APN | Amman
8th November 2022
APN Chairperson of the Board and President of the Arab Network for Food Sovereignty (ANFS), Razan Zuayter, has been invited by the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) to attend a small meeting, attended by FAO’s Director-General, QU Dongyu; Jordanian minister of agriculture, Khaled Al Henefat; Regional Representative of the Near East and North Africa in the FAO, Abdul Hakim Al-Waer; Chief Scientist of the FAO, Ismahane Elouafi; and hosted by Jordanian Princess Basma bint Ali.
Zuayter presented the visions and goals of the APN and the ANFS, expressing hope and calling for more attention to be paid to the Arab region, seeing that it’s the region most affected by the absence of food sovereignty, being the biggest importer of food in the world.
Zuayter further called for expanding partnership frameworks with grassroots civil society organizations because of its crucial role in influencing relevant policies; especially those organizations that work closely with small farmers and seek to actively empower them through national plans and strategies such as APN’s “Green Caravan” programme, which succeeded in empowering more than 9,000 farmers from around the kingdom. Another example is the “Million Tree Campaign” programme, through which over 2,650,000 fruit trees were planted.
For his part, Dongyu expressed his hope that FAO shall work cooperatively with the Arab civil society to find solutions to the food crisis.
Ever since its launch around 2 decades ago, APN has sought to highlight and stress the concept of food sovereignty which considers Arab cohesion to be among its most important prerequisites.