The UN Food Systems Summit stocktake four years on from the original (UNFSS+4) was a sombre affair at times, reflecting on what the sudden and unexpected loss of the great convenor David Nabarro would mean for this global food and nutrition movement.
Fifteen years ago, another titan of the nutrition world who has since sadly left us, Urban Jonsson, wrote a seminal paper in which he reflected on the two grand narratives that have shaped food and nutrition discourse and action over recent decades: the rights-based paradigm and the investment paradigm. Back then, he reflected that while rights and investment are not mutually exclusive – business can be rights-based, and certain investments are needed to achieve the policies and actions needed to secure a right to food – the investment paradigm was starting to dominate to the exclusion of rights.
Both human rights and investment financing were invoked at the UNFSS+4, though you would have had to look harder for the rights rhetoric, which appeared in high-level speeches (and had its own section in the Report of the Secretary-General for the Summit), than for the investment focus, which had its own programme track and featured in many session titles. Fifteen years on from Urban Jonsson’s original reflections, what does the UNFSS process tell us about how these two world-shaping discourses are playing out?
Show me the money
‘Unlocking investment’ was one of the three core objectives of the Summit, and was evident in investment tracks, SME pitching events, and the economic arguments for action delivered from the plenary floor. Of the nearly 3,000 Summit delegates convened at the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa in Addis Ababa, 300 were classed as ‘business leaders’ by the World Business Council for Sustainable Development. Financing came up repeatedly, from green bonds to blended finance to debt swaps, with a new compendium of 15 co-investment models suggesting ways that business can be even more involved in changing food systems.
We know already, however, that corporate concentration in multiple aspects of food systems is part of the problem driving inequitable outcomes, and representatives of many of these corporations were active at the Summit. While there was a clear focus on small and medium enterprises in aspects of the event, there was no clear attempt to differentiate the implications of a small dried-fruit cooperative from the actions of a powerful food multinational: as in previous years, no recognition was made of how power relations affect participation in practice, and no red lines were drawn around which investors could participate and how.
UNFSS has amazing convening power (I brushed past presidents, ambassadors, farmers, women’ groups leaders, and CEOs in the hallways). Perhaps this is because of its focus on investment in a topic – food – that is either struggling for funds in multilateral and civil society spaces, or is seen as a smart business move by the private sector. Because of this convening power, it is also a promising space to engage businesses to step up to their human rights and social welfare responsibilities – but on this, the UNFSS could do so much better.
Rights and responsibilities
Advancing “inclusive, rights-based collaboration and mutual accountability” featured in another core objective of the UNFSS+4: ‘strengthening partnerships and tracking commitments’. Accountability is a key principle of a rights-based approach, one that was called out in a paper by the IPES-Food group that coincided with the Summit as sorely lacking in the process.
The Summit and related private sector initiatives have edged forward on food system accountability in response to sustained critique. Action 55c, part of the 2024 Pact for the Future, focuses on delivering existing commitments related to the private sector, and “encourages” private sector accountability. The International Conference on Financing for Development in Seville, earlier in 2025, pledged to be transparent and have clear monitoring and accountability mechanisms in the future. And the introduction of the Corporate Accountability Roadmap was the centrepiece of UNFSS-specific action on accountability.
Despite these actions, civil society groups contend that the UNFSS continues to rely on voluntary commitments and incentives, thereby discouraging stronger mechanisms with a chance of enforcement. Essential elements of accountability – standards, data, answerability, sanction, and remedy – have already been laid out for global health initiatives, and not all of these elements are considered in the UNFSS framing of accountability. Guiding principles on business and human rights already exist, based in the state duty to protect and corporate responsibility to respect human rights, and these could have guided the UNFSS accountability processes, getting food companies ready for the proposed binding treaty on business and human rights. Seeing little meaningful progress on accountability since the original Summit in 2021, however, UNFSS+4 was boycotted by much of civil society for legitimizing corporate control of food systems without proper attention to human rights.
Did UNFSS+4 walk the talk?
That boycott meant that many civil society actors could not attend the two sessions at the Summit that directly addressed accountability issues. The accountability through science session looked at the data, science and knowledge platforms that are available for monitoring. A key platform is the Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI); although this initiative has been critiqued for focusing too much on the positive actions of corporations and not considering negative actions such as tax avoidance and lobbying against regulation. In the corporate accountability session, it was acknowledged that the nutrition, health and social implications of business actions are not top of the agenda in crowded board meetings, so accountability regulations need to be mandatory (not voluntary) to be taken seriously – and for the UNFSS, compliance should then be demonstrated as a precondition for participation. Overall, the feeling in the room was that enough evidence, data and guidelines exist for meaningful action; there is no need to wait for the perfect gold accountability standard, and the issue is urgent.
But looking around the room, I was not sure that the same 300 business leaders who filled the plenary hall, or the SME representatives who were pitching their business plans at the Summit, were also present in the accountability sessions. Delegates at UNFSS+4 were confronted with a multiplicity of sessions to attend, and chose according to their interests, which meant often talking in echo chambers – another reason why accountability processes must be mandatory rather than voluntary.
Moving forward on accountability and rights
The third and final UNFSS+4 objective was ‘taking stock’. In a world where inequalities in food system outcomes are growing, according to the SOFI 2025 report launched at UNFSS+4, and man-made famines are allowed and enabled despite daily media coverage, there is an argument to be made that all hands are needed on deck. But I’ve written before about the dangers of ‘strategic ambiguity’ in action on food and nutrition – where “conceptual ambiguity generates a false sense that we are all pulling together in one common, unproblematic endeavour”.
So if private sector investment, corporate funding, and economic pathways are to be part of the food system solution, this can only happen ethically with the strongest forms of regulation, transparency and accountability in place. This must be a red line for corporate involvement in food system actions in a multilateral space such as a United Nations summit, as previous work on conflict of interest in conference organisation has elaborated. The UN is predicated on respect for human rights, after all.
Seen through the principle of accountability, the UNFSS is racing ahead with the investment paradigm without equally meaningful work on rights. Guidelines already exist on human rights and business, and on accountability processes and principles for engagement with the private sector, largely produced by existing UN bodies such as the CFS and Human Rights Council. Only universal recognition that these are a vital underpinning of ethical food system transformation will give them teeth – and the UNFSS has the reach and the voice to make this happen if it chooses to do so.
