Press release
Minister McConalogue and UN FAO Director General Qu Dongyu launch FAO-Ireland partnership report
From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Published on
Last updated on
From Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine
Published on
Last updated on
The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue T.D., and the Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) QU Dongyu attended a virtual ceremony today to launch a new publication, FAO + Ireland: Partnering for a peaceful, equal and sustainable world.
Minister McConalogue said, “Ireland is proud to join forces with FAO in tackling the root causes of hunger and poverty, and to help achieve our common goal of improving food security and nutrition for all and in reaching the furthest behind first. Taking a food systems approach, Ireland and FAO are finding new and better ways to promote sustainable agriculture and to achieve multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
”Ireland became a member of FAO in 1946 and over those 75 years, has remained a committed partner in the global fight against hunger and malnutrition. This report demonstrates the valuable contribution that Ireland, through its partnership with FAO, has made to the lives and livelihoods of smallholder farmers and their families throughout the world. I know that these efforts resonate deeply with Irish farm families.”
Ireland’s total contribution to FAO in the period 2014 to 2020 is some €26 million. The largest share of Ireland’s voluntary funding during the 2014–2020 period went to FAO’s efforts to increase the resilience of livelihoods to threats and crises and in its work to eradicate hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition.
Director General Qu commented, “This report shows that the cooperation between FAO and Ireland expanded and grew considerably in the past six years. Ireland’s ongoing support for multilateralism and the United Nations system is as essential to achieving the 2030 development agenda as it is to addressing the immense challenges that crises, conflict and forced migration continue to pose today.”
Note for editors:
• The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialised agency of the UN responsible for ending hunger and achieving improved nutrition and food security for all. FAO is the custodian of SDG 2: Zero Hunger, leading international efforts in the fight against hunger and all forms of malnutrition through improving agricultural productivity and governance, while bettering the lives of rural populations and contributing to the growth of the world economy.
Further information is available at www.fao.org
• Ireland’s 2020 annual subscription to the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) was €1.64 million. Additional funding of €2.14m was also provided for specific FAO projects which included improving food security for refugees in the conflict-affected area of the Lake Chad basin; enhancing surveillance and control of the desert locust invasion in Kenya; and support of the UN Food Systems Summit action track on access to safe and nutritious food.
Further details of the partnership between Ireland and the FAO are outlined in the report which is available at gov.ie - FAO + Ireland: Partnering for a Peaceful, Equal and Sustainable World .