The Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Abdallah Bou Habib, traveled to New York this week to take part in meetings bringing together several of his counterparts and forming part of a series of days of action on the world food security organized at the UN headquarters on the initiative of the United States. Chaired by US Secretary of State Anthony J. Blinken, the meeting (entitled Roadmap for Global Food Security-Call to Action) during which the Minister spoke to his peers, was part of a series of you programmed between May 18 and 19 under the same theme, in a tense international context.
In his speech, Abdallah Bou Habib underlined the difficult situation that Lebanon is currently experiencing in terms of food security, due to the crisis it has been going through since 2019 but also the conflict that has pitted Russia against the Ukraine. Lebanon, which imports “85% of its food needs” and whose wheat needs reach “about 50,000 tons per month”, as the minister recalled, is among those most dependent on grain exports. produced in Ukraine.
Lebanese resolution
“According to the World Food Program (WFP), food prices in Lebanon have increased by 1000% since the economic crisis in Lebanon, and inflation reached 215% in February 2022”, the minister further pleaded before speaking. add that “the repercussions of the current conflict in Europe, coupled with the destruction of the largest grain silos in Lebanon following the tragic explosion at the port of Beirut (August 4, 2020, editor’s note), had only worsened the situation “. At the local level, Lebanon has so far maintained the exchange rate mechanism from which wheat imports benefit and needs to get the executive and parliament to approve a $150 million loan from the World Bank to “avoid a short-term supply disruption (…) and help guarantee an affordable price of bread”.
But the crisis requires a global solution with “276 million people” facing a situation of food insecurity in the world, stressed the minister, who added that Lebanon supported the American initiative aimed at respond to these issues. The minister also announced that Lebanon had “initiated” a draft resolution titled “State of Global Food Insecurity”. The text should in principle be adopted by the UN General Assembly “next week”. “I would like to thank the United States for being part of the group of 20 states at the center of the project,” as well as the sponsorship of more than 80 states. The minister, however, did not detail the content of the resolution in his speech, simply stating that it was “focused and action-oriented”.
Yesterday, Anthony J. Blinken finally led the first flagship event of the United States’ presidency of the UN Security Council, a public debate on the links between conflict and food security. He was then due to meet with UN Secretary General António Guterres.
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The Lebanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and Emigrants, Abdallah Bou Habib, traveled to New York this week to take part in meetings bringing together several of his counterparts and forming part of a series of days of action on the world food security organized at the UN headquarters on the initiative of the United States. Chaired by the…
