The new Food Assistance Convention entered into force on January 1st 2013. This Agreement which has been negotiated between the European Union, its 27 Members States and eight other countries, confirms the commitment of the international community in the fight against hunger and malnutrition.

One of the main achievements of the Food Assistance Convention is the significant change in the approach, moving from food aid to food assistance. The signatories of the Convention agreed to provide food distribution only when strictly necessary to meet the immediate nutritional needs of the most vulnerable. In all other cases, aid should take the form of money to buy food on site so as to promote the local market and help to develop local supply systems.

The Convention also emphasizes the importance of linking short-term assistance to long-term interventions, in order to improve the resilience of the most vulnerable populations and be better prepared for the impact of crisis or excessive increases in basic foods prices. Among the objectives of the Convention are also to facilitate information-sharing and to enhance cooperation and coordination in order to improve the effective, efficient and coherent use of the available resources to respond to needs.

The European Union was one of the first international parties to ratify the Food Assistance Convention in November 2012. Along with the EU and its Member States, also Argentina, Australia, Canada, Croatia, Japan, Norway, Switzerland and the United States have signed the text.

With this ratification, the European Union strengthens its commitment to humanitarian assistance which has made it the world's first donor of food assistance. In 2011 the European Commission allocated €509 million euros to humanitarian and food assistance projects to assist nutritional needs. This assistance has been ensured by working in 47 countries with 57 organizations among which are the UN agencies with whom the EU launched in June 2011 the Strategic Framework of Cooperation to address food insecurity and malnutrition worldwide.