Address to the Holy Father Pope Francis by PAS President Joachim von Braun
at the Papal Audience with the participants of the workshop “Food and Humanitarian Crises: Science and Policies for Prevention and Mitigation”
Photo: Gabriella C. Marino
Dear Holy Father,
We are most grateful to You for seeing us on the occasion of this workshop on “Food and Humanitarian Crises: Science and Policies for Prevention and Mitigation”. The prevalence and scale of food and humanitarian crises are a shame for humanity.
We want you to know that your Pontifical Academy of Sciences cares about the poor, and mobilizes science, practitioners, and policy makers to help overcome the problems of these crises.
Participants in this workshop present here are academics that are committed to address the humanitarian and food crises, senior policy makers, UN Agencies, especially FAO, WFP, OMI, as well as leaders in civil society that directly work in the crisis hotspots, such as Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sahelian countries, Sudan, South Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Cameroon, DR Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, and others. You are very familiar with the problems and have visited several of these countries.
Many of the crises come about because governments fail. That must be addressed. When governments fail to serve their people, we need to form alliances of civil society, religious communities and science. Faith and science cooperation to address crises is needed. A stronger UN system is essential too.
Crises are shaped by wars and armed conflicts, disrupted food supply chains, hinderance of production, climate change.
Three billion people do not have access to healthy diets, more than 800 million are undernourished, there are more millions of refugees and displaced than ever. And still food continues to be wasted by the wealthy.
Our main concern is about marginal population groups, including displaced and impoverished small farmers and herders, slum dwellers, refugees, and women and children in these contexts, as well as Indigenous Peoples. These groups suffer the most in humanitarian crises.
We call for improving and increasing actions. The hungry poor cannot wait.
We Focus on Solutions. Key actions proposed by us include,
We are most grateful to You for seeing us on the occasion of this workshop on “Food and Humanitarian Crises: Science and Policies for Prevention and Mitigation”. The prevalence and scale of food and humanitarian crises are a shame for humanity.
We want you to know that your Pontifical Academy of Sciences cares about the poor, and mobilizes science, practitioners, and policy makers to help overcome the problems of these crises.
Participants in this workshop present here are academics that are committed to address the humanitarian and food crises, senior policy makers, UN Agencies, especially FAO, WFP, OMI, as well as leaders in civil society that directly work in the crisis hotspots, such as Ukraine, Ethiopia, Sahelian countries, Sudan, South Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Cameroon, DR Congo, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Haiti, and others. You are very familiar with the problems and have visited several of these countries.
Many of the crises come about because governments fail. That must be addressed. When governments fail to serve their people, we need to form alliances of civil society, religious communities and science. Faith and science cooperation to address crises is needed. A stronger UN system is essential too.
Crises are shaped by wars and armed conflicts, disrupted food supply chains, hinderance of production, climate change.
Three billion people do not have access to healthy diets, more than 800 million are undernourished, there are more millions of refugees and displaced than ever. And still food continues to be wasted by the wealthy.
Our main concern is about marginal population groups, including displaced and impoverished small farmers and herders, slum dwellers, refugees, and women and children in these contexts, as well as Indigenous Peoples. These groups suffer the most in humanitarian crises.
We call for improving and increasing actions. The hungry poor cannot wait.
We Focus on Solutions. Key actions proposed by us include,
(1) Re-designed emergency aid interventions, based on better foresight, with due attention to nutrition during and after humanitarian and food crises. Satellite data, digital information and new scientific analyses do help action.
(2) Participation by local populations in policies, peace building, governance strengthening is essential. Communities are the first and most important respondents in humanitarian crises. Women’s empowerment must be a central part of that.
(3) A much more comprehensive engagement and welcoming culture in support of refugees and displaced people is required. We gratefully acknowledge your related statements. We must also prepare for flows of people displaced by climate crisis and need increased climate adaptation investments.
Research on how to prevent and overcome humanitarian and food crises shows impacts already, and we are committed to further strengthen the role of science for that in our Pontifical Academy of Sciences and with our partners present here.
Dear Holy Father,
we are grateful for your guidance, as for instance in the encyclicals Laudato Si’ and Fratelli Tutti.
We join you in prayers for the poor, and we pray for you.
Building on earlier food related PAS conferences: The Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS) has repeatedly addressed problems of the world food system in the past from various ...
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