Please join us for a hybrid event in partnership with The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) for a panel discussion on responses to the global food crisis in the Americas. This event will feature Samantha Power, USAID Administrator. The Ninth Summit marks the first time the United States has hosted the event since the inaugural meeting in Miami in 1994. It is President Biden’s highest priority event for the region and the only hemispheric meeting of leaders.

Background:

As governments, business leaders, and members of civil society gather in Los Angeles for the Ninth Summit of the Americas, the world is experiencing an unprecedented food security crisis that will impact people throughout the Western Hemisphere. The number of people facing severe food insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean doubled from 2014 to 2020, and over the past two years has been further exacerbated by inflationary pressures, rising energy and fuel prices, disruptions from the global pandemic, extreme weather, and the reverberations of the ongoing war in Ukraine. Latin Americans are experiencing the highest spike of prices in a generation, and the region is facing the fallout from global fertilizer shortages that will jeopardize short and long-term productivity while increasing production and food costs. 

The panel will open with keynote remarks from USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who will highlight how the United States is scaling up assistance to respond to this crisis and detail new U.S. commitments to help partners throughout the region meet growing food security and nutrition challenges. The panel will also feature perspectives from government, private sector, multilateral, and civil society leaders from throughout the region on addressing immediate humanitarian needs and threats to the regional food supply, as well as longer-term challenges to food security, nutrition and resilience.

In partnership with: 

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Featuring:

Samantha Power, USAID Administrator 

Samantha Power was sworn into office as the 19th Administrator of USAID on May 3, 2021. Prior to joining the Biden-Harris Administration, Power was the Anna Lindh Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and the William D. Zabel Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. Power served in the Obama-Biden Administration from 2013 to 2017 as the 28th US Permanent Representative to the United Nations, and from 2009 to 2013 as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights at the National Security Council.

An immigrant from Ireland, Power began her career as a war correspondent in Bosnia, and went on to report from places including Kosovo, Rwanda, Sudan, and Zimbabwe. She was the founding executive director of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and has been recognized as one of Time’s “100 Most Influential People,” one of Foreign Policy’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers,” and by Forbes as one of the “World’s 100 Most Powerful Women.” Power is an author and editor of multiple books, and the recipient of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Nonfiction.

Registration:

Space for in-person attendance is limited. Pacific Council members may register below, and members of the public may register here. The event is free to all.

This event will be live-streamed. You can view the live stream here.

For event-related questions, please contact Joana Perey at Jperey@pacificcouncil.org