World Food Day marked with focus on food security, refugee crisis

AMMAN — The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) in Jordan on Sunday celebrated the World Food Day, the Jordan News Agency, Petra, reported.

Under the theme “Let’s Change the Migration’s Future”, the celebration was held under the patronage of HRH Princess Basma, the president of the National Alliance Against Hunger and Malnutrition (NAJMAH).

The festivity aims at enhancing global consciousness about hunger risks, and to stress the necessity of guaranteeing food security, food systems, and committing to the UN sustainable development goals in order to eliminate hunger by the year 2030.

In her speech, Princess Basma stressed that this year’s slogan expresses the world’s concern regarding the magnitude of the migration phenomenon: whether it was internal migration or forced due to wars, “the effects of such displacement reflect clearly on the food security”.

The princess noted that 80 per cent of those suffering from poverty and hunger in the world live in rural areas, and 43 per cent of the world’s children die because of malnutrition despite food production dominating one-third of the world’s industries.

She also highlighted the various burdens on the Kingdom due to the successive migrations. Despite the lack of resources, potentials and water shortage, she stressed that the instability in the area made millions of people to migrate out of their home country. 

This necessitates the importance of joint action between countries and their people, in order to translate FAO’s slogan in changing the migration’s future, the princess said.

For his part, Labour Minister Ali Ghezawi spoke about the load of the Syrian refugee crisis on Jordan, which calls for the international community to commit to its pledges in providing support to the Kingdom to enable the continuation of services for refugees. 

He also mentioned that Jordan is the only country that gave work permits to Syrian refugees, creating more than 60,000 permits.

UN figures indicate that over 244 million people in the world have migrated through international borders in 2015, while the volume of the internal migration reached more than 760 million immigrants, in a time where forced immigrants have reached 65.6 million all over the world in 2016.