways Forward for Bangladesh Parliament to address Opportunities and Issues on Improvements in Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Security to Achieve SDGs under the Challenge of Climate Change.”
While presiding over the day’s second and last session, the Chairman of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Ministry of Agriculture, Begum Matia Chowdhury, urged FAO to raise its voice against conflicts and wars in various parts of the world.
“When we see children dying of starvation, it’s not necessarily because of climate change impact rather, it’s because there exist conflicts, wars and war-like situations in various places all over the world,” said the former agriculture minister.
The workshop helped raise awareness and facilitated exchanges of information and experience on the role of sustainable food and agriculture, food security and nutrition to achieve Bangladesh’s ambition to achieve the SDGs by 2030 and its Vision 2041. It helped identifying possible topical areas that need particular attention by the Bangladesh Parliament in contributing to these ambitions and visions.
It was apprised in the workshop that in September 2015, leaders of the world agreed on the 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda and global objectives expected to guide the actions of the international community over the next 15 years. Of the 17 sustainable development goals constituting the agenda, SDG1 and SDG2 have been dedicated to eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition.
But, three years into the SDGs era, hunger is on the rise, poverty now affects almost half the world and progress to combat climate change is slow. In 2017, the number of undernourished people is estimated to have reached 821 million – around one person out of every nine in the world.
In Asia and the Pacific, South Asia is the region with the largest number of undernourished persons (277. 2 millions).
More than half of the world’s malnourished children live in Asia and the Pacific. It is also home to the fastest growing prevalence of childhood obesity in the world. There are multiple causes of child malnutrition – poverty, poor access to food markets and health affordable food, and poor knowledge and practices for nutrition, health, water and sanitation.
Bangladesh is the third country with the highest prevalence of undernourished persons of South Asia, 15.2% - 24.8 millions of people, while the prevalence of stunting children under 5 remains high: 36.1% - 5.5 millions of people and wasting in children under 5:14.3 % - 2.2 millions of people.
