The Fight Against Hunger and Poverty as a Foundation for Human Dignity and Sustainable Development

Thank you everyone for your presence and for coming. We are opening this event, Four Years Left: Accelerating Action on Hunger and Poverty, Human Dignity, Sustainable Development, and the Path from Commitment to Delivery. I am very honored to hand the floor. My name is Renato Godinho. I'm the Director of the Support Mechanism of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. I'll be your mediator today, and I'm very pleased to hand the floor to our co-hosts of this meeting, Brazil and Spain. And for Brazil, His Excellency Ambassador Mauro Vieira, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Brazil. You have the floor, sir.

Well, thank you very much. I'm speaking in Portuguese, so you should pick the the channel, the adequate channel for translation.

Your Excellency, Minister Jose Manuel Albade, Minister for Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain. Your Excellency, Wellington Dias, Minister of Development and Social Assistance of Brazil. Distinguished colleagues, ladies and gentlemen. It is a pleasure to join you today alongside Spain, co-chair of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, to discuss one of the most urgent challenges of our time, how to accelerate action to fight hunger and poverty as we enter the final four years of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The 2026 State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World report shows that hunger indicators have slightly declined for the third consecutive year. This is encouraging, but it is far from enough. In a world capable of producing an unimaginable amount of wealth, hunger and poverty cannot be regarded as inevitable. They are ultimately the result of political choices. Hunger is not simply a matter of food availability. It is, above all, a matter of human rights and political will. Nearly 2 billion people still face moderate or severe food insecurity. Around 2.7 billion people cannot afford a healthy diet. The causes are increasingly interconnected. High food prices, insufficient purchasing power, inefficiencies across food systems, conflicts, climate change, and economic instability. At the same time, the international environment has become more difficult. We face multiple mutually reinforcing crises while international cooperation and developing financing mechanisms are under unprecedented pressure, including a significant decline in official development assistance. We cannot afford to respond to these multiple crises through fragmented approaches. We need to strengthen what has proven effective, mobilize resources more efficiently, and above all, translate political commitments into implementation at country level. This is precisely where the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty has already made a difference. Launched in November 2024, the Alliance represents an innovative approach to international cooperation. Rather than creating new structures or duplicating existing ones, it seeks to connect country-led priorities with proven policy instruments, technical expertise, and financing opportunities. The Global Alliance is now moving from political commitment to implementation. Today, 16 countries are advancing their national plans through the Alliance's implementation process. Recent missions to Ethiopia, Cambodia, and Haiti illustrate this approach. They have enabled the Alliance's support mechanism to work directly with governments, identify priorities and constraints, bring partners together, and explore concrete opportunities for technical and financial support. Ladies and gentlemen, Brazil is proud of the public policies it has developed over many decades in this field. These achievements are rooted in a public policy architecture that combines social protection, school meals, support for family farming, health and nutrition, together with inter-ministerial coordination and institutionalized social participation through the National Council for Food Security and Nutrition. Sharing these experiences is part of Brazil's long tradition in South-South and trilateral cooperation. Through the Global Alliance, we also want to learn from the experiences of other countries and deepen the lessons emerging from implementation. Many of the solutions are already known. We know that social protection works. We know the importance of school lunches and family farming and of empowering women and young people. We know the benefits of investing in sustainable, inclusive and resilient food systems. Our challenge is to bring these solutions to scale. In November, two years after the launch of the Global Alliance, we hope to publish a set of strategies and lessons learned from its work. The coming period will also bring important decisions for the multilateral system, including election of the next United Nations Secretary General and the leadership of the three Rome-based agencies. We must be ambitious. Four years is a short period of time, but it is enough to make meaningful difference if we act with greater coordination, focus, and urgency. Brazil is thankful to Spain for the co-presidency and their commitment to implement in the center of the work of the alliance end hunger and poverty high on the international agenda. Thank you.

Thank you, Excellency, for your words. I'm now happy to invite to the floor, Your Excellency, Minister Manuel Alvarez, Minister of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation of Spain.

Querido Ministro Vieira.

Dear Minister Vieira, dear Minister Diaz, thank you for this joint action. Secretary of State for International Cooperation for Spain, Your Excellencies, hunger and poverty are still too present in our world. It is such a daily issue and we still think of it as something inevitable, but we cannot let this become normal. Today, we have reason for hope. Hunger throughout the world has fallen for three years in a row. Last year, the number of people who suffered from hunger in the world fell by about 14 million compared to the prior year, 43 million fewer people than in the previous year. And we have also had significant goals, met significant goals in poverty. Since 1990, the number of people who live in extreme poverty has gone down by more than 60%. Almost 1 billion people have left extreme poverty in just one generation. We must also recognize that this process has slowed down considerably. Today, 10% of people in the world 826 million people, that is, are still living in extreme poverty. In this current rhythm, about 9% of the world population will still be in extreme poverty in 2030, and this must be seen as unacceptable. If we look at the data, the data tell us two things. We can advance, but to continue advancing, We must double and redouble our efforts. We still have four years until 2030, four years to reach this objective and put an end to hunger in the world. In this very difficult international context, we know which policies work. Social protection policies work, food, lunch, school lunch policies work. helping out small-scale farmers, politics for small-scale economic inclusion, and politics that combat climate change. All of these policies work, and we know that we cannot eradicate hunger and poverty without advancing in gender equality. We must invest in women's rights, in their economic independence, and efficient use of resources for them. This is an urgent necessity for humanity, and it is the most efficient way to transform communities, societies, and economies. This is why Spain is driving a feminist foreign policy and feminist economic development. How do we scale this up? We need to have the engagement and leadership from countries like Brazil, like Spain. We need better coordinated financing. We need engagement from the United Nations. We need it from civil society donors, international development banks, and of course, from the private sector. For Spain, this is the strength behind the new agenda for development financing that we coordinated a year ago in Seville in the International Conference for Financing. And this is the spirit of this initiative for the Global Alliance Against Poverty and Hunger. This alliance has programs in 19 countries. And 10 of those have reached the most advanced stages of support. This is the first step to having a greater international coordination. And our ambition is that when a country says that it has a plan to eradicate hunger and poverty and it needs support to make it a reality, the international community must be able to correspond in a coordinated, efficient way at the necessary scale to meet that challenge. One of the values of this alliance is to show that when we try to end hunger and poverty in the world, there cannot be a North and a South. We need to have partners from all of the continents revolving around a common objective. Brazil has put this fight against hunger and poverty where it needs to be, and I applaud President Lula's leadership, Ministers Dias and Vieira. They have put this center stage of this agenda for development. And they have done it based on their own experience. Brazil has shown in its own country that public policies can transform lives, societies, and it can change people's personal life projects for hundreds of millions of people in the country and throughout the world. The Spanish government, of course, is very proud to share the co-chairing of this alliance with Brazil, and we assume our responsibility like we did in Seville, putting development finance at the center of this international agenda. And we do it now in the co-chairing with Brazil of this alliance to coordinate finance, action, and political will in these countries. And of course, it's a great pleasure to let you know that we have a new strategic vision for cooperation in Spain, which is the a strategy for the right to food and zero hunger. This is going to develop our commitment to eradicate hunger with a rights based focus where people and the planet can be in harmony together to have a sustainable future. In the last few years, we've learned that we can advance and the next four years must show that we can do it faster and without leaving a single person behind. So we have the public policies, We have the knowledge, we have the resources, and what we need now is exactly what we're doing here today, mobilizing ourselves all together.

With that, I think ministers will leave the room. I will invite to take their places here at the head of the room, the your excellency, Reyna Forbin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Haiti and State Secretary News Ennin, Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development of Germany. We can resume our program after this cine set. We will have a dialogue of high-level leaders on how to accomplish. We have heard two messages here, one on the actions that are actually working and are managing to reverse the trends on increasing hunger and poverty. For the last three years, we have seen them decreasing, but at the same time, a call to action on the risks that are ongoing and how we can best accelerate action with those four years left to 2030. Before we invite these section for the high level leaders dialogue. We will hear how to open this dialogue from the co-chairs of the Board of Champions of the Alliance who are present here as a call to action on solutions that can move the needle before 2030 and review the accomplishments made collectively by the Global Alliance so far. I'm happy to invite to the floor, Your Excellency, Eva Granados, Secretary of State and our co-chair.

Thank you very much, Renato. Good afternoon to you all, dear Minister, your excellencies. I won't take long, but based on the messages of the ministers, we can summarize this call to action. We have four years left to 2030. In 2015, we made a commitment. We set forth the SDG agenda, and two objectives that are key for the alliance is that no one should live in poverty. No one should go hungry. And we know that we are advancing, but we know that we are not advancing at the rate necessary. I would like to join the ministers with a message of hope. Both of them mentioned this. We do know what works. We have the policies that are able to reduce hunger and the capacity to protect people when it comes to crises and create more resilient societies. The challenge that we have now in these four years until 2030, that essential challenge is to ensure that these solutions that we've already identified can reach more people, including those that we have reached yet. And this is the proposal of President Lula and the G20 and why we are here. This is why we established the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty. The purpose wasn't to create a new organization and structure, but to allow the existing architecture to function better. The Minister has said it, we are advancing. The alliance has shown that it can produce results. We have 21 programs in 19 countries, and some are very advanced now. This progress shows us that we are heading down the right path. It also shows us what we have to strengthen in order to accelerate those results for 2030. I would like to focus on four main ideas. First, leadership and the ownership of countries. This is something that characterizes this fight against hunger and poverty. We know that there is no one-size-fits-all solution for hunger and poverty. It must be specific to the context of each country. We know that the solutions must be integrated into the national agendas and have that political and institutional will, we are convinced that international cooperation go hand in hand with those priorities and not substitute them. The alliance is based on the demands of each country, and we must incorporate all of the institutions to ensure that the programs can be implemented, have financing, can be implemented at scale in a sustainable manner. As the Minister noted, and this is very important for Spain, we must have gender equality. We cannot eradicate hunger and poverty if we do not address the inequalities that impact women and girls in a disproportionate manner. Women, as we know, play an essential role in agricultural and food systems, but they continue to face the most significant barriers in order to access resources, financing, protect land, and access other economic opportunities. Gender equality cannot be an element that we leave to the end of a project. It must be included in the design from the start. and the third point. And again, there are four. The third is financing, and we are not starting from zero here. We have knowledge and experiences based on proof. We must turn these into public policy and programs. We need sufficient, predictable, and integrated financing. In the fourth summit for development financing in Seville, we wanted to include in the agenda two initiatives. These were connected directly with SDG 1 and SDG 2. First, we have to consider social protection for small scale farmers and climate resiliency. This was included in Seville and in the Baliem Declaration when addressing hunger and poverty. Additionally, we must better integrate the variety of financing sources based on national priorities. In order to advance with this objective, we are establishing a collaborative financing framework for SDGs 1 and 2. The idea is simple here. We do not want to establish a new fund. We want to ensure that existing resources function better collectively based on programs led from the countries themselves, making the most of the existing mechanisms. And the fourth point here, alliances. This is the best defining element here. We always meet and discuss how many countries, organizations, universities, international organizations are joining. No country alone can end poverty or hunger. The United Nations, the World Bank, no one can do this alone. But we can do this together if we are able to join forces, governments, the United Nations, financial institutions, philanthropy, the private sector, if we are all able to work together with these priorities in mind. And the alliance must be the space for conversions, political leadership, policies, and resources that work to advance in the same direction. To conclude, this leads me to the call to action that we would like to make today from New York. First, the governments. Governments must continue to maintain the fight to end poverty and hunger at the center of our public policies. There is also a call to action here for the United Nations. We must align our efforts, capabilities, and resources with national priorities. We need this financial drive. And also, for the banks and financial institutions, we need your capacities to mobilize funding at scale. We need you to be involved from the initial stages, accompanying the priorities of the states and providing solutions that are appropriate and sustainable. And lastly, for all members of the Alliance, let's go further. The demand for support is increasing. It is moment to go from political will to commitments and specific concrete steps. We recently established the country support contact group to advance this mobilization and systematically connect the priorities of countries with the capabilities of their members. Spain will assume its responsibility in this effort. As co-presidents of this alliance, along with Brazil, we want to continue to put the fight against poverty and hunger at the center of the international agenda. And we would like to make this alliance a more useful tool for countries. Thank you very much. And now I give the floor Dear Wellington Diaz, please go ahead.

I thank our dear Minister, Eva Granados, and here as well to Spain here represented and represented through Minister Jose Manuel Alvarez, who brought their firm words. And I also thank our Chancellor, Mauro Vieira, who was also here representing Brazilian's government and President Lula, who I also would like to thank for this co-chairmanship with Spain and with all countries and all regions in the world and all the organizations connected to the UN. Allow me to give special thanks on behalf of my dear friend Ilan that I mentioned that a few minutes ago, we were dealing as well with our representative of the World Bank, trying to deal with a new point, the approval by the World Bank of one side of the board for the-- to create an alternative, to add this alternative to the efforts of the countries, also private resources from this guaranteed fund, giving access to the most poor with difficult to access, which is the risk from the technical evaluation. And with this fund, they can access in a greater scale this financing. And in the same way, our president of FIDA, Alvaro with whom I also had a very important dialogue in the same route. And so I would like to also give these thanks. And I would also like to thank the German country for their economic cooperation and the Chancellor of Haiti, Mr. Fabi and the Vice President, Otwell, here, Mrs. Buzzi-Lucea, and also the Chief Economist, Maximo Torero, which in a few minutes will be here also presenting the report, and I hope with good news, but I also know with very important alerts. We are presenting the propagation of this material, which is a summary of a publication of the alliance mechanism that Renato is working on so that we can, in the World Food Day in the month of October, we'll have it ready. But this also shows the progress, as it was mentioned here, and I would like to bring this back. The year of 2022, when in that triennial, FAO, told the world that after the approval of all the SDGs, when we had 600 million people in food insecurity, and in 2022, we had 735 million. From then on, the global effort, I cannot not mention this hopeful moments that the President Lula referred. And from the G20 and after the approval of the alliance, FAO reported the reduction from the 735 million to 645 million people living with food insecurity, with a small reduction, but on a promising path. What's the alert that we'd like to do? And in the speech of my friend, Evan, all the ones that spoke already, it's that 2030 is around the corner. So it is important to invest greater efforts from all the present people. And I would also like to salute and to thank all people present here as well. Several countries in this last report, and I would like to cite Dominican Republic, we are celebrating together with other countries, several countries that were elevated from the map of hunger. If these countries were able to do, we know that others could as well. And this is the commitment that I believe that we all have to work towards. Yesterday, we heard here on the 81st General Assembly of the UN, we heard the speech of the Secretary General of the UN, Guterres, as well as the president of my own country, going towards the same direction of many leaders, calling, alerting for the situation of wars in this country, wars and countries in conflict situation and hunger. And we hope soon to have the data of Mr. Torero and FAO that actually places an alert in all of us. All this effort cannot be swollen in a quote unquote due to wars and armed conflicts. In other words, from one side, we see trillions that are being used for these killing efforts when in reality we are having a reduction of humanitarian aid to save lives. This reflection, that is that what we want to bring to you, the relevance of having this work, that climate change, the increase of temperature when we were at the end of the last century, we had the hope of a commitment so we wouldn't reach 1.5 degrees of temperature increase, and we did. So this creates a problem in this planet. Nepal is a very big example, but this is happening in every continent. And we need to pay attention because the ones that are The poorest pay a very high price due to wars and climate change. And this is why we need to be careful. We have the hope when we have the opportunity to have a new direction, a new assembly at the UN, we have to have a commitment with peace, a commitment with a global effort towards containing the climate changes in the world. And in this regard, I was also alerted about the concentration of wealth and power, and at the same time, the growth and the return of the inequality. This is a point that we need to pay attention to mainly when, as our Secretary General mentioned, when a dozen of billionaires and trillionaires have more than entire countries and it's about these points that we have to talk about and technological advances and here the special care for artificial intelligence that can be used for the good but also for the evil, and so we have to have a firm position from our countries. So with this, I would like to tell you that the experience of countries that reached good results show us that it is possible. from one side, these care with children, with women, with the elderly, and with the most fragile people, assuring that they have all the needed conditions to move forward. It's not an abstract concept. I say that Brazil, as an example, when we make a decision to place the poorest in our budgets, the results happen. And To elevate from hunger is only a first step. Our alliance has a target of elevating from hunger, but also to overcome poverty. And this is the road, public and private sector together. What's the demand for the new employment, the economic growth of each country that is needed, and also the opportunities for this most vulnerable public. And finally, to work, as it was mentioned here, the financing for people who want to be entrepreneurs, who want to cooperate. And I conclude reminding us that one of the greatest challenges of the world is how to conquer hunger and poverty on the fields and the cooperation in experiences of several parts of the world, especially as big and middle and big corporations to create results. So we have great challenges in front of us. We have policies, as it was said, knowledge, partners. So now we need to increase the scale and mobilize resources. And I would like to add myself to this point. This is moment to transform commitments into the delivery of results and solidarity into financing. The call is to act and to act now. Thank you very much. You can count on Brazil. Thank you.

Thank you very much to the co-chairs. And now we reach our high level leaders dialogue. The alliance, as our co-chair Eva Granados has said, has now over 223 members and countries philanthropies, multilateral development banks, technical organizations and agencies. And some of them from these different constituencies are here to bring their perspectives to this challenge. So how to face these new risks and build on the successes in these four years that are left until 2030. I will invite first of them to hear from the Inter-American Development Bank and its president, Ilan Goldfajn. Pleasure to have you here.

Thank you for the great work done, dear Minister Diaz. Thank you very much also, Secretary Granados. Good af- what are, good afternoon, how good it is to see you again.

Alvaro, my colleague from IFAD. So I'm very glad to be here because we are working together, the co-presidency of Spain and Brazil, but more than that, everybody else in a very important task. We are now trying to accelerate that, the delivery but also how we're going to mobilize financing at the right scale for our objectives. In Latin America, we have evolved. Hunger have fallen from 6.1% in 2020 to 4.8. Extreme poverty has fallen significantly from 20% to 8.1%. But we all know this is not yet where we want to be. There are gaps. gaps are, for example, in terms of extreme poverty and our social protection programs, 45% of them are still not focused. So we still need a lot to do. We know what to do. We also have challenges in terms of fiscal. We need additional fiscal effort. It's not overwhelming. To eradicate extreme poverty, we need an additional 0.6% of GDP. This is relative to other expenses, not the most important challenge, not because fiscal is not a problem. It's a problem in every country. But I think we have this objective. You can find the resources for that. The IDB group fully supports the Alliance mission to eradicate hunger and poverty, reduce inequality. Actually, in our IDB institutional strategy, what we call IDB Impact Plus, one of the three pillars is about poverty and inequality. We are supporting the Alliance through all our instruments, financing, knowledge, governance, and implementation on the ground, but also guarantees. We have committed from the beginning when it was launched by the G20 in Brazil to commit resources, $25 billion between 2025 and 2030 to support country-led programs which align with the Alliance policy basket. Well, we are on track. In 2025, the IDB approved $4.1 billion in aligned operations. In 2026, we already approved 5.8 billion more, bringing the total to 10 billion in the first two years. These investments in country-led programs are already delivering results. So the amount of money is important, but more important is how much we achieve, what is the impact. So let me give you some examples. In Bolivia, we have affected 962,000 people in income transfer programs. In Ecuador, we reached 250,000 pregnant women and 500,000 children under two in a nutrition program. In Manaus, Brazil, We strengthened education services that affected 251,000 students. And we are on track to make the commitment to eradicate extreme poverty, a central objective of our strategy through 2030. We have been working in Haiti. Haiti is the most vulnerable country in our region. We have committed most of our concessional money, our income to Haiti. We have worked with cash transfers, we have worked with school feeding. And now we would like to help deliver programs to Haiti through the Global Alliance. So the work with the Alliance, with Brazilian Ministry of Finance, with the World Bank, with the World Food Programme to support the government of Haiti in advancing a new national social protection program. We will allocate 300 million to these cash transfers. We have allocated since 2018. And we would like to produce one of the Alliance's first country level results, a common roadmap to expand this cash transfers to social protection in a single national framework. That's going to be in Haiti. We do know that the Alliance is now looking at strengthening the governance. We are part of the Board of Champions. We have dedicated staff to the Alliance support mechanism, and we support the new phase. the development of a collaborative financing framework that can better align bilateral, multilateral, philanthropic resources, country-led priorities together. We will work hard with you, the new roadmap at the World Bank and IMF annual meetings in Bangkok. So we will be there to help the Alliance in the next steps. Thank you very much.

Thank you so much for these powerful words and your leadership in the Alliance. I'd like to invite to the floor, I have the honor to invite President Alvaro Lario of the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD.

Thank you to the governments of Brazil and Spain and a lot of friends in the room for co-hosting the the discussion that we're having on the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty. I do feel that today it goes beyond the call to action. We are already on implementation, which is very important, I think. And we need to all the partners think how the current architecture can support countries, especially those with less capacities in least developed countries and with less capacity to implement, how we can all come as one into making their lives easier. I think our role is to facilitate a lot of that implementation. And we are a team. We are the team that needs to do so. From the beginning for us, the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, all the, I would say the DNA is what also IFA is about, which is small-scale farmers, social protection, targeting at the first mile, country ownership and rural communities ownership, coordination of financing with MDBs, with PDBs. So very much what we do on a day-to-day SDG 2.3 on small scale farmers. So the focus very much align. So today I'd like to very much go into what we have been doing as IFAD in supporting on specific countries. And I think the most important for us is how we can coordinate what's currently happening on the ground, the country planning, the alliance missions that are already ongoing and our investment programs. And I think we have been tracking our portfolio and doing a portfolio alignment exercise in seven countries. And currently in those seven countries, we have around 600 million that we are supporting on the Global Alliance priorities. One example, this July in Ethiopia, where this is one of the selected first initiatives to be fast tracked, the implementation roadmap for the government led Yelma Tilufat program. And I think we are working with a number of partners in trying to make it happen. And this will result in climate smart agriculture for small scale farmers, livestock value chains, rural finance, market access, inclusion and resilience building. Our overall portfolio in Ethiopia with the alliance is around 120 million, but also in Cambodia, in one of the programs that is also being prioritized on homegrown school feeding programs. And I think we have currently also exploring opportunities on how to strengthen local procurement, producer organizations, local agri-food value chains. And I think the Global Alliance at the end is about how we can make sure that it happens in the field and on the ground. And we are already at that phase. And I believe that that coordination among many of the partners in the room will become even more important. Just if the Alliance manages to share the experiences, but that we all go at once to really implement the national developed plans, the food systems pathways, the agriculture already development plans that they have, I think that would be already with the current practices a great success. For us in the next cycle, and it was mentioned by some of the colleagues, by Minister Diaz, by Aelion, I think the For our next cycle, we're also trying to see how we can support local private sector embedded in a lot of these investments and focusing very much on youth employment. And I think especially in least developed countries and in countries affected by fragility and conflict, this is even more important. And our focus, and I would say the transformation of the mindset needs to go in that way. That's the future of development cooperation and we have excellent practices already by the Global Alliance that can make it happen on the ground. So now, I would say to finalize, in addition to accelerating and coordinating better, I think the real practical test is whether this is really translating into whether these national commitments are really reaching the people at the scale and the speed and the scale. Let us remind ourselves that extreme poverty is a phenomenon mostly in rural areas. It's 80% of extreme poverty is in rural areas. And also that acute hunger, unfortunately, over the last decade has doubled. I think there's a lot of homework we need to do and there's excellent practices that the Global Alliance can be an engine of implementation. So thank you for your attention.

Thank you, President Lario, for very grateful that you remind of the work at country level of the Alliance that's starting to show already its results and alignment. We'll be hearing more about that and these remarks that The successes mostly have happened in places where resources are available. And now we are approaching the concentration of hunger and poverty in the fragile regions. And some solutions need to be found on how to support those regions to bring that. So thank you. We'll hear now from another vice chair of the alliance, state secretary of the Federal Ministry for Economic Operation Development, of Germany, Your Excellency, Nils Hanning.

Thank you. Thank you very much. And thanks to the co-chairs. Very grateful for your leadership and for everybody here in the room. As has been mentioned, Germany has supported the Global Alliance against Hunger and Poverty from the very beginning. Indeed, we have built our own ad hoc alliance when there was a lot of pressure on access to food and somehow also incorporated some of the experience in the ongoing alliance. So we are very proud to be partnering with our friends. And I also don't want to repeat because it has been mentioned that there are only a few years left until 2030. So I think our priority is clear, ending hunger and poverty worldwide. There is success to be mentioned, and it has been mentioned. It's important to do that. But I think it's also very clear that after the setbacks that we suffered with COVID, the conflicts, the wars that are going on, Minister, you mentioned that the climate shocks, hunger remains unacceptably high. In 2025, around 8% of the world's population, estimated 645 million people, were still experiencing hunger. And it means that here at the United Nations, we need to be very clear that SDG is currently off track and requires sustained international efforts. We already know, I think, here in this room, what works to reduce hunger. The task is now to deliver and not just to discuss, but we need to act, I think, faster. And I want to briefly mention the points that I believe are most important first. Political leadership. Political leadership must focus on solutions that makes a tangible difference in people's lives, and I think that has been the spirit of the Alliance from day one. Adaptive social protection is one of the solutions. For example, Germany is supporting the World Bank's Sahel Adaptive Social Protection Program in six Sahel countries. Between 2024 and 2025 alone, it reached more than 1.2 million people through national social protection systems, helping them cope with shocks such as droughts, flood, food insecurity, and income loss. Homegrown school meals are another powerful example of a solution that works. Earlier this year, Germany launched the School Meals Accelerator And we're happy that we have been partnering also with UN organizations present here in the room. It supports national governments in reaching an additional 100 million children with nutrition school meals by 2030. I think this is about more than providing a meal. It is about getting more children into school and about creating local jobs and value. School meals show how social protection and sustainable food system can reinforce each other. The second point I wanted to mention is ownership. Country ownership is essential for lasting results. Partner countries set their priorities and develop their programs. International partners can contribute and contribute expertise, resources, and turn those priorities into results. And that's the spirit of our German engagement. And as the German government, we see our role as supportive by combining our experience and resources with those of our partner countries. We support their national strategies and programs, and we aim to support them in creating conditions for larger investments to follow. Third point, last point, don't be concerned, not going to be too long, but I want to mention is the international community should make better use of the resources and instruments that are already available. Germany is making a substantial contribution and one of our particular strengths, I think, is long-term engagement. The Global Alliance can help us bring national priorities, bilateral and multilateral support, expertise and financing together more effectively. But we also know that long-term engagement because of the current pressures and the priority that is given to the most current political debate is something that requires some political strength and, again, leadership. So the aim should be to improve how existing resources work together, aligned with countries' own priorities. And we will, I want to assure you, be a reliable partner in this effort, and we will continue to work with all of you to end hunger and poverty. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much to our Vice Chair and reminding us how the Alliance can make resources from partners more effective. I'll make two announcements. First, that I'll ask the further speakers to be shorter. We are behind time a lot and there is another event starting here at 6:15. And we have a small change of program. Minister Forbin from Haiti could not be present. She had a last minute difficulty. We had invited Haiti as one of the leading countries in advance, getting results from the ground in this methodology that the Alliance is trying of all the members on alignment partnerships. We still want to hear from the countries who are in the forefront in implementing these programs. We have heard from Mario on the experience of Ethiopia, so I'm happy to call on Ambassador Yosef Kasse, the Director General for International Organizations in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ethiopia, who is here and can talk about this experience firsthand.

Very much, Mr. Moderator. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I will try to be very brief in the interest of time. Let me start by thanking the co-chairs of the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty for convening this crucial and timely event. Ethiopia, as a member of the Alliance, remains deeply committed to its vision and continues to champion inclusive, climate-smart, locally driven solutions that empower smallholder farmers, promote equity, and accelerate progress towards the SDGs. Our unwavering commitment is also demonstrated by practical application, including through the accelerated implementation of one of our flagship initiatives. As the President of IFAD just mentioned, it's called Yelamat Turrufat, meaning bounty of the basket. So this homegrown program exemplifies Ethiopia's strategic vision food sovereignty, nutrition security, and inclusive economic growth. Launched in November 2022 under the leadership of our Prime Minister, His Excellency Dr. Abiy Ahmed, Yilma Turu Fat has mobilized over 200 districts to boost productivity in dairy, poultry, honey, fish, and meat. In its second phase that lasts for the next four years, the initiative aims to sustainably boost productivity, inclusivity and resilience in Ethiopia's livestock, poultry, agriculture and apiculture sectors by empowering 5 million smallholders farmers with a focus on 65% women and youth. This initiative, which stands out as a first fast track program within the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty, have successfully reached the implementation roadmap formulation stage. This milestone signals Ethiopia's full readiness large-scale implementation and reflects program's maturity, the strategic clarity, proven capacity to deliver transformative results in food security, nutrition, and inclusive rural development. GAVI is now well positioned to enter the full phase of implementation, bringing us closer to our shared goals of eradicating hunger, empowering smallholder farmers, and building resilient food systems. We deeply value the all contributions and look forward to our continued collaboration in this transformative journey. The best time is ready to share its experience and collaborate with fellow alliance members to scale up sustainable solutions that eradicate hunger and poverty. We believe that the Yelamathurified model offers a replicable blueprint for fast-tracking food system transformation across the global south. Thank you, Mr. Moderator.

Thank you, Ambassador. Ethiopia is leading the way, not only of the design of the program, but also leading the approach and the way that different actors mobilized each with their different roles in the program. And it's nearing the launch of its implementation roadmap, consolidating all these partnerships. And now I'm very happy to invite another champion of the Alliance, Ms. Dana Boudousea, Vice President for the World Vision International.

Thank you very much. Excellencies, distinguished leaders, colleagues, partners, it's such a privilege to join you, and I want to start by deeply appreciating your leadership in this Global Alliance in a moment when our world needs hope and, equally, practical solutions to close the development gap before 2030. As a Christian relief development and advocacy organization, World Vision is working with some of the world's most vulnerable children, families, and communities, fighting poverty and restoring hope. And for us, fighting child hunger and poverty is foundational. And that's where we are fully aligned with the Alliance's objectives and aspirations. And in too many contexts, we are continuing to see children losing potential when they don't even have access to basic needs. And after decades of progress, we must admit collectively that we are still far from achieving both SDG 1 and SDG 2. We are currently looking at 333 million children who are still living in extreme poverty. And one in five children are living amid conflict, one in five. This climate crisis that we keep hearing about really threatens to affect, to impact the rights, safety, food, healing, and learning all together. But I want to tell you what gives me hope. Because earlier this year in Ethiopia, thank you, Ambassador, for mentioning that, we have seen World Vision colleagues in World Vision Ethiopia sitting at the table, around the table, with Global Alliance partners, including Ministry of Agriculture, FAO, the African Development Bank Group, IFAD, the Brazilian Cooperation Agency, UNIDO, and the World Bank. And what's inspiring is that they were coming together around a shared goal, and that was to identify solutions that can best deliver on the agreed vision, where ending hunger requires collective action. And accelerating action on hunger and poverty creates the space for such important conversations. With only four years remaining until 2030, the challenge is no longer identifying solutions, we know those solutions. The challenge is whether we can scale those solutions and sustain what we already know that it's working. And for me, for us in World Vision, children sit at the center of that challenge. Because when progress stalls for children, the consequences, as quiet as they might be, they are very long-term. And they affect their health, their learning, their economic opportunity, their dignity for years to come. And what today may seem like just a delay, tomorrow it may very easily turn into a lifetime loss of human potential, a lifetime. And three years ago, World Vision launched a global campaign that's called Enough. It was, our campaign is aiming to end child hunger and malnutrition. Today, the campaign is active in 81 countries. And in this three years since it was launched, we have managed to mobilize $3.2 billion in nutrition-related spending. But there is something that qualifies this number that I want to make clear. First, this figure doesn't include the advocacy efforts that were done to mobilize additional funding in public allocations, public funding allocations. And I'm not just talking about national budgets, I'm also talking about local budgets. And I want to give you an example from Bangladesh. Children in Bangladesh mobilized for the budget conversations with their local governments, and the result of that, they were able to convince local government leaders to allocate an additional $311,000 for child-related actions. It doesn't seem like much, but the impact was on reaching almost 400,000 children. This is the power of the civil society to make policy work for citizens, because governments will make changes sustainable when they make their own investment. And the second thing that I want to mention, the figure above doesn't take into consideration the value added by community empowerment and the importance of that community empowerment. And when I was in Ethiopia less than a month ago, what impressed me when I visited World Vision programming in the field was meeting mothers and children, but also community leaders, ambassador, and there is something incredibly inspiring in the mothers who are coming together to address child malnutrition together as a group. And it's in this way in which the practices that you have seen are actually being currently integrated in the national program. And these are practices that are addressing community-based nutrition, livelihood, successes, they are connected with the national plan. And that gives me hope, because we are not reinventing the wheel. We are working with what was documented already. And this is the power of the model that the alliance proposes. I want to close, and in closing, I want to say that we each have very specific things that we can add to the table, and we can each work on our own strengths. And in communities where some of the most vulnerable children live, it takes trust, and it takes persistence and active participation of people themselves so that the solutions that we are proposing can actually be implemented and they can be sustainable. I want to leave you with just one word from Ruth, 16, from Ethiopia. She's the chair of the Children's Council, representing 400 children's local councils. And I asked her what she would like me to bring to this meeting in New York, and she said, "Children need peace." They need access to basic services, including water, food, and education. And in return, we can become a powerful source of progress and hope. But that is currently not happening everywhere. Help us achieve it. Thank you.

Thank you very much for these words and the collaboration of World Vision in the ground in the programs that are developing, as you have rightly pointed out. We are approaching the close of this event with the real call from the analysis that has been done by both FAO and WFP, key organizations in the Alliance. I wish to invite here the chief economist of FAO, Maximo Torero, to provide this brief overview from the insights from Sophie, and then to be followed, as we are very close and already over time, by the Assistant Executive Director for Partnerships and Innovations of WFP, Rania Dagash, for insights from the Global Report on Food Crisis. So please, Maximo.

Thank you very much, and thank you, Minister Wellington Dias, for being here, and for Spain, for the support of the Global Alliance, as all of you know. And I will be very brief because of the time and I want my colleague of WFP also to be able to speak. The Global Alliance and the support mechanism is hosted in FAO. And what is so innovative of the Global Alliance is the creation of the policy basket, the pillar one, but also the coordination of financing. And I think that's central and implementation at the country level. The Global Alliance is not what FAO does, what others do, or what other institutions does, it's more the coordination and the working together And I think the example of Ethiopia and the example of Haiti too, which is not here today, are two clear examples of how we can change things that are happening and how we can help coordinating not only the best practices that we know, given the numbers of hunger, although they have improved substantially in the last years, we are in 645 million people still in hunger. We need to work together to try to align and minimize the coordination failure that we are facing in the world. Because I don't think it's an issue of lack of money. I think it's an issue of not coordinating the money properly to create investments that are required by countries and that countries are demanding to be able to move out of hunger and poverty. And that's the core, I think, behind the Global Alliance. So again, I am not going to show off all what we do or what other agencies does. I think it's important to put pressure on this coordination so that the investment can have the results that we expect and not only to assume that social protection is a solution because social protection helps, in extreme situations to help people that cannot afford, but we need also to create a transition of graduation of the social protection. And that's where agriculture and what we are doing with Ethiopia and other countries will help us to transform and to really achieve sustainably moving out of hunger and poverty. That's the goal, and that's what we need to aim for. Thank you.

Thank you for these very strategic words and concise on what we need to do and working on that. Please, Rania.

Thank you very much, Renato. Massimo is always strategic, actually, and amazing. Thank you, Brazil and Spain, truly for convening us today. I think exchange is one of the best ways for all of us to learn. So, really, thank you to all of you who shared their experiences today. And it's an honor for me to represent the Global Network Against Food Crises. The message, I think, from the Global Network is pretty clear. Food crises are deepening faster than our collective response. That would be message one. And this is not just about conflicts and climate shocks and economic instability and displacement and disruptions to food and supply chains that are pushing millions deeper into hunger, but it's actually the reinforcement and the interaction between all of those that turns the individual shocks into protracted food crises. And the evidence is rather stark. Over the past decade, Both the number and the share of the people facing acute food insecurity has doubled. The crisis is not receding. The number of people facing catastrophe, or IPC 5 as we know it, has increased more than nine times since 2016. And for the first time in the history of the global report on food crisis, famine was confirmed in two contexts in the same year, parts of Sudan and Gaza. But what's even more important is what the longer-term trends are telling us. 80% of people facing acute food insecurity each year have been concentrated in the same 33 countries. And these 33 countries are facing protracted food crisis, and the majority of them are in all 10 editions of the Global Report in sub-Saharan Africa. This is precisely where prevention and resilience matter most. And while humanitarian assistance to food sectors in crisis context fell by close to 60% between 2022 and 2025, even as the share of the analyzed population facing high levels of acute food insecurity doubled, it brings us to the central challenge. The challenge is no longer understanding the risk, it's acting on it, as many of you have said. It's having increasingly strong evidence about where the food crises are emerging, who is most at risk and what is driving them, and if we can translate that into early, coordinated and sustained action. Every day comes at a cost to livelihoods that are lost, to food systems that are weakened, to humanitarian needs that grow, and the eventual cost of response increases. I'll be quick to say acting early is not more effective, it's more efficient. And ultimately, it's less costly than waiting for a crisis to escalate. But no one can do it alone, and that's why the Global Network Against the Food Crisis is so critical and so unique, because it plays a critical role of bringing us together, builds consensus around evidence and analysis, and collaboration. So what do we need? I'll be very quick. Multi-year financing, sustained investment in social protection, anticipatory action, and shock-responsive systems. Ultimately, we need to build political support, as some of you have said, for a system that acts earlier, but that's about national ownership as well. That way we sustain the gaze longer and we reduce the dependence on humanitarian assistance. And to something new, my sister said, it is central that we urgently restore trust when the international system has credible evidence of an emerging crisis, we translate that into action. Before I hand the microphone to His Excellency Wellington Dias for the closing, I want to end where we started with Brazil. Brazil turned its own experience in overcoming hunger into a global public good. And WFP is proud to carry that experience to countries that need it the most, 15 years later, our center of excellence against hunger in Brasilia remains a powerful example of what is possible when political leadership is matched by partnership, knowledge, and delivery. And we look forward to the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty's two-year anniversary high-level session on the 18th of November, and to working together to turn the four years ahead into measurable progress for SDG 1 and 2. I thank all of you, especially those of you who stayed till this end.

Thank you, Rania. And with these words, Minister Diaz had asked me to close the event very quickly, given we are over time. Thank you all for your presence and looking forward to the next steps in this path that we are all building together. And I apologize for many who wish to continue the discussion here and didn't have the time to intervene, including Your Excellency, the Minister of the United Arab Emirates, the Vice Minister of Venezuela, and others who are eager to join the discussion. So we invite them to send their interventions that we will circulate. And again, thank you very much.