Brussels – During the tenth joint meeting of the Executive Boards of the three United Nations agencies based in Rome – the FAO, the World Food Programme (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) – Morocco called for a stronger focus on humanitarian crises, with a view to finding lasting solutions and gradually reducing dependence on aid.
Speaking in the debate on the implementation of the Blueprint for Inter-Agency Collaboration in Fragile Contexts, Morocco’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative, Youssef Balla, welcomed the progress made, while emphasising the need to put a way out of the crisis at the heart of international action.
“Against a backdrop of declining financial resources, we cannot regard crisis management as a permanent state of affairs,” Balla said. It is therefore necessary to move away from a predominantly emergency-based approach towards one that strengthens national and local capacities and addresses the structural causes of fragility.
Morocco has proposed that the Blueprint should more explicitly incorporate the transition from crisis management to sustainable solutions as a guiding principle for collaboration among the FAO, the WFP and IFAD.
“Success should not be measured solely by the ability to respond to a crisis, but also by the ability to create the conditions to ensure that it does not become permanent,” concluded Balla.
