The announcement was made at the CFS annual meeting this week in Rome where two HLPE papers were presented (Biofuels and Food Security and Investing in Smallholder Agriculture for Food Security).

The CFS is the central international and intergovernmental platform for food security and nutrition, where policies can be developed, interventions co-ordinated, options shared and decisions at different levels can be prepared. The HLPE was established in 2010 to guide CFS decisions. The CFS identified two controversial issues each year that the HLPE is commissioned to prepare papers on for discussion at the following CFS annual meeting of its 193 United Nations member countries. This enables the direct translation of scientific evidence into policies and programme interventions in the member countries.

The HLPE aims to help CFS to better understand the diversity of issues and rationales when dealing with food and nutrition insecurity. As an independent opinion, it strives to clarify contradictory information and knowledge, elicit the backgrounds and rationales of controversies, and identify emerging issues. The HLPE organises a scientific dialogue, built upon the diversity of disciplines, backgrounds, knowledge systems, diversity of its teams, and open e-consultations.

Prof Hendriks leads the University’s Institutional Research Programme on food security, consolidating this strategic research area. It brings together top researchers from over 25 University departments to address complex and complicated food security issues of significant relevance to South Africa. She served on three Technical Review Committees of the Global Agriculture and Food Security Programme, led the development of the Comprehensive African Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP) Framework for African Food Security and led the first CAADP technical reviews of national and regional investment plans. She is an active research leader in trans-disciplinary food security research and is also facilitating the South African CAADP process.

Prof Hendriks’ research focuses on understanding household food insecurity and hunger and evaluating the impact of food policy and food security interventions in Africa. She has a special interest in the identification of food security indicators and institutional arrangements for food policy. Prof Hendriks consistently publishes on food security and food policy issues. She has made a significant contribution to building Africa’s capacity for food security analysis through supervision and training of students from 18 African countries.