Advocacy to key decision makers at the regional and global level

Successful advocacy towards the UN Human Rights Council to adopt the Declaration on peasants’ rights. A great victory achieved in Geneva in October for mostly poor smallholders globally and the organisations that have supported them for 17 years. It serves as a solid basis for advocacy in the region to promote policies conducive to the interests of smallholder farmers. FAO’s Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative adopted by the Committee on Agriculture with our strong advocacy support. Inputs submitted to the report focusing on agro-ecology compiled by the High-Level Panel of Experts of the Committee on World Food Security with a view to show how agroecology and organic agriculture are viable options for smallholders in the Global South. Submitting a position paper with a broad range of German NGOs to the German Government in order to get support for agroecology both politically and financially. All these efforts serve as a basis for the enforcement of the four project country’s commitment to the African Organic Action Plan for mainstreaming ecological organic agriculture into national agricultural production systems by 2025 as well the ECOWAS funded Agroecological Transition Support Project or the project to “Support for the dissemination of good agro-ecological practices” in Togo included in their Nationally Determined Contributions as submitted to the UNFCCC. FAO invited to present the Scaling Up Agroecology Initiative at the IFOAM – OI HQ in order to find synergies for collaboration, including OM4D work in the 4 countries. With a view to push for the enforcement of the four project country’s commitment to the African Organic Action Plan for mainstreaming ecological organic agriculture into national agricultural production systems by 2025 as well the ECOWAS funded Agroecological Transition Support Project or the project to “Support for the dissemination of good agro-ecological practices” in Togo included in their Nationally Determined Contributions as submitted to the UNFCCC. During Q6, IFOAM - Organics International has been: - highlighting the benefits of OA in West Africa for farmers and the society at the 2nd Global Conference of the Sustainable Food Systems Programme in San José, Costa Rica in February. - advocating for organic agriculture and the M4P approach based on our project experiences and achievements to global and regional decision makers at UNEA-4 in Nairobi. - preparing contribution to the online consultation on the agri-food and rural agenda of the Africa-Europe alliance launched by the European Commission at the end of April. In October 2019, we have participated in the 46th session of the Committee on World Food Security in FAO, Rome with a view to advocate for agroecology and organic agriculture as viable alternatives to the most common paradigm and technology used in agriculture today based on chemical inputs. At a side-event held together with Welthungerhilfe, we have presented how organic agriculture can bring food security and farm resilience and thereby secure livelihoods in various countries including West Africa. In order to promote the M4P approach and to inform relevant government officials about the project we held bilateral meetings with country representatives from the 4 project countries. Our reports on the development so far were received with kind interest and gave us hope for follow-up government action. With officials from the Ministry of Agriculture in Ghana, we have identified concrete next steps of an advocacy plan to sensitise policy makers about organic in the country. In November 2019, at the West African Organic Conference, we organised a policy roundtable raising awareness about policies supportive of agroecology and organic and looking at the performance of countries living up to their commitments made on mainstreaming organic farming in their agricultural policies.