Help from Organizations: US State Department The US State Department has more than 250 diplomatic and consular posts around the world, including embassies, consulates, and delegations and missions to international organizations.

The Department of State is the lead U.S. foreign affairs agency. It promotes U.S. objectives and interests in shaping a freer, more secure, and more prosperous world through formulating, representing, and implementing the President's foreign policy. The Secretary of State, the ranking member of the Cabinet and fourth in line of presidential succession, is the President's principal adviser on foreign policy and the person chiefly responsible for U.S. representation abroad.

For more than 200 years, the State Department has supported Presidents and Secretaries of State, worked with the Congress, and served all citizens of the United States as they grew to become a great power. To read more about their past and our role in foreign affairs see 'Learning about the State Department'.

The US State Department has been heavily involved with the attempt to solve the problem of world hunger. The following outlines what the US State department has and is doing in relation to the problem.

The U.S. Government will participate in the World Food Summit November 13-17, 1996, in Rome. The conference, which is being convened by the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), will address and focus high-level political attention on the problems of chronic hunger and malnutrition that exist to some degree in all regions of the world. The World Food Summit comes 22 years after a World Food Conference stimulated international efforts to address malnutrition and global food security issues.

Over the past two decades, the international community has taken great strides in reducing the numbers of chronically undernourished people in developing countries. Today, many countries can point to significant progress on food issues, particularly in dramatic increases in agricultural production. Nonetheless, an estimated 800 million people still live with chronic hunger and suffer from malnutrition. Projections indicate that overall global food security will improve during the next 10 to 20 years, although food insecurity is projected to deteriorate further in sub-Saharan Africa and to worsen in South Asia.

The summit will produce a Declaration and Plan of Action designed to promote policies and actions to combat food insecurity at all levels. The conference is expected to address many factors that negatively influence the availability, access, and utilization of food. Apart from natural disasters, such factors include: war and civil strife; inappropriate national policies; inadequate investment in and poor access to research and technology; barriers to trade; environmental degradation; unsustainable population growth rates; poverty; gender inequality; and poor health. Member states of the FAO agree that the summit should examine realistic approaches to food security; it is not intended to be about pledging new resources, creating new financial mechanisms, institutions, or bureaucracies, nor to reopen agreements reached in other fora.

For the United States, improving global food security is an essential element of promoting peace and raising living standards in many regions, thus serving U.S. political, economic, and security interests. Working with other countries toward food security is also in line with America's values and humanitarian instincts. The U.S. believes that the work of the summit should complement the final documents issued by the recently concluded series of UN global conferences which began with the Rio Earth Summit in 1992 and ended with the 1996 Habitat II housing and urbanization conference in Istanbul. Sustainable development -- the necessity of balancing economic and environmental considerations -- was the underlying theme of the UN global conferences.

The U.S. delegation to the summit will be led by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), and will also include senior officials from the Department of State, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. Private sector advisors, representing a broad spectrum of U.S. agricultural, food industry, and health interests, will also play a key role on the U.S. delegation. The U.S. recognizes that, though this is an intergovernmental conference, farmers and others in the food industry bear primary responsibility for food production; their knowledge, investment, and economic success is critical to progress toward food security.

USDA, in cooperation with the State Department and USAID, has been working to raise U.S. public awareness of the summit and to assure public participation in the preparatory process through public meetings, forums with non-governmental organizations, and Congressional briefings. A U.S. Country Paper produced as a result of the consultative process establishes four primary objectives to guide U.S. participation in the summit:

• Adoption of appropriate national policies by all countries as the foundation of food security at all levels;
• Assertion of the U.S. role in assisting other countries to overcome hunger and malnutrition through U.S. leadership in agricultural, fisheries, and trade policies; development assistance; agricultural research; long-term environmental forecasting; and, as necessary, food aid;
• Promotion of the critical role of sustainable development in the agriculture, forestry, and fisheries sectors in achieving food security; and
• Recognition of the essential role of women, population stabilization, education, and health in the food security equation.

Specifically, in pursuit of the objectives defined in the U.S. Country Paper, the U.S. intends to:

• Share its expertise with selected countries wishing to review and change their national policies to improve food security.
• Enhance U.S. Government support for research and technology development in agriculture and related sectors, both at home and abroad.
• Continue support for food security through the use of agricultural programs, development assistance, and food aid.
• Work with all countries to achieve freer trade, recognizing that the broadest possible market participation is the best formula for maximizing benefits to consumers and producers.
• Continue support for international efforts to respond to and prevent humanitarian crises that create emergency food aid needs.
• Continue efforts to encourage and facilitate implementation of food security-related actions adopted at recent international conferences or established in recently agreed-to conventions.
• Work within the multilateral system to enhance global approaches to food security.
• Continue to work toward food security for all Americans.

Those countries that have demonstrated the most progress in achieving food security are those that have seriously pursued policy reform, macroeconomic stabilization, and structural adjustment, while focusing government activities on public goods investment and provision of safety nets. Such commitment and assumption of responsibility at the national level create a climate conducive to private and public investment. Developed and developing countries alike should work in partnership to achieve this climate, taking into account the particular circumstances of each individual country. The United States stands ready to join in a new kind of partnership with all countries prepared to take the difficult steps necessary to meet and surmount the challenge of conquering world hunger.

One way you could help to fight the problem of world hunger is to work for the US State Department as a Foreign Service Officer (FSO). As a FSO you would be working on the front lines using diplomatic skills to bring peace to countries where hunger is a problem which would allow organizations to come into the country and work directly with the people in helping them to solve their own problems. You would also be directly involved in setting up those missions and helping to establish programs around the world.

Foreign Service Officers can be sent anywhere in the world, at any time, to serve the diplomatic needs of the United States. They are the front-line personnel of all U.S. embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic missions.

Historically, FSOs have been generalists who could expect to be assigned to various kinds of jobs, in different parts of the world in the course of their careers. For most FSOs, this is still the case.

But international affairs has changed. Today, the Foreign Service seeks candidates interested in more than political science or international relations to help take American diplomacy into the 21st century; we need people who can manage programs and personnel. Also transnational issues will characterize the diplomacy of the future. Among these new priorities are: science and technology, including the global fight against diseases such as AIDS, and efforts to save the environment, anti-narcotics efforts and trade.

The US Department of State also has an increasing need for candidates with training and experience in administration and management. The Department of State requires that applicants select a "Functional Area of Specialization," or, "cone" when applying to take the written examination. . The Foreign Service cones are: Administrative, Consular, Economic, Political and Public Diplomacy.

For more information about why diplomacy is so important to ending hunger, read the How hunger can be solved: Government involvement article.