Brazil's one-time food security minister, Jose Graziano da Silva, was elected Sunday director-general of the Food and Agriculture Organisation, the UN agency tasked with reducing world hunger at a time of near-record high food prices. Graziano, currently FAO's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean, won on the second ballot in a 92-88 vote of the 180 member states voting.
He beat out Miguel Angel Moratinos of Spain, his main challenger, and four other candidates to replace Jacques Diouf of Senegal, whose 18-year tenure prompted a change in the agency's rules to set term limits.
Graziano takes over the agency at a time when high food prices are putting the lives of millions of already hungry and malnourished people at further risk and raising fears of a repeat of the high-price-driven social unrest of 2007-2008.
The FAO's food price index hit an all-time high in February. It has since decreased slightly, but experts warn that food prices remain far too high for many poor communities. The agency put the number of hungryn. It has faced long-standing calls from top donors like the US for bureaucratic reform, budget cuts and better prioritising of projects.
In his final campaign pitch to delegates Saturday, Graziano noted that no Brazilian heads a top-level position in the UN system and that no Latin American had ever headed the FAO. He said he had the credentials, citing his tenure as FAO's regional representative for Latin America and the Caribbean since 2006.
Prior to that, he served as food security minister under former Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. In that capacity, he helped implement the ``Zero Hunger' initiative that helped dramatically decrease malnutrition among Brazil's 190 million people.
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