Amman - The Arab Network for Food Sovereignty represented civil society of the West Asia region in a conference titled “Access to Natural Resources and the Promotion of Sustainable Agriculture”, which was held in New Delhi in India.The Arab Network for Food Sovereignty is a nonprofit organization founded in 2012 and based in Jordan. The network promotes sustainable livelihoods and sovereignty over natural resources and food in Arab societies. There are currently 60 members representing different communities.The conference, which was organized by Jawaharlal Nehru Technical University, ActionAid India, and ActionAid International, brought together different social movements and academics from Asia, Africa, and Latin America.In a lecture during the conference, Chair of the network, Razan Zuayter, said that the Arab World is suffering from marginalization of a large agricultural sector. The region has become the least self-sustaining in the world, despite the great richness in natural resources, and having been inhabited by civilizations who were the first to sow wheat in history.Zuayter insisted that there is a foreign political will to sustain wars and conflicts in the Arab region, which prevents the success of efforts for development. She mentions also that the conflict in Palestine is at the heart of others in the region and the longest lasting.Challenges facing South-South cooperation, a model for cooperation between development initiatives across the Global South, were discussed at the conference.  It is becoming an increasing important model because of the absence of sovereign governments and the negative influences of financiers and some non-governmental organizations whose actions have caused the Arab Spring to deviate from its original goals.Zuayter called for networking among all social movements and civil society organizations working on the subject of food security, emphasizing the importance of planning, integration, teamwork, and lack of fragmentation in order to realize self-sufficiency.She also called for civil society in India to occupy its rightful place in the leadership of the global civil society, while saying that their role has been marginalized as a result of prioritizing internal problems. Audiences remembered Jawaharlal Nehru and the Bandung Conference, hoping to return to the trend of South-South cooperation.The conference was held in order to reach a common understanding of the challenges facing peasants and rural women, fishermen, pastoralists, and smallholders.The objectives of the conference are also the pursuit of strategic planning on common challenges.  Speakers discussed ways to take advantage of natural resources and sustainable agriculture for small-scale producers, pastoralists, fishermen, and women in the countryside, in addition to building a movement to reform agricultural land, the distribution of land, and to find alternative methods of production and distribution to ensure women's rights to land. They also discussed the best ways for initiatives across the Global South to cooperate with each other.The Arab Network for Food Sovereignty seeks to serve rural Arab societies based on the principles and values ​​of voluntary work and by enabling vulnerable communities to have sovereignty over their food and natural resources. The network has a membership of more than 60 institutions and associations who have common interests and goals, seeking primarily to contribute to the promotion of the principles and practices of food sovereignty in Arab countries.