Are you prepared? World Food Day is just two months away!

The countdown to World Food Day 2024  has begun, with the theme "Right to Food for a Better Life and a Better Future" recently announced.

The campaign emphasizes the ongoing that hundreds of millions of people around the world still face hunger, often worsened by frequent weather changes, economic downturns and conflicts.

One of the key solutions highlighted is the role of social protection as an effective policy tool to address these crises. Extending social protection is key to ensuring access to nutritious, safe and affordable food for everyone, everywhere, and to protecting and empowering vulnerable people.

Despite this, more than half of the world´s population, approximately 4 billion people, remain excluded from social protection systems, with women being disproportionately affected. In low-income countries, 80 percent of the poorest rural households have no access to social protection.

There is no right to food without social protection

World Food Day 2024 focuses on solutions to ensure adequate, regular access to diverse, safe, and nutritious food for all. It calls on everyone to become change makers and for a renewed international effort to prioritize the right to food for all people.

To achieve this, holistic plans and projects are needed, including extending social protection to rural population require holistic plans.  Worldwide FAO is working with governments and local communities to expand social protection for the most vulnerable by enhancing resilience to climate change, enabling households to invest in more productive agricultural practices, and improving access to health services, education and decent work opportunities.

The right to social protection and the right to food interconnected and essential for building efficient, inclusive, resilient and sustainable agrifood systems that leave no one behind.