Summary of Key Points:

Policy Initiative: Negotiate a Food Security Convention (FSC) within the UN system that would elevate food security to a high priority in international law. Conventions are treaties that must be respected by other multilateral fora such as the World Trade Organization.

Purpose: The purpose of a food security convention is to increase stability in the food supply by reducing volatility in agricultural markets, and by making food production and distribution systems sustainable and equitable over the long term.

Principal Actors: Governments through the UN General Assembly and UN agencies such as the Food and Agriculture Organization and Office of the High Commissioner of Human Rights, and civil society organizations. Leadership for the development of the FSC has come from the APM network, and interest has been expressed by Collectifs Strategies Alimentaires, Oxfam Canada, ASOCODE Honduras, the Rome Coalition on Food Security (PASTA) and groups involved in the Mexican Forum on Food Sovereignty.

Calendar: The average time frame for the negotiation of a convention is 10 years. Target date for a Food Security Convention is 2005.

Background:

Beginning with the preparations for the World Food Summit and continuing through the recent inaugural meeting of the Global Forum on Sustainable Food and Nutritional Food Security with a strong emphasis on the South, it has been evident that there is a significant movement building to defend and promote food security in an era of globalization. The question is not so much how to catalyze this movement, but to bring focus so that there will be more impact from our collective efforts. The Food Security Convention could make a significant contribution toward this goal.

In preparation for the World Food Summit, groups of NGOs from Latin America, North America, Europe and Africa, the majority of them affiliated with the APM network, proposed that it was time to negotiate a Food Security Convention to make food security a high priority within the framework of international law. Multilateral organizations ranging from the World Bank to the FAO were promoting trade liberalization as the primary guarantor of long-term food security. Civil society organizations favor a mix of policies that will support peasant and family farm agriculture as important contributors to domestic food security, with trade as a means to complement domestic food production.

The proposal for a Food Security Convention debated at the NGO Forum at the World

Food Summit has several core elements:

• The basis for food security begins at the household level and must be first defended and promoted by national food security policy. Countries should develop food security plans that incorporate policies for farmers and consumers.

• Where international agreements undermine food security, the food security convention should take priority. Provisions should be made for waivers to WTO agriculture provisions for key staple crops, for example, if these undermine domestic food security as planned for in national food security plans.

• An international network of local and regional food reserves is essential to long term food security.

• Commodity agreements can play a role in ensuring that volatility in world markets is reduced and that importing countries have stable supplies from exporters.

The hope behind the Food Security Convention proposal is that it will be an initiative that will keep building the movement for food security around the world beyond the follow-up initiatives to the World Food Summit and the renegotiation of the WTO agriculture and TRIPs agreements in 1999 and 2000. Because food security is the emphasis, this initiative creates significant opportunity for leadership from southern countries struggling with the effects of trade liberalization on food security.

Pros:

1. The negotiation of a Food Security Convention would have significant participation from civil society and presents the opportunity to promote a positive alternative to globalization as it is being institutionalized through the WTO.

1. The FSC is hard law that would have weight in the structure of international law.

1. The FSC brings food security out of the WTO as an independent priority in the global arena.

1. As the negative impacts of globalization become more evident, the FSC provides a framework upon which governments can build the strength to challenge the agenda of globalization.

1. Work on the FSC could play an important role throughout the debate on the WTO agriculture and TRIPs negotiations in providing a positive alternative so that civil society is not simply in a defensive position of resisting the trade liberalization agenda.

Cons:

1. A Food Security Convention depends upon the initiative and involvement of the very governments that negotiated the World Trade Organization agreements on agriculture and TRIPs. Unless there is significant leadership from countries that have hitherto held back from playing a major role in international food-related trade negotiations, the FSC will have limited prospects for negotiation.

1. Because conventions are only as strong as the base of countries who agree to be parties to them, the process of negotiating them is complex and takes time. The average time required to negotiate conventions, as demonstrated through the environmental conventions now in place, is 10 years. Thus the negotiation of a Food Security Convention will not address the problems of food security for some time.

1. Some argue that NGO energy would be better spent working to improve the strength of regional food systems, rather than working to convince their governments to engage in the long-term process of negotiating a convention.

4. If it is handled incorrectly, work on the FSC could take important energy away from opportunities offered with the renegotiation of the WTO agriculture and TRIPs agreements, and struggles related to regional trade liberalization regimes such as the Free Trade Area of the Americas, Mercosur, APEC, and others.

Lessons from the past:

In opening this debate, we hope to take advantage of the lessons learned during the negotiation of environmental conventions such as the conventions on biological diversity, climate change and desertification, to name a few.

1. Adopt a multiple proposal/single text approach to drafts of proposed conventions. Involve cross-cutting clusters of countries and non-governmental interests to prepare multiple initial proposals.

2. Create an active regional support structure for the agency leading the negotiations. Convene regional clusters of countries cutting across North-South lines to discuss strategies.

3. Provide informal support to countries that might require pre-negotiation assistance. This is best accomplished through regional collaboration, rather than through a centralized process (match countries that can help each other). Provide assistance before draft treaty language has been circulated.

4. Encourage constructive linkage to create economic incentives. Identify points of difference that can work to mutual advantage.

5. Encourage greater variation in the categorization of countries for the purposes of prescribing action or responsibility. Avoid "lowest common denominator" by thinking about categories of countries for which policy prescriptions vary. Create different standards of responsibility/performance.

6. Encourage unilateral action by removing implicit and explicit penalties for efforts that predate negotiated agreements. Establish a baseline year after which any and all improvements will be counted. Describe the types of improvements or efforts that will be counted.

7. Avoid the separation of science and politics in decision-making and avoid advocacy science. Negotiate contingent agreements, taking into account a variety of future scenarios.

8. Seek an expanded role for non-governmental interests within and apart from national delegations. NGOs should participate in pre-negotiation preparations and in post-negotiation implementation.

9. Stress the educative role of the media, particularly in developing countries.

10. Consider several functional reforms in international institutional arrangements that will facilitate the process improvements recommended above.

Major Issues to Advance the Larger proposal:

1. Should those promoting the convention continue with the proposals made at the World Food Summit NGO Forum? Or should the convention have a different focus?

This question can only be answered through wide-spread debate and a dialogue among civil society in both net food importing and net food exporting countries. There has not been sufficient feedback to yet determine the parameters of a final convention proposal.

As the FSC proposal came under debate at and following the World Food Summit, regional variations in response emerged. Some Europeans, for example, while supportive of the Convention concept, were concerned that differentiating treatment of agricultural crops through the lens of food security could skew production systems. They feared new cycles of overproduction of some commodities with consequent impact on surpluses and prices. In Canada, discussions with NGOs and farmers' organizations led to a proposed revision that only those crops that are part of indigenous peasant agriculture production should be allowed different treatment under global trade rules to support food security.

One of the proposals has received significant support among NGOs, and there is hope that it could also be an appealing proposal for governments-the creation of an international network of regional food reserves. Food reserve policy has undergone an enormous shift in recent years. The United States, for example, eliminated the Farmer-Owned Reserve and is pursuing a zero-stocks policy, moving grain directly from the farm to the market without setting reserve targets. Increasingly, corporations are becoming the world's grain reserve, with large industrial nations acting as brokers when food aid is requested. The recent food crisis in North Korea, in which the U.S. government worked to set up a grain deal for Cargill, is one example. As part of their proposals for the U.S. Plan of Action to implement the agreements from the World Food Summit, U.S. NGOs are calling for the reinstitution of the Farmer Owned Reserve and the development of an international network of grain reserves. Debate about the Food Security Convention played a role in raising the profile of the reserve issue.

2. What is the best approach to expand support for the Food Security Convention and to get countries and UN agencies on board as proponents of the convention?

• Identify working groups of key actors in each region to take responsibility for developing the convention proposal and enlisting support from key governments. The first task is to organize a process of critical examination of the current FSC proposal which will lead to the addition of other issues and policy approaches. Because of the nature of the work, these working groups should be composed of participants from farmers' organizations, consumer groups, and food policy institutes who have links with sympathetic government officials who could ultimately move the proposal in the UN process.

In North America, Canadian groups have set an example. A symposium sponsored by Oxfam Canada, the National Farmers Union, and the Canadian Food Grains Bank brought together more than twenty representatives of Canadian agriculture and hunger groups to evaluate the convention and the Code of Conduct on the Right to Food for work on hunger in Canada. The Canadian Home Economics Association included the convention proposal in its food security study circles guide which will be read by groups of home economists in each province and used as a basis for discussion.

• Work with the groups in each region that are most involved with the UN's agenda on food security to incorporate the FSC as part of the list of policies that are included in the agenda for discussion and action. Proponents of the Code of Conduct on the Right to Food have done this effectively by gaining the support of key governments and legal experts in the FAO and Human Rights Commission of the UN. It is important to work with people who recognize the importance of civil society and play a role as advocates to turn our ideas into concrete proposals in the formal policy arenas. As civil society groups, we need to develop a list of sympathetic UN and government officials to form the core of people inside the system with whom we will work..

• Encourage other networks working on globalization and food security to incorporate the FSC proposal as a central part of their agenda. At the founding meeting of the Global Forum on Sustainable Food and Nutritional Security, for example, participants agreed that the search for alternatives to the WTO agriculture provisions to promote food security should be one of the priority working groups. The group heard presentations on the Code of Conduct on the Right to Food and the Food Security Convention and concluded that work on these alternatives should go back to the local and regional level for discussion.

Calendar:

There is no calendar established at this time. However, the following goals could be established:

1. Peoples' organizations and NGOs work to get feedback in their regions on the specific content of the convention in 1998 and to generate new proposals for inclusion in the proposal. The emphasis should not be on the text as it currently exists, but on the search for policies and proposals that should ultimately be included in a convention.

1. As members of civil society contact members of governments in the context of the renegotiation of the WTO agriculture and TRIPs agreements in 1998-2000, ensure that they mention the FSC proposal and solicit ideas. The convention should be part of the discussion at key international meetings in the coming year including the Alliance meeting in Sao Paolo, a meeting in India in March on the WTO negotiations and food security, and NGO meetings coinciding with the May meeting of the WTO in Geneva.

3. Establish a drafting committee that includes representatives from networks who are the strongest proponents of the convention, representatives from UN agencies, and experts in international law. The task of the committee is to convert the proposals raised through debate at the grassroots into a viable proposal for a convention. This proposal must still be viewed as a draft.

1. Once the WTO negotiations are completed, the FSC enters a new phase of activity. Governments will be four years into the World Food Summit action plans, the future direction of the WTO in relation to agriculture will be clear, and the necessity for stronger policies to support food security will be apparent. In addition, it is likely that national governments will be rethinking their role and advocating the relocalizing of food systems. At this point it is essential to implement a strategic approach to getting governments on board with the convention proposal. Civil society should focus on strengthening the positions of governments that are advocates for food security and that play a leading role in their regions.

Karen Lehman phone: (612) 870-3403

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy fax: (612) 870-4846

2105 1^st Ave. S. email: klehman@iatp.org

Minneapolis, MN 55404 web: http://www.iatp.org/foodag/

December, 1997