BRAZILIAN JOSÉ Graziano da Silva, the director general-elect of the UN’s Rome-based Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), yesterday pledged to work for consensus in order to avoid paralysis at the UN’s largest agency.
On Sunday 61-year-old Mr da Silva won a tight electoral contest for the position, defeating former Spanish foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos Cuyabe by four votes.
Next January Mr da Silva will take over from Senegal’s Jacques Diouf, who has run FAO since January 1994. Acknowledging that his election had highlighted a split between donor countries and developing nations, Mr Da Silva said: “Those divisions emerged in the electoral process . . . This is part of daily life at FAO and something that you cannot ignore. I have lived with these differences on a day-to-day basis for years . . . I hope, however, I can promote agreements so that we get a minimum consensus.”
The fact FAO, which employs some 3,600 people, has had only two directors general in the last 36 years – Mr Diouf and his Lebanese predecessor Edouard Saouma – would suggest it is anything but a democratic organisation. It has also manifestly failed in its quintessential raison d’être, to end world hunger. Asked by The Irish Times if the FAO was in need of radical reform, Mr da Silva defended the agency while also suggesting that he will be making internal changes: “I have campaigned for a more decentralised organisation but that does not mean weakening headquarters. I don’t accept that FAO has been a failure but obviously we have to improve at regional and country level.
“I don’t expect to have problems with the staff here . . . although maybe sometimes we need to remind people that the organisation’s objective is about more than removing hunger from the families of staff members.
Mr da Silva co-ordinated Brazil’s successful “Zero Hunger” campaign.