CPLP: Mozambique ambassador stresses importance of food security on agenda

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CPLP: Mozambique ambassador stresses importance of food security on agenda

4:42 CAT | 18 Oct 2022

Image: Notícias

The ambassador of Mozambique in Portugal on Monday stressed the importance of food security being on the CPLP agenda, taking into account the need to create mechanisms for the population to have food available.

“A well-nourished population is the greatest wealth to which each of us can aspire,” said Joaquim Bule, Mozambique’s ambassador to Portugal and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries (CPLP), during the event “ESAN + 11: A decade in the promotion of food and nutritional security in the CPLP”.

The meeting, which runs until Wednesday in a virtual model, evokes the 11 years of approval of the food and nutritional security strategy of the CPLP (ESAN-CPLP) and 10 years of creation of the food and nutritional security council of the CPLP (CONSAN-CPLP).

The diplomat defended the CPLP as “a space free of hunger” and praised the fact that food is on the agenda of this organisation.

In Mozambique, he recalled, hunger is one of the main concerns and is partly the result of years of conflict and the climate, with periods of drought and heavy rains.

“For Mozambique, the availability of food for people and the use of food by people is a fundamental objective. People have to be able to access food to ensure their own survival, development and growth”, he said.

In this respect, he highlighted the role of women that “many times are the ones that work the land and feed their children. They are the guarantors of the survival and subsistence of families”.

At the level of the Community, six of the nine countries already have their own mechanisms, while Brazil and Angola once had them, but stopped having them by choice.

At the opening session of the event, the executive secretary of the CPLP, ambassador Zacarias da Costa, praised many of the advances made in this area, but stressed that food insecurity is a worrying reality.

“The latest report warns of very poor indicators, which include several factors such as the dramatic increase in climate change, the pandemic of Covid-19 and the context of insecurity triggered by the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.

There are many challenges facing the CPLP and its member states in terms of food and food security, he said.

The event that began today and runs until Wednesday also aims to reflect on the causes of hunger and malnutrition as one of the main global problems for the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as well as on the successes and political affirmation of the ESAN-CPLP.

Source: Lusa