Somali women wait for food at a distribution center at Ifo camp in Dadaab, Kenya in 2011. Evelyn Hockstein/CARE.
On March 30, the Council launched a new report, Stability in the 21st Century: Global Food Security for Peace and Prosperity, at the Global Food Security Symposium 2017. Each week, we will highlight one of the report’s recommendations on the Global Food for Thought blog. Watch for a new post each Wednesday, and join in the discussion using #GlobalAg.
Food and nutrition security are too often treated as secondary issues within the US national security agenda, considered relevant only to development or poverty reduction. But hunger and malnutrition have a much broader impact and are directly related to many of the most pressing security issues facing the world today.
For years, improving global health has been a strong component of the US government’s national security strategy—and for good reason. Cultivating global food and nutrition security should play an equally prominent role in national security strategy.
As such, the Council recommends that the US government make global food and nutrition security a pillar of US diplomatic and national security engagement and strengthen the integration and coordination of activities both within the United States and around the world.
To accomplish this, the US government should take several actions:
Amplify the importance of global food security for US national security and diplomatic activities.
The administration should place much greater emphasis on global food security in the US National Security Strategy, and include analyses in its security and intelligence modeling of the impact of food insecurity on stability and national security. Similarly, it should develop and prioritize strategies to improve food security in weak and fragile states. Food and nutrition security are global in scope and must play a prominent role in US relations and engagement with other countries. The United States should give greater prominence to food security issues in bilateral and multilateral diplomatic engagements around the world, recognizing the relationship between food security and key threats such as civil unrest and violence.
Maximize resources through smart integration and coordination among agencies and between the US government and civil society.
The administration should significantly bolster efforts to improve interagency planning, integrate investments, and more effectively draw on the comparative strengths of various agencies so that US government food security programs and efforts are more closely aligned and mutually reinforcing, both in Washington, DC and in the field in low-income countries. The United States should also strengthen coordination between global food and nutrition security and other related US government activities focused on energy, water, health, and education such as the USDA McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program and related programs. Likewise, the United States should bolster mechanisms to enhance coordination and collaboration among humanitarian and development actors within the government and knock down artificial and administrative barriers that impede better coordination. Also, given the important leadership from civil society on food and nutrition security, the United States should continue to partner with and learn from a broad coalition of civil society groups interested in and working on food and nutrition security issues.
Work closely with bilateral and multilateral partners to achieve collective goals.
As in the past, the United States should be a leader in multilateral bodies on food and nutrition security and should encourage partners to do the same. At the next appropriate G7 Summit, the administration should consider participating in a renewal initiative in support of food and nutrition security to restart a multilateral food security funding program like those agreed upon at the 2009 L’Aquila Summit. The administration should also continue to play a strong role in G7 and G20 deliberations on global food security issues.