The Andean countries, as coparticipants in the commitments of the World Food Summit, assumed the task of combining efforts to define joint actions on food security. 

The Presidents mandated the adoption of this commitment during the 2003 Council of Andean Presidents, where it was agreed to further strategic lines of work to perfect the region’s integration system.  Within those lines of work referring to the Political Dimension of the Integration process, it was agreed to “Instruct the Andean Council of Foreign Ministers to lay down the guidelines for a Regional Food Security Policy.”

A process of dialogue and joint efforts was launched in mid 2003, through workshops and the recruitment of consultants, to identify the priorities of and bases for formulating a subregional food security policy, with the support and technical cooperation of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and in execution of the TCP-RLA-2909 project, the participation of representatives of the public agencies responsible for the design and implementation of Food Security policies in the Andean countries, and the Andean Community General Secretariat.   

The following actions were carried out as the Project was executed: 

a) An intensive regional course on food security for Andean government officials working in agencies involved in food security policy execution.

b) National consultancies on the food security situation in the Andean countries.   

c) Subregional workshop to evaluate the food security diagnoses. 

d) Subregional workshop to identify different points of agreement among national strategies and, on that basis, to determine the components of the regional strategy.

e) National consultancies to identify projects for improving food security.   

Guidelines for a Regional Security Policy in the Andean Community *

Vision

The vision of Food Security in the Andean Community countries is defined on the basis of the commitment that was shared and reaffirmed at the World Food Summit five years later, which is the following:

Vision: The commitment assumed at the 1996 World Food Summit of at least halving the number of undernourished people in the Andean countries by the year 2015.

This means that by 2015, the number of people with food insecurity in the Andean region should amount to no more than 7.8 million. 

General Objective

According to the definition approved by the World Food Summit, held in Rome in November 1996, food security exists when the availability of food is guaranteed and when its supply is stable and accessible to all people.   

In this sense, the general objective of the Andean food security policy should foster the fulfillment of the commitments agreed upon at the World Food Summit through the adoption of joint efforts in the Andean Community to help guarantee physical and economic access to enough innocuous and nutritious foods to satisfy, by 2015 at the latest, the food needs and preferences of at least one-half the people who are suffering food insecurity in the subregion.   

Components

The following guidelines, strategic objectives and priority actions are proposed to orient the food security policy in the Andean countries, in compliance with the five components of food security:

1. Availability

Guideline: The attainment of Food Security in the Andean Community should aim to ensure a sufficient and timely supply of healthy, nutritious and accessible foods to the population.   

Strategic Objective: Improve food production and availability.   

Priority Actions:

·         Promote the competitive production of regional foods with a high nutritional value, thereby increasing the total availability of energy from this source.   

·         Foster access to and better use of productive resources to increase food production.

·         Reinforce the research into and exchange and recovery of experiences, in order to contribute to national and regional food security. 

·         Identify, promote and consolidate sustainable finance and microfinance systems for production and marketing processes.   

·         Build up local and regional food distribution and marketing systems, in order to contribute to food security.   

·         Promote the sustainable management of natural resources for food production.   

2. Access

Guideline: Food Security in the Andean Community should contribute to the social and economic inclusion of the poorest population sectors and guarantee the right to food for all vulnerable citizens, particularly children, old people, pregnant women and nursing mothers.  Government interventions will seek to promote employment, diversify income sources and boost access to productive assets, among other things. 

Strategic Objective: Improve the economic capacity and quality of life of urban and rural families suffering food insecurity. 

Priority Actions:

·         Create economic opportunities for urban and rural people suffering food insecurity.

·         Give vulnerable groups sustainable access to the markets for goods and services, increasing coordinated urban and rural efforts through economic corridors.   

·         Improve the access of vulnerable groups to good-quality productive assets and basic social services in urban and rural areas.

·         Develop comprehensive protection systems for vulnerable groups that include the right to food.   

·         Guarantee direct food and nutritional assistance to highly vulnerable social groups and those facing emergency situations.

3. Use

Guideline: Guarantee basic health conditions, basic sanitation in dwellings and urban centers, and the appropriate preparation and consumption of foods, so to take advantage of their nutritional potential, in order to contribute to Food Security.  Priority actions within this component are the innocuousness of foods and the revaluing of patterns of local consumption with a high nutritional value.   

Strategic Objective: Improve the people’s nutritional conditions and practices and the innocuousness of foods. 

Priority Actions:

·         Incorporate contents designed to improve food, nutritional, health and hygienic practices and patterns into formal and nonformal education programs.   

·         Promote and revalue patterns of consumption of local foods with a high nutritional value.   

·         Ensure the population’s access to basic sanitation and health and education services.   

·         Update the instruments for food and nutritional programming and orientation (nutrition recommendations, food composition tables, food guides, and the like).   

4. Stability

Guideline: Work toward ensuring a continuous food supply.  To that end, it is necessary to identify groups that are vulnerable to natural disasters and economic and social emergencies by implementing efficient early warning, information and communication systems.

Strategic Objective: Reduce the vulnerability of the region’s countries to the risks posed by globalization, natural disasters and economic and social emergencies. 

Priority Actions:

·         Develop policies and instruments to monitor and reduce the impact on food security of natural disasters and economic and social emergencies.   

·         Develop Information Systems about food insecurity and vulnerability in the subregion. 

·         Develop a disaster prevention strategy.   

5. Institutions

Guideline: Ensure that policy interventions have the desired efficiency and impact, by making appropriate institutional adjustments that will guarantee the adoption of an integral and multisector vision of the programs and projects that are formulated and carried out, together with the necessary disciplines for their effective monitoring, follow-up and impact assessment, in keeping with national strategies for decentralization and citizen participation.    

Strategic Objective: Enhance the efficiency of multisector food security interventions. 

Priority Actions:

·  Reinforce the targeting and coordinated and complementary action mechanisms of multisector interventions.   

·  Strengthen food security and nutritional intervention planning, monitoring, follow-up and impact assessment systems by encouraging the unification of measurement criteria and standardization of indicators.   

·  Broaden and optimize user-targeted information systems that are relevant for food security and nutrition.   

·  Reinforce the participation of civil society in the design, execution, assessment and surveillance of food security and nutrition policies.   

·  Take advantage of international trade negotiations bearing on food and nutritional security in order to obtain more access to markets and differentiated treatment as Andean countries.   

·  Promote a regional forum on food security in order to reinforce national capacities in this area.   

·  Place food and nutritional security on the local, national and Andean agendas.   

* This text is part of the document Guidelines for a Regional Food Security Policy in the Andean Community,  approved by the Ministers of Agriculture at their meeting on July 10, 2004.