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World Food Day 2025 Antonio Tajani, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, speech

On October 16th, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) commemorated World Food Day and its 80th anniversary with a landmark event in Rome. Hosted by FAO Director-General QU Dongyu, the celebration brought together prominent global figures, including Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Collaboration.

Language Italian

Country Italy

Duration 12m39s

Edit Version International

Video Type B Roll Video

Date 10/16/2025

File size 934.39 MB

Unique ID UF1B1E5

Production details and shotlist

Shotlist STORY: FAO / WORLD FOOD DAY ANTONIO TAIANI SPEECH
TRT: 12’:40’’
SOURCE: FAO
RESTRICTIONS: PLEASE CREDIT FAO ON SCREEN
LANGUAGE: ITALIAN / NATS
DATELINE: 16 OCTOBER 2025, ROME, ITALY
1. Top shot, Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs speaking
2. Wide shot, Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs speaking
3. Med shot, Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs speaking
4. Wide shot, Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs speaking
5. SOUNDBITE (Italian) Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Collaboration: complete speech - check script
6. Top shot, Antonio Tajani, Italian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs speaking
7. FAO flag

Script It is an honour for us to host in Italy, in Rome, this very important institution. But we need to transform this honour into concrete actions. Because we need to fight for achieving good results. The message of the Pope has been very very clear: we need to do more.

For us Italians, the fight against hunger must increasingly become a priority. We must shine a spotlight on those parts of the world where we, the rich countries, despite our own problems and difficulties, can and must do much more. Food waste, mistakes, the horrors of past colonizations, climate change, there are many reasons why billions of people are unable to live as they could and should, as is their right. Because the right to food, the right to life, is an innate human right, granted by God for believers, or by nature for non-believers.

That is why, in this moment of war, we must do everything possible to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza. Hundreds of thousands of women and children are starving. There have been and will be, if we do not act quickly, deaths from hunger. That is why it is right to open the Rafah crossing, to allow hundreds of trucks to enter, and Italy will do its part. After having already sent over 2,500 tons of food supplies to the people of Gaza in recent years, we are ready to send another 100 tons in the coming days.

This will be our largest humanitarian operation, and we are also ready to continue welcoming sick children, many of whom are victims of food shortages. We are ready to welcome them into our country, as we have done so far, and we will welcome more in the coming days. This is a duty for us, and I am proud to say that Italy is one of the countries in the world, alongside many Muslim countries, that has welcomed the highest number of children, with their families, as refugees from Gaza.

We want to treat them in our best hospitals.

I am pleased to announce that I have appointed our Permanent Representative to the FAO, Ambassador Bruno Archi, as Special Envoy for the Reconstruction of Gaza, with attention also to humanitarian aspects.

The Italian government is ready to do its part. Of course, as Pope Leo XIV said, declarations are important, but they must be transformed into concrete actions, into daily political choices. Not only on the days when we rightly celebrate the FAO’s 80th anniversary. This is an institution we want to continue supporting in all its global activities, and we will do so with the FAO.

We have been working with the World Food Programme for years to alleviate the suffering of the people of Gaza, but we also want to work to alleviate the suffering of another people, the Ukrainian people, who have been suffering for years due to an unjust war. We want to prevent hunger caused by war there as well.

That is why we have prepared a draft resolution for the UN General Assembly on the Olympic Truce ahead of the Winter Games that Italy will host next year in Milan and Cortina. It would be very important for us to have the support of all your countries. It is true that this is a tradition, but this time it must be done differently.

After shining a daily spotlight on the war in the Middle East and the war in Ukraine, we must also shine a light on another dramatic reality that is rarely discussed: the civil war in Sudan, where thousands have died, and hundreds of thousands of refugees, women, men, children are also dying of hunger.

We must also shine a strong and determined light on what is happening in other parts of the world. In the Far East, people are dying of hunger, not only in Africa. Indigenous populations are dying of hunger even in the heart of Latin America.

That is why, as the Italian government, we have made Africa a strategic priority. We launched the Mattei Plan, and the entire policy of the Italian government, from our G7 commitment to our work in Europe and NATO, is aimed at ensuring that the African continent, rich in resources, no longer suffers from poverty in many countries where, as we’ve seen in the images, people still risk dying of hunger and disease.

We are absolutely convinced that we must support, and Italy does, the Gavi project for vaccine production in Africa, to extend the life expectancy of children who should not die at one, two, or three years old. That life horizon is unacceptable. We must do much, much more.

Hunger, malnutrition, and disease still kill far too many people around the world.

We want to do everything we can so that our know-how, including through collaboration with the FAO, can be used. We must transform our declarations, even solemn ones, as the Pope said, into concrete actions and commitments that rich countries like ours, despite our difficulties, can and must make. We also have advanced technology in the space sector, satellites can do a lot to help agriculture in Africa.

Our companies are among the most advanced in the world in this sector, and using these technologies for agricultural purposes allows us to produce more with fewer resources, while respecting the environment.

I’m also thinking of the importance of applying assisted evolution techniques in agriculture, which improve production capacity to better face increasingly frequent climate crises, such as developing plants that are more resistant to drought.

This means enabling African peoples to continue cultivating their land. The combination of these technologies allows farms to control all operations, from sowing to harvesting, promoting precision agriculture that requires fewer pesticides and less water.

We offer our know-how for more efficient water resource management, agricultural production, and technological development of the agri-food system.

Water is essential for life, health, and well-being. Too much is wasted, even in our countries. Yet around 2 billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water. Water is an extraordinary engine of peace in Africa and the Middle East. That’s why we are proud to host, here in Rome next October, the first Euro Mediterranean Water Forum.

Not only that, next year we will also host in Rome the meeting of Foreign and Environment Ministers of the Union for the Mediterranean, dedicated to water. This is another key issue if we want to fight hunger in the world.

Ladies and gentlemen, majesties, leaders of important countries, we can work and build together. Beyond political differences and affiliations to different organizations, there are priorities that go far beyond our divisions, our ways of thinking, our cultures. Defending life is a commitment that concerns each of us. I am a father and a grandfather: seeing children die who are the age of my grandchildren gives me goosebumps. A shiver runs down my spine. Let us think of how many mothers and grandparents, unlike us, cannot see their children and grandchildren grow up.

This must stir our hearts, not just our minds, and drive us to work together, even through multilateralism, beyond political differences and geo-strategic divisions. Before being politicians, before being leaders, before being part of factions, we are women and men, and we have the duty to always and everywhere defend human life. It must be a priority for each of us. As a minister, as an Italian, and as a man, I want to send you this message, guaranteeing the commitment of myself, my ministry, and I would say all of Italy, so that more and more human lives can be saved around the world by fighting hunger.

Thank you all. And happy anniversary to the FAO.

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World Food Day 2025 Antonio Tajani, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, speech

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