(14 July 2011) The new Director-General elect of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), José Graziano da Silva, visited the headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) today.
He met with Alicia Bárcena, Executive Secretary of the Commission, who congratulated Graziano da Silva on his recent appointment at the head of FAO and assured him of her willingness to continue working together on joint issues in the remit of the two institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean.
"In FAO we wish to strengthen joint work and collaboration with all regional commissions of the United Nations", stated Graziano da Silva. "In this sense, the experience we have of cooperation between ECLAC and FAO, which includes the annual publication, along with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA), of the report The Outlook for Agriculture and Rural Development in the Americas: a Perspective on Latin America and the Caribbean and the joint organization of seminars and experts meetings, could be a good starting point", he added.
Both of them highlighted that, given the state of the world economy, it is vital to reinforce the development pillar of the United Nations, which is represented by the work of the two institutions.
José Graziano da Silva, who is Brazilian, was elected as the new Director-General of FAO on 26 June 2011, during the organization's biennial conference held in Rome. Since 2006, he had held the post of FAO Assistant Director-General and Regional Representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, based in Santiago, Chile. Previously, he was Brazil's Extraordinary Minister of Food Security and Fight against Hunger.
He will take over on 1 January 2012, as replacement to the Senegalese national Jacques Diouf.
Any queries should be addressed to the ECLAC Public Information and Web Services Section. E-mail: dpisantiago@cepal.org; Tel.: (56 2) 210 2040.
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