Proposition 54K2171

Proposition de résolution relative au Fonds belge pour la Sécurité alimentaire.

General information ¶

Authors

CD&V Els Van Hoof
Ecolo Muriel Gerkens
Groen Anne Dedry
LE Georges Dallemagne
MR Kattrin Jadin
N-VA Rita Bellens
Open Vld Ine Somers

Submission date

Nov. 8, 2016

Official page

Visit

Status

Adopted

Requirement

Simple

Subjects

sustainable development resolution of parliament development aid food safety

Voting ¶

Voted to adopt

Groen CD&V Vooruit Ecolo LE DéFI ∉ Open Vld N-VA LDD MR PP VB

Abstained from voting

PS | SP PVDA | PTB

Contact form ¶

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Discussion ¶

April 20, 2017 | Plenary session (Chamber of representatives)

Full source

I would like to refer to the written report.

Unfortunately, Mr. De Croo is not present.

The Belgian Food Safety Fund has always worked very well and has also had excellent evaluations in the past. It has ensured that there was additional attention to food security after the hunger in Ethiopia in 1983 and this was a very serious achievement because the fund has also saved lives. Nevertheless, in June 2015, Minister De Croo, with the support of the entire government, decided to withdraw the plug from the fund. The Minister believed that there was no need for separate food security programs anymore. A new holistic, integrated approach to development cooperation and integration of agriculture and food security would make this fund superfluous.

Many fellow MPs, as well as the NGO sector, were very concerned about the progress. That’s why, as chairman of the Fund and as a constructive opposition member, I started talking to all members of Parliament, regardless of whether they belonged to the majority or the opposition, especially to see if we could share the concern about the priority of food security and find support for it. Thus, the resolution that is presented now has been adopted. In this resolution, we seek to emphasize the importance of food security as one of the key pillars of development cooperation.

This resolution contains ten recommendations, which are to be voted here today.

First, the strategic notes align agriculture and food security. This must be done without weakening the level of ambition of the 2014 Strategy Note of the Belgian Food Safety Fund.

Second, the agreed budgets for the current country programmes guarantee.

Third, 17.5 million euros of the National Lottery earmarks for food security.

Fourth, 15 % of the development cooperation budget will be spent on agriculture and food security.

Fifth, pay special attention to gender within the theme of food security.

Sixth, proposals for cooperation between the House, NGOs and local parliaments are examined.

Seventh, mainstreaming of the multi-actor approach within the integrated new policy of the Minister.

Eighth, an evaluation of this new policy approach in 2018 by the Special Evaluator.

Ninth, transparent reporting to and monitoring by Parliament for the achievement of SDG 2 targets, including food security and agriculture.

Tenth, special attention should be paid to small-scale, family-based agriculture as the focus of food security.

For me and the Ecolo/Green Group, it is especially important that the resources of the National Lottery remain allocated to food security, that there is a transparent reporting to the Parliament and that 15 % of the budget for development cooperation will continue to go to food security and agriculture.

To reach this resolution, the working group has gone a long way. There were consultations with the NGO sector, with the minister, with the cabinet, with the various parliamentarians and so on. For Ecolo/Green, there was absolutely no savings in terms of development cooperation.

My colleagues in the majority — and I look in particular at Ms. Somers of the Open Vld and Ms. Van Hoof of CD&V — agreed with me, in the sense that the depletion scenario for the Belgian Fund for Food Security should not mean that less funds would go to food security.

I also thank Mrs. Pehlivan of the sp.a for her constructive contribution through amendments, as well as Mrs. Grovonius of the PS for evolving with her group from a pronounced “against” to an abstinence.

Ultimately, the majority and a large part of the opposition agreed to approve this resolution in the committee with twelve votes in favour and two abstentions.

Dear colleagues, I will not fail to question the Minister on this subject repeatedly. This is also the purpose of this resolution. I am convinced that food security through diversified and small-scale family agriculture should be the cornerstone of Belgian policy against hunger. This cornerstone must be strong enough, so that the house of food security does not become unbuilt. Without good foundations, one cannot build a strong and future-oriented policy.

On March 10, Stephen O’Brien, Deputy Secretary General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, declared before the Security Council that the world is facing the worst humanitarian crisis since the end of World War II, with more than 20 million people suffering from hunger and hunger. Nigeria, Yemen, South Sudan and Somalia are the four countries directly affected by the crisis. Emergency aid is necessary to support the populations of these countries and avoid a catastrophe.

This is all the more necessary because hunger does not strike only in these four countries. According to a new global report on food crises dated March 31, 2017, ⁇ 108 million people worldwide were faced with serious food insecurity in 2016, requiring emergency assistance, a dramatic 35% increase from the 80 million people registered in 2015.

In its Bulletin of 25 January 2017, the Network of Hunger Early Warning Systems notes that the extent and severity of the need to cope with the risk of hunger at this beginning of 2017 constitutes a situation unprecedented in recent decades. Given severe droughts, persistent conflicts, poverty and economic instability, tens of millions of people across 45 countries are likely to need emergency food aid this year. Many of these countries are partners of the Belgian Cooperation.

Dear colleagues, the great famine is back and, unfortunately, this is probably only the beginning. How do you understand the decision of Minister De Croo to abolish the Belgian Fund for Food Security? As a reminder, this Fund was created precisely in 1983 – at the time it was the Belgian Survival Fund – to respond to the general indignation over the famine in the Horn of Africa and in the Sahel.

In this context, the resolution proposal we are discussing this afternoon seems even more inconsistent. Indeed, what the majority proposes to us today is neither more nor less to transform our assembly into the curator of the Belgian Fund for Food Safety, a curator who obviously tries to embolden things following the unilateral and uncoordinated decision to liquidate this Fund taken by the Minister of Development Cooperation and his head of cabinet. Because yes, it is a unilateral decision, which is not based on any consultation and above all on any evaluation. This removal was not wanted either by the House, or by the administration that is responsible for it, or by some members of the majority, or, above all, by field actors and NGOs.

The decision of the Minister is as shocking as incomprehensible. It is all the more shocking as we learned it through its cabinet head, around an informal meeting of a parliamentary working group. How have you dared, without any concertation, to decide to remove this Fund created and run by parliament? Why abolish this Fund, in which the federal government has invested over 500 million euros over the years in more than 150 effective programs for food security? Why not, on the contrary, value the expertise of its administration and the actors working in this field?

These questions, we have asked them many times; but they never found an answer, including when we discussed the law-program within which this removal had been concealed.

Today, this removal is effective. What is this resolution for? It comes when everything is over. We have always said this: for the PS Group, the only resolution and recommendation that kept the way was simple: the maintenance of the Belgian Fund for Food Safety. The latter is indispensable for its expertise and, above all, because it emphasized, especially from a budgetary point of view, on the issue of food security, which, for us, is central in development policy.

We are in a democracy. Everyone has the right to have their own opinion, even when they are wrong. That being said, I can’t accept to hear that it seems to be a coup, a rape, a rape, or I don’t know what else is so violent. Especially because this was decided on the basis of reports showing that the emission weakened our action.

Mr Flahaux, show me the slightest assessment indicating that the Belgian Food Safety Fund did not do an efficient and efficient job! I challenge you to do it. It does not exist!

You did not listen to what I said!

and yes!

I talked about the emptying which shows that it is a weakening. This does not mean that the Fund itself did not perform effective work. But combined with other means, it makes work even more efficient.

Show me a single report that confirms exactly what you are saying! It does not exist! I am sorry. This is your vision; you want to concentrate the means. My choice would have been different.

As part of the Committee on Foreign Relations, I would be pleased to submit documents to you, Mrs. Grovonius.

I would also like to make a small nuance here.

Mrs. Grovonius, you pretend that the abolition of this fund was purely a decision of Minister De Croo, without any consultation. I would like to point out that a Council of Ministers took place on Friday 2 October 2015, where the entire government decided to eliminate 90% of the organic funds by 31 December 2015. This includes the Food Safety Fund.

Then the working group finally took action and announced that a number of specific matters would be fixed in relation to food security.

Thus, it is within the government decided that all organic funds, with the exception of those subsidised with European funds, which do not belong to them, were abolished by 31 December 2015. For the Belgian Fund for Food Safety, it was decided to keep the reserves and we were given an additional year before this fund was abolished.

So if you act here as if it was a decision of one person, who was thus pushed by the throat of everyone, then you are gradually exaggerating.

I thank you very much for your intervention which proves, though, that it is not the same reasons that pushed the MR, the Open Vld or other parties to make this decision.

Apparently, Mr Flahaux, it was not reports drawn up by serious organizations that motivated the decision in question, but simply a budgetary choice of this government to remove the specific funds.

Thank you very much for this useful little accuracy.

Mr. Speaker, let us be equally serious: the Open VLD and the MR are saying exactly the same thing here. The MR has just said that the resources must be used efficiently. At all times, including by the Minister, there has been a very positive look at the results and the functioning of the Fund. It has even been promoted by him to take over ways of work from other projects.

Let us now be really clear: if one has a pot of resources, then they must be used in the most efficient way, and that is not through fragmentation. In that regard, I may differ from you, but for the rest, what you are proclaiming is actually just a lie.

What you see as a lie, I see as a difference of point of view. Of course we will not agree. We have repeatedly discussed the abolition of the Belgian Fund for Food Security. I understand, of course, that you wanted to defend your minister. This is quite logical and honorable on your part. However, I apologize for having a slightly more objective look at the decision that was made without any evaluation. You indicate that this will be more effective, while no evaluation demonstrates this. It’s your choice, assume it and stop trying to justify it when it’s completely unjustifiable.

I would like to emphasize that things can always be improved. We demanded that the Belgian Fund for Food Security be ⁇ ined. This could be accomplished by evaluating and reforming certain elements of the Fund’s functioning. That is why we abstained in the committee on this text and we will repeat this vote in the plenary session.

I would like to welcome the initiative and the willingness to compromise of the now former president of the Belgian Fund for Food Security. The simple fact that this text is co-signed by the party of the minister, however, illustrates the soft compromise that my group did not want to sign. A soft compromise further accentuated, unfortunately, by several amendments adopted by the majority in the committee. The CD&V, co-signing this text, hopes ⁇ , once again, to put a little balsam in the heart.

I would like to repeat the words of my colleague CD&V Els Van Hoof, a member of the late Belgian Fund for Food Safety: "The 2014 survey shows that the working method of the Belgian Fund for Food Safety (FBSA) is not contested, but rather that it is unique and that it brings added value in terms of improving food security. On the other hand, some things could be improved in terms of the harmonisation and coordination of the FBSA. However, the idea of integrating this Fund into bilateral cooperation is premature. It does not rely on an assessment of this issue and it is not provided in the government agreement. Furthermore, the FBSA group is responsible for formulating strategic guidelines.” The Working Group shall formulate recommendations with regard to the strategic guidelines of the Belgian Food Safety Fund on the basis of the priorities of the different components of the Belgian foreign policy and on the basis of the evaluation reports, the various projects and programmes and on the evolution of the international situation in the field of food security.

I find that, here again, the majority has differences in views which reinforce my conviction that the decision was indeed taken in the name of purely budgetary considerations. We cannot be clearer. Nevertheless, the CD&V also voted the program law and, today, this text that sweeps for the honor the effective abolition of the Fund. I recall that this removal was by no means wanted by civil society, as demonstrated by the last meeting of the Parliamentary Working Group. The text fulfills the promises of the Minister. In short, after-sales service is provided, without any guarantee for the future. Indeed, from now on, nothing will allow us to truly control the budgetary focus focusing on the fight against food insecurity. In this area, however, our country has so far been a pioneer.

Nevertheless, I would like to emphasize the Minister’s commitment to reserve the resources of the National Lottery to food security and to ensure, at least, that the ongoing projects can result. Similarly, I would like to welcome our government’s swift response to the urgency of the raging famine as well as its support for call 1212.

However, I say and repeat, my group does not want to participate in this mascarade that the authors of this text have staged on behalf of the minister.

Rather than voting on this resolution, which no longer has any object, no interest, I reiterate a request I have already made in our committee to resume a debate on several elements, in particular on the strategic note on agriculture, which is being finalised and which we have not yet been able to discuss by making our contribution. However, the elements that will be included will be of great importance, especially if we want to put a particular focus on family farming.

In addition, I would like that we can discuss the ways and means that Belgium is ready to mobilize to help eradicate hunger by 2030.

I would also like us to be able to discuss the structural causes of hunger and how to address them in a coherent way.

Finally, I propose that a debate be held on the modalities that will be effectively put in place by Minister De Croo in order to allocate 15% of the Cooperation budget to agriculture and food security.

My dear colleagues, the scale of the current crisis deserves better and more than the unnecessary discussions we have had for weeks or even months on this proposal for a resolution that, in the end, only endures a decision already made for a long time. It is time that we finally start working to find structural responses to food security.

I hope that this call will be heard.

Mr. Speaker, colleagues, Mrs. Minister, this resolution puts an end to the Belgian Fund for Food Security, an end we regret because the fund was a good platform to address the problem of hunger in the world. Unfortunately, this issue is still very current. We believe that the Fund was an important instrument in the Belgian contribution to the fight against hunger in the world and precisely for this reason more support should be provided instead of eradicated.

It is a pity that there is even no use of the evaluation system. I rely on the Minister, he is absent but I hope that the message reaches him, in order to ensure that the evaluation is still there, as also mentioned in this resolution.

We voted against the abolition of the Belgian Fund for Food Security. We discussed it extensively in December. We have defined our position. The majority and the chairman of the Fund then drafted a proposal for a resolution. We submitted amendments that were accepted. A number of important points for us were included in it.

The resolution underlines the continuing importance of agriculture in Belgian development cooperation and the funds it needs. The guarantee that 15% of the budget would be spent on agriculture was important to us and took away our approval, as did the transfer of €17.5 million from the National Lottery for Food Security. We will ensure that these guarantees are respected in the coming years.

Just because we consider this fund and this theme so important, we have submitted the amendments to ensure that the most important point of the fund, namely the Belgian support for small-scale family farming in the South, is ⁇ ined for us.

On this point, the Minister and myself are very different. According to the minister, this support for small-scale agriculture is a romantic or nostalgic reflex. The Minister believes primarily in investments in the agro-industrial sector with private capital to solve world hunger.

However, there are also other visions about what would be the best strategy against hunger. Belgian organizations such as Broederlijk Delen, international organizations such as Oxfam, and also UN agencies such as FAO - the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations - do not believe that we will solve it only with large-scale agriculture and the private sector.

Support for small-scale family agriculture is crucial, according to organizations such as the FAO, in helping the world out of hunger. This type of agriculture helps millions of people worldwide to survive. What helps them is to deal with the hunger at the root.

Organizations such as Broederlijk Delen and Oxfam hint on the importance of investing in tailored technologies such as agroecology. Financing from, among other things, agroecology can give small-scale family farming and livestock farming the resilience and prosperity that will make the difference in stopping hunger globally.

I ask the Minister to take the expertise of an organization such as the FAO and of people in the field seriously and also take their advice to heart. In this important matter, we must not blindly look at our own great equality and must continue to strive for consensus as this resolution aims.

If even the most cautious predictions of the effects of climate change come true, it will have a huge global impact on agriculture and livestock. What is happening now in countries such as Somalia and Sudan is then only a prelude to what the world will be waiting for in the coming decades, if everything remains the same. That the conflicts in these countries play a role in the current famine, nobody denies. However, the UN stresses that the exceptionally long drought has turned a bad situation into a dramatic situation.

It is not my habit to think. However, if we fail to sustainably eradicate hunger in the world, we will not be able to protect ourselves in Europe from its consequences.

As colleague Grovonius said, the Minister will soon present a new strategic note on the theme of Agriculture in the Belgian Development Cooperation. Well, that note should not be less ambitious than what is now stated in our resolution.

This brings me to my last point. The Belgian Fund for Food Safety offered parliamentarians the opportunity to insert and participate in the way the Belgian Development Cooperation deals with agriculture. Now that the fund disappears, it is appropriate that the Minister comes to discuss his new strategy note Agriculture in the committee. In this way, Members of Parliament remain engaged in this important theme and remain alive in the spirit of collaboration and seeking consensus across party boundaries on a global theme.

Colleagues, I hope to receive support not only from the opposition, but also from colleagues from the majority to persuade the Minister to present his new strategic note in the committee so that we as parliamentarians can also participate in it.

Mr. Speaker, as colleague Pehlivan said, what is happening in Somalia and South Sudan is pushing our nose to the facts. There is still a lot of hunger in the world and a lot of effort needs to be made to ⁇ the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Food security is still an element to break the poverty spiral. For this reason, we can hardly be enthusiastic about the abolition of a budget fund for food security.

Therefore, in this resolution, we call for a number of guarantees regarding food security. As a group, we will be very vigilant on this. We should not throw the child away with the bath water. The Food Safety Fund was a good example of integrated cooperation between civil society, executive and legislative authorities, and local partners. I think we should evaluate this well in the projects that are still to be evaluated. The lessons we learn from this should be taken into account in the new food security note of the competent minister.

The abolition of the fund is ⁇ not an exemption to cease to be concerned with food security. Rather, we commit ourselves in this resolution to spend 15 % of the development budget on food security. As Parliament, we will be very vigilant about this. This means that the €17.5 million in the Fund must be permanently spent on this food security.

There is a lot of expertise accumulated in the Food Safety Fund. The multi-stakeholder approach must ⁇ be retained, also in the future, in the development cooperation policy.

Another element that is important and that will also need to be stopped is Parliament’s involvement. Typical for the Food Safety Fund was the consultation between civil society, Parliament and the legislative power on development cooperation. We are increasingly noticing that the Parliament is becoming less a topic of development cooperation.

I believe that in this resolution we are clearly asking that Parliament wishes to be permanently involved in this issue. We want to strengthen parliaments in developing countries. Today it is very clear that in development policy one actor is constantly forgotten, namely the parliaments. They are the foundation of democracy and sustainable development.

I think it is our duty to work with those parliaments on the themes they want so that we can strengthen them. This is very explicitly requested in this resolution.

Of course, I support Mr. Pehlivan’s question that the strategic note on agriculture and food security should be discussed in Parliament. It will soon be completed, and then we can make it clear again that hunger is a grave injustice, that hides a great deal of suffering, even today, in Africa. I hope that the resolution will help to further strengthen the food security policy.

Mr. Speaker, as colleague Somers just said, the abolition of the Belgian Fund for Food Security matches the abolition of a number of organic funds. As a result, the fund is shut down, not by a unilateral decision of Minister De Croo, as colleague Grovonius pointed out. However, we are very pleased that the activities of the Belgian Food Safety Fund are integrated into the overall policy of Belgian development cooperation.

We think that has a great advantage. As colleague Flahaux has already pointed out, it prevents fragmentation and enables a more coherent policy. At the same time, our group wishes that the integration of these activities in the Belgian development cooperation be taken in order to make a thorough evaluation of the activities of the Fund and to learn – which is ultimately also intended – to ⁇ results on the ground and learn from the best practices that the Fund has delivered in the past.

The target date we have pushed forward for this is 2019. We would definitely advocate for this to be ⁇ ined, Mr. Minister. We are also pleased that the 15% remains reserved for agricultural policy in the Belgian development cooperation and that you continue to pay attention to local entrepreneurship.

Our group is in favor of controlled depletion of the fund’s ongoing projects. We compare that with the exit strategy that is pushed forward for the partner countries that are no longer on the list of partner countries.

We fully support the resolution and thank the initiator, Ms. Dedry, for this proposal.

During this legislature, I was no longer part of the follow-up working group of the Food Safety Fund. It was my colleague Anne Dedry who took the presidency, but since I am a parliamentary, it is with assiduity that I am this fund, in which I have been involved. In 1999, it was Claudine Drion, a colleague of Ecolo, who had the presidency of what was then called the Belgian Survival Fund.

If I speak today, it is, on the one hand, to regret obviously the removal of this Belgian Survival Fund, which has become the Fund for Food Security, and, on the other hand, to thank the parliamentarians who have drawn up this resolution, as an attempt to organize control over compliance with missions, control of the objectives of defence of a family agriculture, control of missions to fight hunger and food insecurity.

I would like to remind you that the transformation of the Belgian Survival Fund, which became the Fund for Food Security, before disappearing, was done in an evolutionary manner. In 1983, the Federal Parliament, in order to help the populations of the Sahel suffering from famine, wanted to intervene in a specific and complementary manner to the Development Cooperation. It was from there that this fund was structured, that its financing was organized through the National Lottery and that laws valid for periods of ten years were passed, spending ten billion Belgian francs over ten years.

This fund and this way of working, I hope that Development Cooperation will respect it. I hear the arguments such as “fighting with debris”, “to bring together all the means, that is how we are most effective.” It’s a reading, but it wasn’t ours at the beginning, and I’m still not convinced that it will be done this way and that the specificity of this fund will be respected. I hope that when reading the report, the members of the Committee on Foreign Relations, who follow the matters of cooperation, will be aware of the need to work in a targeted manner with regard to the populations that suffer the most from food insecurity. Under the previous government, the scope has already been restricted compared to the initial project, since it has been stated: "The Belgian Fund for Food Security can no longer be covered by countries that are included in the list of countries with which there is cooperation."

This is the first restriction that took place and that led to this. It must be remembered. It is the poorest and most food insecure population that was targeted.

The other characteristic is that these are long-term projects. The Belgian Fund for Food Security enabled five-year renewable projects. We could thus act ten years with a population, with local stakeholders (families, local authorities, local NGOs, bilateral organizations, ...). And this is obviously what enabled to ⁇ , at a given time, the objectives aimed at appropriation by the populations of how to proceed and modify the governance of the local entities of these regions. This could be evaluated. If it sets the same objectives for fighting food insecurity and for family and sustainable agriculture, development cooperation will have to respect this. Therefore, a resolution was useful.

Another important element is that this working group brought together different actors around the same project. Among the actors present were, of course, the parliamentarians at the basis of the process and the arrangement, but also representatives of Belgian NGOs, bilateral organizations, the Cooperation Administration and the Cabinet of the Minister. This made it possible to have a real reflective work in identifying the projects to be supported, the evaluation relating to the evolution of these projects and, finally, the conclusion of the program goals to report the improvements.

I would like to draw your attention to a approach that is becoming more generalized. It is that the mistake that we have probably made within the Food Safety Fund monitoring working group is to dare to evaluate. We dared, already in 2008, to say: “We have put in place a system that really shows its performance but, at the same time, we are faced with countries in the world, where people die of hunger, where we accompany a whole series of programs. Maybe there is a way to do it even better. Let’s evaluate how we got there. Are our methods adequate? What can be improved?”

We have done this assessment with all the actors. There were UNICEF, universities, administrations, NGOs, and a splendid report came out of it. By daring to evaluate and daring to launch paths to improve work, I realize that, in the political context of the government of the time and that of the current government, one becomes fragile; then one becomes the prey of certain people who want to remove the means or change the work axes. This is what is happening today with Unia! Unia dares to ask for an assessment of its perception by the population. This assessment report shows that it is perceived in a more specific way on certain themes and then one comes to attack Unia by saying that it is not a good body, because it only deals with discrimination against foreign persons and that it does not deal sufficiently with other discriminations. This is exactly the same approach of attack and weakening when we dare an assessment approach. This is what happened to the Belgian Fund for Food Security.

All the work that has been undertaken to help these populations is undermined by a government that has decided, for budgetary reasons, to remove some funds, to no longer follow the same goals and policies, and that has decided to remove a tool that had proven itself.

I would like to thank the authors of this resolution, which aims to control the allocation of at least 15% of the budget to food security, policies supporting family farming and long-term cooperation strategies.

A resolution must be followed: it is therefore up to parliamentarians to regularly question ministers about its implementation.

Finally, under the previous government, Belgian agricultural organizations and trade unions were added to the list of partners of Development Cooperation.

From a policy aimed at helping the weakest populations with associations that teach them to defend their rights against those who want to sell their livestock, make profit at their expense or seize their land, representatives of the Belgian and Western agricultural unions have been introduced, who have seen it rather as a possibility to defend their radiation and their activity. The positioning is no longer the same. It is important to ensure this and to include this in the elements to be questioned through the follow-up of this resolution.