Video Remarks to the First 2012 Meeting of the L'Aquila Food Security Initiative

Hillary Rodham Clinton
Secretary of State

Washington, DC

February 6, 2012

Good morning everyone. I am delighted to welcome you to this year’s first meeting of the L’Aquila Food Security Initiative. As you know so well food security is a major pillar of our administration’s development agenda, and it is a personal passion of mine. That is why we created the Feed the Future initiative and why the State Department launched our 1000 Days Nutrition Partnership and created the Office of Global Food Security, which is hosting this landmark event.

AFSI has been critical in our work, and it will continue to be important as we move ahead. This initiative helps us coordinate our efforts and keeps us all accountable for our investments in food security. And that’s exactly the kind of rigorous effort it will take for all of us to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

As the United States looks forward to our tenure as Chair of AFSI in 2012, our primary goal is to ensure not only that donor countries are living up to our own financial pledges, but also that these contributions are being allocated strategically and making a real difference in the fight against global hunger. To do this, we will expand reporting on our investments at the country level, deepen our engagement with developing country partners, track our spending on research for agricultural development, and measure the impact of our investments.

So I want to thank you, all of you for all the work you’re done to make AFSI a success so far, and for everything you will do to build on that success. I hope you have a productive meeting and a pleasant stay here in Washington and I look forward to hearing the results of this important conference. Thank you.