From Global Reform to Local Leadership: Leveraging the Humanitarian Reset to combat acute food insecurity, malnutrition and famine

Excellencies, distinguished guests.
Good afternoon and welcome.
Thank you for joining us at the 2026 Humanitarian Affairs segment side event entitled From Global Reform to Local Leadership, Leveraging the Humanitarian Reset to combat acute food insecurity, malnutrition, and famine.
I'd like to inform you today that today's side event is also being webcast on UN webTV and would also like to welcome those watching online.
First, let me take this opportunity to introduce myself.
I'm Elda DeCosta, Secretary-General of the Group of seven plus, an intergovernmental organization made up of 20 member states affected by conflict and fragility ranging from Asia, Pacific, Africa, and the Caribbean united by a vision of peace, stability, and development in their countries and elsewhere in the world.
It is my pleasure to be moderating this side event.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are here in a moment of considerable changes across the global aid system, and yet the underlying challenges we face are not new.
Staggering levels of acute food insecurity that have more than doubled in the last decade.
Famine was recorded in two countries just last year, communities hit by shock after shock and without the resource of time or time to recover and rebuild before the next disaster.
These crises are increasingly concentrated in conflict affected countries.
As we kick off the 2026 humanitarian affairs segment, today's side event, we will look at how we can leverage the reset and reform agendas to drive locally led solutions to a deepening hunger and nutrition crisis at a moment of aheever and tightening fiscal constraints.
Reset and reform must be about more than prioritization and process efficiency.
It must invest in solutions that reduce needs, protect livelihoods, and help crisis affected populations recover and build resilience over the long term.
Through a diverse set of speakers lining up today, this event will examine how the humanitarian system can respond more effectively to today's world food and nutrition crisis by placing affected communities and national actors at the center of decision making.
This includes empowering and strengthening the capacities of local and national actors, scaling up innovative financing and programming, and shifting international capacities to enable more sustainable responses which are vital to effectively drive forward solutions to improve food security and nutrition.
Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, I now have the honor to turn to Mr.
Hans Das, Deputy Director General and Chief Operations Officer, European Commission DG for European Civil Protection and Humanitarian Aid Operations for his opening remarks.
Mr.
Das, you have the floor.
Thank you.
Dear Secretary-General, dear colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for the very kind introduction and it is a real pleasure for me to offer some opening remarks at the start of today's discussion on how the humanitarian reset can help us respond more effectively to global hunger and malnutrition.
At the end of April, I was in London for the launch of the global report on food crisis.
It was not a very happy meeting.
The situation presented there was sobering.
Needs are higher than ever.
Acute food insecurity remains at alarming levels and the outlook for the coming months and years does not look bright to say the least.
All of this is happening at a time of severe funding cuts.
The gap between humanitarian needs and available resources has never felt wider, has never been wider.
As a result, the humanitarian system is under enormous strain.
Organizations are being forced to make extremely difficult choices, often choices between life and death.
Choices about where to stay, where to reduce assistance, and who can still be reached.
But one message came true very clearly during the lounge event in London.
We cannot continue as before.
We cannot keep applying the same solutions to all problems in the same way and somehow, expect that the result will be different this time.
There was a resounding call in that meeting for a fundamental shift in how we work.
We need greater efficiency, we need stronger collaboration, we need more proactive anticipation, and we need deeper integration with local capacities.
So while the current situation is undoubtedly very difficult, we should also recognize that it has finally triggered debates and processes that perhaps have been delayed for too long.
And in that sense, this crisis, like every crisis, is also an opportunity to push forward much needed reforms this time of the humanitarian system.
The UN is taking the initiative, and we're very grateful for that.
Through UN 80 and the humanitarian reset processes, the UN is tackling many of the right issues.
We still need to see whether the outcomes are the right outcomes, but at least we have identified a number of issues that are right.
The entire humanitarian system is now in a process of reflection, adjustment, and in many ways, reinvention.
The European Union fully supports this direction of travel.
At a time of growing instability, we want to position ourselves as a reliable, a principled, and a stable donor.
You will have seen in the statistics that we are not reducing our funding levels for humanitarian aid.
But I also want to be brutally clear, being reliable does not mean defending the status quo.
Nor does it mean that we can be taken for granted or that our funding can be taken for granted.
We expect the humanitarian system, the humanitarian partners to carry out genuine reform now.
We need to become better collectively at how we do our business.
It means that we all need to support the reforms that are needed to make humanitarian action more effective, more efficient, and better able to reach the people in need.
That is why we presented on the 27th of May a policy document in our European jargon.
It's called a joint communication on humanitarian aid.
It sets out our vision on how humanitarian aid should be further developed and further strengthened.
It is structured around three pillars, P, perform, and partner, and it promotes a more effective approach to humanitarian action and contributes directly to the broader reform of the humanitarian system.
Today's session we'll explore how the humanitarian reset can be leveraged to address the hunger crisis.
For the EU, several avenues stand out.
Localization, first of all, we need to strengthen our local partners.
We have imposed on ourselves on the EU a target of 25% of humanitarian aid to be granted as directly as possible to local partners by 2027.
Anticipatory action.
We have already had a lot of good pilot projects and good innovative work on this, but we need to scale it up and roll it out.
Stronger and more coordinated supply chains.
There is too much fragmentation in the humanitarian system and we need to bring things together that belong together.
Collaboration will make aid more cost effective.
Innovative financing, we need to explore blended finance.
We need to work more with the private sector.
We need to think about all sorts of new ways of going about mobilizing funding.
Finally, clear and transparent and equitable prioritization.
Together, these measures will be essential to maximize our impact, make the best use of scarce resources, and maintain trust in the system.
The European Union is already engaged in each of these areas, and we're working hand in hand with you and many other partners.
So I'm very much looking forward to today's discussion.
There is much to learn from each other, and we're certainly here in a very humble way and very keen to hear from all of you.
I'm eager to hear your perspectives, to learn from your experience, and reflect together on how we can turn this reform agenda into concrete improvements for people facing hunger and malnutrition.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Hans, that's for those insightful words.
You use your time very effectively.
7 minutes.
Thank you.
Your statement highlighted the urgency of structural reform in the humanitarian system, particularly Ahmed deepening funding crisis.
You also discussed the humanitarian reset as an opportunity to deliver long overdue systemic change, reaffirmed the EU's commitment to supporting these reforms and referred to the EU's recent communication on humanitarian aid highlighting its alignment with this reform agenda.
I just spotted your last sentence in this.
Right, before giving the floor to our next speaker, let me say that the G seven plus is very pleased to have recently joined the Global Network against food crisis.
For the G seven plus, this is an important partnership.
We have 23 member states, Haiti, DRC, and Liberia.
As our members bring the perspective of countries facing these realities directly, while also leading efforts to strengthen national systems and locally owned solutions.
The GNA FC provides an opportunity platform to connect this country perspective with shared evidence, policy dialogue, and coordinated action.
With this, I'm pleased to invite Mr.
Connor Elliott, colleague of Global Network Against Food Crisis, Technical Secretariat, to provide the scene setting presentation.
F is yours, please.
Thank you very much, doctor DeCosta.
It's a pleasure to be here.
I The global network is very proud to be part of this event to support and co organize this event.
I thought in all the meetings happening this week, there weren't enough PowerPoint presentations, decided to address that gap with a few short slides today just to help us navigate through some of the scene setting for this discussion.
Um, the global network is a multi stakeholder forum of members, humanitarian and development partners all committed to working together to addressing food crises and more specifically to changing how we address food crises.
When we speak about food crisis, we speak about contexts with populations in acute food insecurity and specifically those contexts where the levels of acute food insecurity exceed the national capacity to respond.
Our work has always been targeted at trying to inform policymakers, decision makers on how and where best to dedicate resources.
For ten years, we have been gathering data and I'm delighted that we have DDG das with us today because the European Union has been the founding member of the global network and has supported our analysis through the last ten years.
And so we'll run through some of the pictures that we are all too familiar with, but I think they'll provide the right kind of backdrop for solutions conversation.
So over the last ten years, we've seen a continued deterioration in food insecurity in food crisis countries and continued increase.
In 2026, in 47 countries where we had data, we had 266 million people in acutely food insecure.
With 39 million people in what we call IPC phase 41.4 million people in IPC phase five.
From these numbers, these are people that require humanitarian assistance.
When we speak about IPC three and above, they're people who require urgent assistance.
For the first time in the history of the global network, we had famine confirmed in two contexts in the same year.
And over the ten years of our trend, unfortunately, repeating pattern that we see is that these are protracted crises.
So about 80% of the population who require humanitarian assistance to meet their food needs are in context reoccurring and reappearing on an annual basis.
And the key point about this is that these are not necessarily and not only shock driven crises.
These are crises with a recurring aspect to them on an annual basis, often driven by the primary drivers of acute food insecurity over the last decade are conflict and insecurity, weather extremes and economic shocks.
These are long standing needs in protracted crises.
Next slide, please.
The top orange line that you see here is the share is the prevalence of acute food insecurity.
Incidentally, the number trend is the same.
We're seeing this exponential growth either in number or in prevalence of people with acute food insecurity over the last decade.
This graph is the last ten years.
Then underneath it, in light blue is humanitarian funding for food security outcomes and dark blue is development funding.
What you can see is that particularly since 2022, on the humanitarian side, we've had a very significant decrease.
2022, the jump there was war in Ukraine and drought in the Horn of Africa.
But that works out to be just about a 60% drop in humanitarian funding for food security outcomes since 2022 alone.
And you can see over the last year, the direction of travel from the food security funding.
What's very clear here is the widening gap.
It's the most obvious thing from this graph.
We have needs going one direction, and we have funding going in the opposite direction.
Now the level of funding that we're looking at is at or just below where we were in 2016, despite the number of people with acute food insecurity being more than double that.
Next slide, please.
It's not just a question about volume.
It's not about the size or the amount of funding, but it's also about where and frankly for what types of interventions funding goes to.
But what we can see here is that the cuts are highly concentrated and closely aligned with situations of worsening food insecurity and these are some of the world's largest food security crises.
Yemen, DRC, Somalia, Afghanistan, South Sudan, these countries represent 45% of the reduction in humanitarian assistance.
Is gathered amongst those five countries.
These are some of the worst effective food crisis we have.
Over the last year, we saw an increase of 6 million people with acute food insecurity.
Next slide, please.
And this is a forward looking projection.
This is going to be released tomorrow.
By the way, tomorrow we release the Hunger hotspots report, another product of the global network.
This is a forward looking risk projection that assesses the risk of deterioration of acute food insecurity.
You can see again, a number of contexts where extremely large food crises with particular concern for a significant deterioration.
I think noting specifically that we had a history of funding cuts in these countries over the last number of years and contexts.
Now we have the impacts of the Middle East and of course, we're facing into El Nino.
We're as an international community, particularly concerned about these compounding risk factors that are all coming together in these vulnerable contexts.
Next slide, please.
So this is a collaboration that we've been doing with the food security cluster, and where we're assessing the people left behind.
And I want to spend a minute on this, and there's only one more slide after this.
This speaks particularly to the efforts that are happening in the humanitarian reset and prioritization discussions.
So, um, You can see what we're looking at here across the graph is the gap in people who are being left behind.
The diagonally shaded parts of the box on top are people who it's the number of people in countries with acute food insecurity where there's a humanitarian needs and response plan.
Over the years since 2021, that number has gone 132000000-168 million people.
That's IPC three above in those countries.
In the dark orange underneath is the number of people being prioritized for assistance.
So you can see this growing gap and just in those 23 countries where there's HNRPs the number is increasing year by year as the prioritization bites, and now we have almost 74% of the people in acute food insecurity in 23 countries are excluded because of the hyper prioritization process.
Next slide, please.
Just going back to where I started, Last year, there was 266 million people where we had data for, 266 million people in need of urgent assistance to meet their food security needs.
This year, 45 million people are being targeted in 23 countries.
There's 221 million people that we know have acute food insecurity and are not being prioritized in the system as it stands today.
Out of all the countries where we were able to access data in 2025, 47 countries, only 23 countries have humanitarian needs and response plan.
47 countries have populations that need humanitarian assistance for their food security outcomes.
So I think that sets the scene quite starkly for this conversation and the types of solutions that are needed.
These are contexts and people facing acute food insecurity and who are falling outside of the prioritization exercise.
Obviously, this is not because needs are declining, but it's because the system is being forced to prioritize with shrinking resources.
The humanitarian system is no longer only prioritizing who needs assistance most.
It's increasingly, unfortunately, deciding who despite urgent needs will not be reached.
The reform and reset conversation has already been mentioned, provides a great opportunity for all of us to reflect on this data and this scene in terms of how we reimagine and revision the system.
We need to change this operating model.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
Connor, for your presentation.
After reading the slides, it appears one thing very clear.
Acute food insecurity remains a great global concern.
The food prices context require continued political tension at the highest level.
It is also clear that humanitarian and development financing are moving in the wrong direction, unfortunately.
The concern is not just about the decline in financial overall, but that these cuts appear to be particularly hitting contexts where needs are already severe and where systems are already under enormous pressure.
These risks making the financing contraction itself a driver of further deterioration.
I was particularly struck by your last slide, demonstrating how more people who urgently need assistance to save lives, but also to protect the livelihoods are simply not being reached and that has very real consequences.
Vulnerable households are left to absorb shocks on their own, sell productive assets, reduce what they eat and fall even deeper into crisis.
Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like now to turn to our next panelists.
Let me introduce our first panelists, miss Jeanette Frankie Cao forgive my pronunciation.
Jeanette is a distinguished civil society leader, activist and advocate for gender Justice, humanitarian Protection, and policy reform in Lebanon and internationally.
She is the founder and executive director of the HDA, Hama Dam Aa, a national resisted Lebanese nonprofit organization that works across Lebanon to protect vulnerable populations with a strong focus on women and girls.
Affected by gender based violence, displacement, and systemic inequality.
Janette, I'd like to welcome your perspective on the following question.
As conflict, displacement, and economic shocks continue to drive hunger and malnutrition in Lebanon, what investments in local systems would have the greatest impact in preventing humanitarian needs from escalating further rather than simply responding after the crisis has deepened.
Please.
Thank you so much.
Excellencies, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen.
Today, I'm coming from a country that it is overwhelmed of fatigue, different emergencies and different shocks happened back to back since 2019.
If I want to start, let me start from a simple but uncomfortable observations in Lebanon.
In Lebanon, hunger is not emerging because systems do not exist.
It's emerging because the international response continues to bypass the systems that already exist.
Markets, traders, farmers, informal supply chains, municipalities, and community networks are already the food system.
They are the first to absorb shocks from conflict, economic collapse, and displacement.
Yet, most humanitarian food responses are still designed as if these systems are secondary.
The most important investment is not another layer of emergency response.
It is investment in local food ecosystems as the primary infrastructure of resilience.
That means three shifts.
First, we need to invest directly in local markets and production systems, not just food distribution.
In Lebanon, when supply chain break, it is not only because food is unavailable, But because transport, liquidity, fuel, and informal trade networks collapse.
Supporting traders, farmers, and local market infrastructure is often more preventive than any downstream food aid and believe me, this is true.
Second, we must strengthen local public systems, municipalities, society, primary health care, and school based support.
These are the shock absorbers of food insecurity.
And when they are weak or fragmented, households fall rapidly into negative coping strategies, including skipping meals and pulling children out of school.
We have plenty of these cases currently.
The experience of the localization lab in Lebanon.
He thank you for your Excellency, Mr.
Das, talking about localization.
The experience of the localization lab in Lebanon reinforces this point.
Through bringing together local women led organizations, the lab has demonstrated that locally led analysis and decision making can identify vulnerabilities and solutions much earlier than traditional response models.
One of its key lessons is that resilience is strengthened when local actors are involved, not only in implementation, of course, but also in shaping priorities, resource allocation.
And preparedness strategies.
Investing in local food system, therefore, it means investing in the institution and partnerships that allow communities to anticipate and absorb shocks before humanitarian needs escalate.
Third and finally, most critically, we must stop treating local actors as implementers of externally designed responses.
Local organizations, women led groups, and community networks are already managing food insecurity daily.
The system failure is not at the level of response capacity.
It is at the level of decision making power and financing.
A true example is the community led fund that it is established recently in Lebanon under Lebanon Localization lab and supported by the leadership of LHDF.
There is where current models breakdown.
We keep funding response after threshold are crossed.
Instead of investing in the systems that prevent those thresholds from being reached in the first place.
Thank you.
Thank you, Jeanette.
You did answer some of the questions.
I want to follow up with the follow up questions because of the time constraint.
So let me now turn to our second panelist, miss Allison Greenberg.
Miss Allison is the Director of Reimagining Humanitarian Nutrition Security at the Rockefeller Foundation.
The Reimeraging Humanitarian Nutrition Security Program is part of the Rockefeller Foundation's Build the Shared Future Initiative, which seeks to rebuild pathways to global collaboration that are fit for the 21st century.
Allison is also founding and advisory partner of the Development Practice LLC and a professor in the master of Development Practice Program at Columbia University.
Allison, my caution to you, through the Rockefeller Foundation's reimagining Humanitarian nutrition security RHMS program, you are helping to advance data driven and participatory approaches that strengthen local food systems.
Could you share how the foundation is approaching anticipatory action, particularly its links to localization and provide some examples of impact at the country level, please.
Yeah.
First I'd like to say that I'm just very inspired by Jeanette's priorities.
I think everything she said is exactly right about what needs to be done.
I think I'm very happy when I think about what the priorities of reimagining humanitarian nutrition security are at the foundation, they are extremely aligned and 100% aligned in fact to, I think the three priorities that you've laid out.
Diagnosing that problem as the system is bypassing local systems that are the first to absorb track and the most ready to and the most able to and the most sustainably able to So I think a big part of our program and how we're approaching it is thinking about how can we be bridging short term response to that long term food systems building and resilience? And how do we do so by investing in local actors, and how do we do so by making sure that it's local systems first? So there are three pillars of our program.
One is data, one is on country pilots, and then one is on advocacy and scaling.
So I'll I'll mention all three just because I think I was going to just focus on the data one and the anticipatory action side.
But there's no point of having the data and the anticipatory action if you're not showing how that works through country pilots and through local actors that we're working with.
Our three country pilots are Somalia, Haiti, and then we're also working in the BAM region of the Philippines to show how anticipatory action can be effective in different contexts and two different kinds of shocks.
Within Haiti, we are working with a local farmer network to prove institutional demand can be met locally and that commodities for response can be provided locally.
In Somalia, we are working with a few different partners, but really looking at how we could help the government and help civil society build locally owned early warning systems.
Then in our data program, we're really looking at how we can be bolstering and providing a new space for some of the global reforms to really be driven locally.
Really, it's about having data that is more anticipatory, that has longer lead times, that's more efficient and more technology enabled.
Part of looking at humanitarian systems that are in the post 2025 world that are really fit for the 21st century as our larger program B the shared future is trying to look at is thinking about, you know, the funding cuts, nobody would have wanted them to happen the way that they've happened, but can there be an opportunity here for efficiencies? Can this be a moment of bringing in technologies, of bringing in local actors that we know act more efficiently, that we know are just more cost effective and to say, where can we bring in those savings? How can we more effectively link these global reforms to the local systems that we know that are there and that we know that are strong? Within that, we're building something that we're now calling an intentional data community to try to bridge and connect all of the different alliances, coalitions, cluster groups that are working on different pieces of the data reform across the ecosystem.
So how can we create a space? We keep talking about the APIs to connect the different technologies, but also the connectivity between all of these different parts of the sector, all of the different types of partners that are out there.
I will highlight, um, Another piece of this initiative, particularly under the data piece, is something that we're working with the European Commission, JRC on called the Vital Data Initiative.
Also looking at trying to map the data ecosystem to figure out with the funding cuts, where are their data systems under threat and where should we be speaking with one voice as a joint ecosystem for what the priority should be? Some of that might not look like saving a particular data system.
It might look like how do we bolster the local systems and national systems to fill the places where the global systems potentially have gaps or falling short now.
How do we map that out and how do we make that case for making sure it's the national systems that are owning their national datasets and that are able to bring in local data layers that can be earlier, that can be more effective and can be more anticipatory? That's a lot of what we are doing around the datap, Then our third piece is advocacy and scaling.
I'm part of Rockefeller Foundation catalytic Capital.
We want to figure out how to build and catalyze programs that could be taken up by systems in the long term.
We know that that means bringing in new partnerships, new financing models, bringing in the private sector, figuring out what the right business models are for social enterprises, for just thinking about what these different models are.
Yeah, I think, what Connor is saying from the global network against food crisis, we know that the system needs to change and we know that part of that change is bringing in new actors to the space, not just trying to rebuild the system that fell in 2025.
It's about thinking about who else can be coming in? How can we make it more efficient? How can new partnerships really be moving the needle? Different financial models can be more efficient than what was coming in before as we really think about what What does this ecosystem look like in the future and how do we not just replace or fill gaps, but how do we truly reimagine it to be something better? I think everybody was aware of the shortcomings of the systems that are now losing a lot of funding.
How do we use this moment to move forward into a future and into a system that can more effectively reach the populations that need it the most? Yeah, that's really how we are thinking about it within our HNS and the foundation.
Thank you, Allison, for providing the perspective from the Rockefeller Foundation's perspective.
Because of the time constraint, allow me to before I open the floor to other speakers who have already registered to intervene.
Allow me to take this opportunity to call upon three member states of the G seven plus to make a short intervention.
I say short because it's only 2.5 minutes because we only have 7 minutes allocated for the three of you, sorry.
Right.
Beforehand, I'd like to invite ambassador and permanent representative to the United Nations in New York from Haiti.
His Eric Pierre.
The floor is yours, please.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
Thank you, Mr.
President.
I would like to thank the orr of this meeting.
And, you know, FFO in Haiti has been so supportive in the past.
I'm not going to miss myself.
I know what I'm talking about when I have to talk about the job of FRO to fighting hunger and lack of food in Haiti.
And, as you know now, I'm not talking about Haiti right now because you know how the situation is in Haiti for violence, insecurity and all this situation.
But in the past, Haiti used to export rice and it was thanks to FAU support and thanks also to the Inter American Development Bank, and the Haitian farmers they are so hard working people.
And, you know, they have been working in very difficult conditions sometimes without water irrigation and on a hurricane because right now huan seasons has started, and I have to tell you more in it needs this type, the assistance of institution like FL Second, when we had pest in the Haitian cattle for the African swine fever, fever has been there for us and forestration also because all these Is is the one contributing to poverty, contributing to misery of the population.
And I would be happy if those institutions continue to give some assistance to Haiti about this.
I'm not going to stay longer.
I want to thank you for not forgetting Haiti.
Thank you.
Thank you, Ambassador, for that swift and succinct intervention.
Next, I'd like to call Minister Counselor, Mr.
King Gonzila from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The floor is yours, please.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr.
President, the Democratic Republic of the Congo thank the Oanet for holding this event, the decade of the humanitarian res humanitarian reform and the fight against food and nutrition crisis and the risk of famine.
The time of discussion comes at the time when the challenge we face call for the deep reflection of the future of humanitarian action.
The finding of the 2026 global food crisis are particularly worrying.
They show that acute food and security continue to worsen under the convenient effect of conflict, climac shocks, economic hardship, and mass population displacement.
For the FaceTime famine situation have been officially confirmed in several contexts, illustrating the urgent need for a more effective collective response.
For the Republic of the Congo, the reality are unfortunately not.
In several of province, the consequences of armored conflict continued to affect people, livelihood, disrupt agricultural production, and permanently web food system.
This experience reminds us that the plague, again, hunger cannot be separate from the effort to promote peace, stability and development.
Mr.
President, the humanitarian arrest offer the opportunity to rent how we act, it should not only aim to make assistance for more effective, but also to sustainable a graded national capacity so that state and community can gradually become the primary aitive of their or resilience.
In this regard, The DRC believed that national authority, local community organization and the local actor must be at the of early warning, prevention and response mechanism to look to localization of humanitarian action should not be as main transfer of responsibility, but as a genuous advertisement at national capacity.
This requires more direct access to funding for local actors and strengthen a national food and nutrition surveillance system, and the development of proactive mechanism to enter them before crisis reach catastrophe level.
In this regard, more predictable, flexible on nationality allment funding is essential for the success of the reform.
Mr.
President, Not can, we know that many contexts hung remain primaly indirectly consequence of armed conflict and insecurity.
As long as population are displaced, agricultural land remain inaccessible and humanitarian access is comprot our response will remain inadequate.
The the democratic approach to Congo remain convicted that is essential to strangle the synergy between humanitarian action, development, and peace building.
This three programmed approach is one of the most promoting lever for addressing the root cause of food crisis rather than just the consequence.
We also wish to emphasize the crucial role of women who remains central to agricultural production, hold house, food security and community resilience, their full participation in food governance mechanism, their economic empowerment, and their protection.
Again, all forms of violence must remain on the e of our collective strategy.
Faced with this challenge, The Congolese government is activity working to fundamentally transform its food system, drove the implementation of the national food and nutrition security policy in line with the commitment of the 2030 agenda.
The DRC has adopted is national strategic development plan for the 2020 with the vision of making the country a middle income nation free from hunger and malnutrition, where every Congolese, including the most vulnerable enjoy good nutrition status, conductive to active or product life.
The humanitarians will only produce lasting results if it helps build stronger national institution, generously support local actors and promote partnership basis of the trust, shared responsibility, and respect for national priority.
The DLC remand full commitment, working with all of these partners so that this reform will help build more resilient food system, prevent crisis before they escaled and above all, guarantee every population to fundamental work to sufficient, dignified, and sustainable food.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
You exceeded 2 minutes, but it's I'm so sorry.
Right.
Next, I'd like to invite miss Pella Booker Wilson, the legal coordinator at the Permanent Mission of Liberia to the United States.
The Flo Yes, ma'am.
Thank you, doctor DeCsta.
Taking the floor for the first time, I would like to start off by stating that Liberia is honored to join UNICEF and fellow partners in co sponsoring this vital initiative.
As a current member of the UN Security Council, Liberia brings a perspective shaped by lived experiences, food insecurity, malnutrition, and the transformative power of peace building and local leadership.
These lessons inform our national arrest agenda, which prioritizes agriculture revitalization, road infrastructure, and connects farmers to markets, drives economic diversification and breaks cycles of hunger and fragility.
The Security Council has increasingly recognized the inextricable link among conflict, insecurity, and acute food crisis.
Liberia's post conflict recovery taught us a clear lesson.
Food security cannot be sustained by emergency relief alone.
It requires long term investment in resilient local systems, inclusive governance, and empowered communities.
Food security is not only a development goal, it is a peace imperative and a security priority, not a moral obligation.
We therefore commend the humanitarian reset for placing national actors and affected communities at the center of prevention and response.
This is not only necessary, it is overdue.
We echo the call for innovative financing, stronger anticipatory action, and closer alignment of humanitarian efforts with local priorities.
The global report on food crisis reminds us of the urgency before all of us.
Behind every statistic stated here today is a child, a family, our community whose future depends on the decisions we make today.
In this spirit, Liberia pledges to mobilize the Security Council to keep food security central to the maintenance of international peace and security.
We also pledge to champion political will and diplomacy to ensure unimpeeded humanitarian access, share lessons from our joining in peace building and food systems transformation, and finally, to advance scalable locally led solutions that strengthen national systems, enclosing that critical step.
Commitments allow me to state that commitments are not enough.
We call on all partners to match commitment with urgency and urgency with action.
The success of the humanitarian reset will be measured not by frameworks, but by lives saved, resilience built, and futures secured.
Liberia stands ready to work alongside UNICEF and other partners to deliver on this promise, ensuring that no child, no family, and no community is left behind.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Let's give a round of applause, please.
Just to lift the environment up a little bit.
I'm glad you mentioned Liberia is going to bring this issue to the Security Council.
The beauty of this is that Liberia and DRC you both are members of the Security Council this year, we expect that you could amplify our voice at the United Nations Security Council.
Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, being a moderator has been challenging handling the time.
I apologize if I have to push everyone to be on the time limit.
Now we have I'm going to open the floor now for interventions.
We have eight interventions here in the order of Switzerland, Spain, United States of America, Ireland, Germany, Bahrain, World Vision International, and Slovania in that particular order.
Without further ado, I'd like to invite ambassor and Permanent Representative of Switzerland to the United Nations U in Rome, Christina Ben.
The floor is yours, ma'am, please.
2 minutes, please.
2 minutes.
I speak very fast.
Thank you very much.
I think it's nice to give me the floor.
Of course, everything that has been said today, I don't want to elaborate because I think it's extremely powerful and extremely useful and is really the answers we were asking for, I think, asking ourselves, what could we do, what should we do? What do we do well and what should we do better? In Rome, you know, we We're also dealing with these issues in trying to bring together a more collaborative and more efficient action between the Rome based agencies as we call them, FAO, World Food Program, and also EFAD.
I would like to say five things very quickly, which were raised by the people around this table, which I find instrumental for this discussion and also for the follow up to the transformation of food systems and coming from emergency to development.
Um, First, funding is missing, is decreasing, we have seen while the numbers of malnutrition are increasing.
But also what was importantly said today is that data is starting to lack.
So the EU Rockefeller Initiative, we also have one in Switzerland launched in Geneva, which is called the Data Initiative.
Uh, which also data observatory that I also encourage you to read about.
The idea here is that data are public goods and should be given and collected and analyzed and given to the public to make action even more channeled and more incisive.
The second is what I said, the UN agencies collaboration should be much, much better, let's say, uh seen on the ground.
I think my colleague from Haiti said it very correctly when FAO is there helping to anticipate the work, then maybe when you're arriving in a situation of emergency, you're already much more prepared.
You cannot have only an emergency response, you have to have a collaborative approach on the field, under the country team.
The third is a little bit the content of what has been said around the table.
What are the actions of substance that can be instrumental.
I think our colleague from Lebanon said extremely precisely that localization means local actors are in charge and not I am acting towards making local people implement what I want.
I think this is the future anyway.
In the end, you don't need the UN because you are more instrumental yourself.
The UN and the multilateral actors on the ground should find and collaborate and transform this with the local actors on the ground.
Of course, anticipatory action, again, my colleague from Haiti said, is the only way to prepare better and need less when an emergency comes.
Cash assistance for local purchasing on local markets to develop them instead of in kind assistance because in emergency, it makes much more sense.
Of course, the transformation of food systems at the end, which should always be the final objective, not only the relief, but also how to go from this situation to a completely different more resilient food system.
These would be the contents in substance.
Of course, as a Swiss person, I cannot refrain from recalling the respect of international law or international humanitarian law.
People have a right to food and healthy diets, including in emergency situations because it is a long time perspective that we are ensuring by also looking at the nutritional value of what we do in an emergency situation.
We tried to bring these together actors of the humanitarian sector and the development sector in what we call now nutrition Week in Rome, where we also try to always make an appeal for, don't forget healthy diets when you operate in an emergency context.
Otherwise, you are also jeopardizing generations.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Madam Ambassador.
Next, I'd like to call on ambassador and Deputy permanent representative of Spain to the United Nations in New York.
Her excellency Anna Jimenez De Lajos.
The floor is yours, please.
Thank you very much moderator and good afternoon to everyone.
Spain is very honored to co sponsor this very important site event which has offered us the opportunity to see how we can work better in the context of the implementation of the humanitarian reset to rethink how we can finance, how we can decide, and who we place in the center of our response.
I will highlight very briefly some of the priorities for my government.
The first has to do with the role of local and national actors at the center of the response.
I think we a very excellent presentation by Janette making a very strong case for that and we totally agree that we must strengthen the capacities of local and national actors, ensure access to financing, recognizing their leadership not only as implementers, but also as designers of humanitarian response, which was also a point that was raised.
During this discussion.
We're making sure that we are making funding progressively more flexible, multi year, and accessible to local actors.
My second point is the issue of the prevention and anticipatory action.
Again, we think this is a critical issue in which we are investing.
Financially, also, we are hosting a WFP logistics hub in Spain, which is essential to relief operations across West Africa and the Sahel.
Together with Brazil, we co lead the Global Alliance Against Huer and Poverty, which is a commitment or demonstration of our commitment.
An effective and inclusive multilateralism with the UN at its center.
My third point has to do with the point that also was just highlighted by Switzerland in terms of the respect for humanitarian law and unimpended humanitarian access.
Because solutions will not be sustainable unless civilians are protected, the entry of food and essential supplies is permitted and attacks on agricultural, health and water infrastructure are brought to an end.
And this is a clear priority for our foreign policy and our humanitarian diplomacy strategy.
My fourth point has to do with accountability in the face of the use of starvation as the method of warfare, which cannot go unpunished.
Is very important that states investigate and prosecute violations related to the denial of humanitarian access and the use of starvation as a weapon and that accountability systems are strengthened and universally applied.
Again, we are very honored to be part of the discussion and you can count on our continued support in this issue.
Thank you.
Thank you, Madam Ambassador.
Next, I'd like to call on the United States, Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Bureau of Disaster and Humanitarian Response at the US Department of State.
Miss Meghan Hansen, F yours, please.
Thank you, Chair and organizers for putting on this important side event.
The United States is a resolute supporter to combat food insecurity and malnutrition in the world.
As we continue our collective work to accelerate the humanitarian reset, it is critical that we do not lose sight of the purpose of system wide reforms.
Fundamentally, the purpose is efficiency, accountability, and effectiveness, such more that every dollar goes to the hungry rather than to bloated organizations with extensive overhead costs.
For this reason, we reiterate our support for the reset and firm intention to continue driving it forward.
Across the range of reforms, arguably the most critical for increasing the number of lives that can be saved is the UN 80 Integrated Supply Chain Initiative.
Some estimates suggest that 70% of the humanitarian systems costs are wrapped up in supply chain logistics and procurement.
Any efficiencies that can be gained or duplicative structures that can be eliminated will mean more of every dollar is spent on saving lives and ending food insecurity.
At a time when needs continue to rise and resources continue to shrink, system wide reform is both a strategic and moral imperative.
It is critical that UN agencies accelerate transparent implementation of the reforms and that all humanitarian agencies opt in to the integrated supply chain Initiative.
Another key priority is scaling up cash and voucher assistance for food wherever possible.
Recent evidence from the Cash and Learning Partnership Network has revealed that these modalities can be 30% more efficient than in kind at meeting emergency humanitarian food needs.
While the UA remains modality neutral and recognizes cash assistance cannot meet all needs, it plays a crucial role in support of a more efficient global food assistance response.
In addition to the specific system reforms, our new approach to humanitarian funding will yield dividends for food and nutrition security.
Pooled funding for specific crises will empower local leaders to get resources to the front lines of need faster and more efficiently than ever before.
We reiterate our call on other donors to join us in pooled funding.
Lastly, the United States matches our support for system wide reforms with our political support for combating food insecurity and malnutrition.
Our president's peacemaking efforts call on us to end conflict so that we can restore normal economies and get people back to self sufficiency, whether this be in Gaza, Sudan, or elsewhere.
Together in a streamlined system, we can better tackle food insecurity together.
Thank you.
Thank you, miss Megan.
Appreciate for your time, consideration.
Next, in line, I call upon ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of Ireland, the United Nations in New York.
Her Excellency is Na, please.
The floor is yours.
Thank you, Chair and many thanks to the organizers of today's events and all the panelists for their excellent statements.
Ireland is pleased to co sponsor this important event today, which has very clearly set out the scale of the challenge that faces us.
I do want to assure you that Ireland remains firmly committed to combating hunger on the development and humanitarian fronts and from a human rights perspective and bilaterally and through the European Union.
We absolutely see empowering local leadership as essential to addressing this challenge.
U Deputy Director General Das spoke earlier about EU efforts.
As some of you may know, Ireland will hold the rotating EU presidency from July of this year and in that role and in relation to the EU's mutually beneficial partnerships and the global gateway policy, we're ready to facilitate development discussions on how the EU can advance food security and nutrition.
We also look forward to coordinating EU member states work on the new EU communication on humanitarian action, which was mentioned already by the DDG.
In terms of our national action, Ireland is increasing its development and humanitarian funding this year, and we do have a particular focus on food insecurity.
We have started delivering on our nutrition for growth commitment to provide 250 million euro annually until 2029 to address hunger and malnutrition.
Through our 50 million Child wasting initiative with WHO, UNICEF and Concern, we support the Child Nutrition Fund, which partners with governments to mobilize domestic funding for maternal and child undernutrition in 63 countries.
We are also supporting regional coordination and was really pleased to hear some of the comments on this earlier on today to unlock the potential that's there and for example, through partnership with the EU Development Agency.
A lot has already been said on localization and local capacities, just to add our voice to that as well.
For us, it's clear and absolutely essential to recognize that critical role that local actors play.
They have a better understanding of their context.
They can access areas, others can't.
They offer better results and better value for money too.
And very briefly just to finish up, a number of comments were made earlier about local food ecosystems and supply chains.
Just to mention the crop Trust.
We've invested in the Crop Trust and interested to see how its work on expanding the use of pulses, oil seeds, and millets can reduce dependence on imported fertilizers and energy while strengthening nutrition and farm incomes and to us, it's a positive example.
Very finally, um For Ireland, it is important to look at food insecurity across the full slate of action at the UN.
We're running at the moment for election to the Human Rights Council and one of our priorities there will be the right to food.
Clearly, for us, it's important to address that interplay between conflict and hunger.
We're very proud to be co chairs of the Group of Friends of Action on conflict and Hunger alongside one of the members of 347 plus Sierra Leone and we will continue to speak out as well on international humanitarian law issues including accountability.
But thank you again, very sincerely to all those who've organized today's event.
I can assure you of our ongoing support.
Thank you, Madam Ambassador.
Next, I'd like to call on Representative Germany Ezuk ambassador of Germany to the United Nations in New York.
His Ecellcy Frank ras, please.
The floor is yours.
Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
In the light of time, let me just thank you for highly interesting opening remarks, scene setting and panel contributions.
Excellent discussions and explanations.
Besides that, our points were covered by colleagues.
Thank you.
Well, that's record breaking, sir.
Thank you so much.
Inspector.
Thank you.
Thank you for honoring our request.
Now, I understand that next we still have three more speakers lined up, but in the interest of courtesy of miss Lucia Elm, Director of emergency operations of UNICEF had to leave.
So I'd like to pass the floor to you to give some concluding remarks before I return to the three other speakers Romani, please.
Fe yours.
Thank you so much, doctor Care.
Terribly sorry.
I apologize.
I want to take the place of the member states, because we have our executive board and I'm the next online for the humanitarian segment of the execty board and I hope that some of you will be there as well.
With my apologies.
I try to stay as much as I can because I want to hear the intervention from our colleagues and partners.
Again, I'm not jumping the queue, but I try to be as well as short.
First of all, thank you very much for for this event.
It's actually many of the reference that you have made to localization, to long term solutions, to the metrics as well of the reset are very much in line with what I'm going to deliver in 20 minutes next door.
Really thank you for that.
I think it's a really good opportunity to look at what was the original intent, what is the original intent of the reset and see how fundamentally we can all together as a system in terms of complementarity.
This is not a zero sum game when, you know, one actor is really the complementarity, but also how together we transform the way we work.
We spoke about, you know, defining the efforts, who needs the most support, the delivering of how do we deliver humanitarian system, how do we devolve power? To local actors.
For us, local actors is not only the local organization, NGO, but also local and national government and systems as the first line of response, being, for instance, in the DRC, the community health workers, the health system, the teachers and the district education, departments in remote areas.
So it's really there.
And then of course, how do we defend the IHL and international humanitarian law and humanitarian workers as well.
They were seen completely under attack.
Five points very quickly, I promise.
First one, we must prevent famine.
This is something that it said and we really need to make sure we know how to do it.
We know what are the ingredients.
We know when early on before the children start starving, we need to act.
The prevention, being anticipatory action, being a strengthening those development system at the local and national level can really be extremely effective.
Also, secondly, we must strengthen data.
I heard data as a social good.
We are also supporting as a development as our dual mandate together with the data, the UN data group as part of the UN 80.
So those are common data, common platform, the work of the cluster as well in terms of having those standards and data collection is extremely important.
A also less resources become available for data, how do we make sure that we get our effort effort together.
Number two, the evolution of power.
Yes, we need to think to go beyond the metrics of measuring the percentage of funding the NGO receive from other entities, including the UN.
But really, how do we support them in prioritizing, making sure that we choose we choose collectively with the local actors and the local actors themselves, by the way, including children, they tell us what they need.
If you ask a child what they need or their parents, 95% I know what they're going to say is education and food security and nutrition for their kids and the two very often are linked together and knows very well how these can be powerful.
Really looking at the evolution of decision making and the more transformative localization agenda.
Number four, of course, we talked about funding and resources and leveraging, I would say, how do we bring the IFIs also earlier on into this picture? How do we make sure that we work with the private sector? How do we have a balanced portfolio of resources that can really help you in the different phases, being a country based pool funds, being the surf, being the development resources, and being also the core and regular resources that we give you to support organization to be able to act rapidly when they need it.
Finally, My last point is that, and again, it's not a surprise, is that famine is a political decision, is a political decision to act, to impede or not to act.
So I think is something that we really need to start, start with choices that actors make to impede or to allow humanitarian access to impede or to support financing and budgeting early on, really the importance of those choices in supporting government to make those choices and when there is a need in terms of also making sure that IHL and the humanitarian principle are uphold.
Really call for action to make sure that the We continue to raise the alum beel.
We don't want to be in a situation like last year with two consecutive famine declared at the same time historically, but not only that, there are a large number of countries.
If you see the IPC and a number of countries being South Sudan, being Sudan, but also other like Lebanon, for instance, as our colleague from reminded of the situation, how this can also be an alarm bell for all of us.
Thank you.
Thank you, ma'am.
With that, you may leave.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Now, let's go back to our three other speakers.
I call Representative Bahrain.
Madam, please floor yours.
Thank you very much, Excellencies, distinguished colleagues.
Before I begin, I would like to thank each and everyone present with us today for this remarkable event as co sponsors of the side event and informal co focal points of Hunger and conflict in the Security Council, Bahrain and Denmark recognize the critical importance of today's side event to discuss strengthening food security in the increasingly complex global environment.
2025, conflict and insecurity drove acute food insecurity in 19 countries and territories, affecting 147 million people.
At the same time, humanitarian funding for food systems is falling sharply despite rising needs, leaving 124 million people facing acute food insecurity outside prioritized assistance in 2026.
These realities show a system under strain, and we need to make one thing very clear.
We will not be able to keep pace with rising needs under shrinking humanitarian resources.
We need to strengthen empowered local communities and resilient national systems and leverage innovative financing and emerging technologies to improve early warning, preparedness and response.
Today, I'd like to highlight three major points.
First, anticipatory action needs to move from theory to practice.
This requires investment in early warning, forecasting, and risk financing that can be activated before crises escalate.
Acting early reduces human and financial costs.
Second, this agenda must go beyond standalone projects and strengthen national systems, including social protection, health and nutrition services, disaster management, and agricultural support.
This requires more flexible multi year funding through national and local actors, along with stronger domestic resources, so governments can respond first to hunger and malnutrition.
Humanitarian reset must stay focused on results, practical, locally driven solutions that deliver impact.
Third, food crises cannot be separated from conflict, which remain one of the main drivers of hunger.
The international community must do more to prevent and resolve conflict, uphold international humanitarian law, and ensure safe and rapid and unimpeded humanitarian access.
In conclusion, a successful humanitarian reset requires a shift from short term crisis management to long term resilience, investing in prevention, empowering national and local leadership, and addressing the drivers that continue to drive food and nutrition insecurity.
I hope I finished in less than 2 minutes.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, ma'am.
Appreciate that.
Next, I'd like to call them representative of the world Vision International Frazier Thank you, Mr.
Chair.
As we talk today about the humanitarian reset and how it translates into a more effective and locally led response, I think it's important to reemphasize the point that doctor Lucia made, which is complementarity.
Complementarity really needs to be at the center of how we operationalize the reset.
And how we translate it from theory into actual action and physical action on the ground.
We're already seeing a shift toward prioritization and a more locally decision making.
But without a deliberate approach to how different actors work together, the risk of creating gaps becomes bigger, and obviously no single actor can close all these gaps alone.
So local and national actors bring proximity and trust.
UN agencies provide system leadership and coordination.
NGOs and INGOs play a key role in bridging access, delivery, and accountability.
If these roles are not clearly defined, connected, and properly resourced, the system will struggle to deliver as intended.
In recent research that World Vision published, including work on our Russian cuts, 57% of households reported that at least one family member is going, sleeping hungry in the past month.
In another research on Lebanon, we see that one in four adolescents are experiencing hunger due to conflict.
When these responses narrow, The children and adolescents are the first to fall within the cracks.
If the reset is to reach its objectives, the ask is quite simple.
Let's make complementarity intentional.
Let's define how the roles are made, how decisions are made at country level, and how financing enables each actor to play their part.
That also requires sustained support from member states to ensure that financing and policy choices actually enable a complementary system rather than a fragmented one.
Thank you.
Thank you, sir.
Last but not least, I'd like to call on representative of Slovenia, Flossi Thank you so much.
It's always convenient to stand between you and your coffee breaks after the event.
But thank you so much to the speakers today, the panelists, my co sponsors, my colleagues that I see very often in these events.
Since we do this together with the agencies and countries quite often per year, these discussions have to evolve and yet I feel we always come to the same list of crises that we discuss and none of them is a surprise.
They're all a reflection of severe violation of international humanitarian law that we daily watch on our news and on our phones.
They're all a reflection of political attention shifting elsewhere, and therefore financial resources shifting elsewhere and they are all a result of politicization of humanitarian action.
Just a couple of messages to conclude today's discussion.
While global needs are rising, the humanitarian aid is politicized, constrained and underfunded.
And we need stronger and coordinated action to ensure respect for IHL and accountability for the violations.
We need humanitarian diplomacy that safeguards principled humanitarian action without discrimination and without political interference.
The third one is anticipatory action that has been mentioned so often, but for anticipatory action, we need to defend the system that are in place, in particular IOPC that we have seen attacked so often in the past.
Fourth, the integration of emergency relief with long term recovery, peace building and prevention.
I think next week in the peace building week, we will have a chance to discuss this, but it's so important to ensure sustainable management of natural resources, especially water that's very close to my own country because they provenly enhance social cohesion, stability, and address root causes of conflict and prevent future conflict.
Above all, and that's why we are all here is we need to restore trust in multilateral humanitarian system supported by civil society, international, non governmental organizations, national non governmental organizations, actors working on the ground, rebuild credibility among affected populations, but of course, also among the donor nations.
No PowerPoint is too much, I believe, when it comes to that and strengthen the global solidarity that seems to be shrinking.
Thank you so much.
Thank you, representative of Slovenia.
With that note, I believe we have exhausted our time at this 2:10 30.
10 minutes over.
But with that note, I'd like to say that we have reached the final part of our discussion.
It's been very enriching.
Unfortunately, we didn't have the interactive discussion as much as we would like to.
But the very well attended session itself and with your presence here speaks volume.
So you don't have to have this interaction, but this part of the intervention from ambassadors and all the other representatives who have registered speaks volume.
So with that note, as moderator, I'd like to thank you all for attending this timely side event and especially to our speakers and panelists and to the organizers and co sponsors.
Thank you so much for organizing this.
I wish you a fruitful week ahead with the start of the Ecosoc 2026 Humanitarian Affairs segment tomorrow.
With that note, good luck and thank you once again for attending this side event.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay.
Thank you.