Islamabad, October 08, 2019 (PPI-OT): The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is conducting a capacity building training on analysing the Poverty-Food Insecurity Nexus, from October 7 to 11, 2019 at the FAO representation office in Islamabad. The training workshop is being organized under FAO’s Technical Cooperation Programme (TCPF) project. Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFS and R) and Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform are the main stakeholders in this project.
FAO supports national institutions of the member countries and trains their staff in new tools and methods, and use of internationally accepted approaches for producing quality and timely statistic for sound decision making. FAO is the custodian UN organization for 21 SDG indicators and contributing agency to additional 5 indicators.
The organization supports the member countries including Pakistan to analyse their data and to be able to monitor their status on food security and other SDG indicators for which FAO is the custodian/contributing agency. Through this training, officials of national institutions will be trained in estimation of incidence of poverty and analysis of poverty-food insecurity nexus. Pakistan is facing challenges of high incidence of poverty (24%) and prevalence food insecurity/hunger (around 20%), where around 40 million people in Pakistan are estimated to be undernourished/food insecure. Disparities exist in incidence of poverty and prevalence of food insecurity across urban/rural regions and provinces.
Data analysts/officials of Ministry of National Food Security and Research (MNFS and R), Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform, Pakistan Bureau of Statistics, (PBS), PARC/NARC, Provincial/Regional Bureaus of Statistics, academia and UN organizations attended the training workshop.
FAO representative in Pakistan Mina Dowlatchahi said during the opening ceremony that both poverty and food insecurity are reducing in Pakistan, however, still more focus is needed in areas where poverty and food insecurity are high including certain districts in Sindh, Balochistan, and the Newly Merged Districts (NMDs) of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. FAO is implementing multiple programmes to reduce food insecurity and improve livelihoods in Pakistan.
For more information, contact:
National Information Officer
United Nations Information Centre (UNIC)
Islamabad, Pakistan
Tel: +92-51-8355720
Cell: +92-300-8553790
Email: ishrat.rizvi@unic.org