The Reformed Committee on Food Security. A briefing paper for ...

To be implemented within the second phase (elements of which will commence October 2010)• Coordination at national and regional levels – <strong>The</strong> CFS reform documents describesthis role as to “[s]erve as a platform to promote greater coordination and alignment ofactions in the field, encourage more efficient use of resources and identify resource gaps.”(CFS: 2009/2: Paragraph 6.i).• Promote accountability and share best practices at all levels – “<strong>The</strong> CFS should helpcountries and regions, as appropriate, address the questions of whether objectives arebeing achieved and how food insecurity and malnutrition can be reduced more quicklyand effectively.” (CFS: 2009/2: Paragraph 6.ii).• Develop a Global Strategic Framework for food security and nutrition – “in order toimprove coordination and guide synchronized action by a wide range of stakeholders.”(CFS: 2009/2: Paragraph 6.iii).It is clear that – although they were assigned to two separate phases during the reform discussions– there is potentially a lot of overlap between these roles. For instance, the first role in phase One, “Coordinationat a global level”, consists of providing a “platform for discussion and coordination to strengthencollaborative action”. Collaborative action seems already to imply some sort of agreement, or process ofreaching agreement about what it is that needs to be done. This therefore seems to overlap – despitetheir apparent separation – with the third role in phase Two “Develop a Global Strategic Framework”, theobjective of which is to “improve coordination and guide synchronized action”. Additionally, the secondrole of Phase Two “Promote accountability and share best practice” requires “developing an innovative mechanism,including the definition of common indicators, to monitor progress” (CFS: 2009/2: Paragraph 6.ii).<strong>The</strong> production of “common indicators” again presupposes or implies agreement or convergenceabout what it is that needs to be done, and so we can say that from the outset of the CFS’s work programme- and continuing all the way through the implementation period – one of the central pillarsof the CFS’s work will be to seek to generate agreement about what it is that needs to be done to achieve foodsecurity, to translate this agreement into general principles and policies for coordinated action, and to monitortheir implementation.16