Official launching ceremony of the International Year of Quinoa 2013

This Wednesday, 20 February, the official launching ceremony of the International Year of Quinoa 2013 will be held at the United Nations General Assembly, in New York. UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon will attend.

At this occasion the FAO Director General, José Graziano da Silva, will appoint the President of the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Evo Morales and the First Lady of Peru, Nadine Heredia, as FAO Special Ambassadors for the International Year.

We invite you to follow this event live via the International Year of Quinoa website: www.fao.org/quinua-2013/ , from 16:00 - 19:00 CET.

The year 2013 has been declared “International Year of Quinoa” (IYQ) in recognition of the Andean peoples who have preserved the quinoa as food for present and future generations through their traditional knowledge and practices of living in harmony with nature.

The Year was proposed by the Government of tBolivia, with the support Argentina, Australia, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Filipinas, Georgia, Guyana, Honduras, Iran, Liberia, México, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Seychelles, Uruguay and Venezuela. It was supported by the FAO Conference in June 2011 and was approved by the United Nations General Assembly during its 66th Regular Session, in December 2011.

The UN General Assembly took note of the exceptional nutritional qualities of quinoa, its adaptability to different agro-ecological conditions and its potential contribution to the fight against hunger and malnutrition, and called on FAO to facilitate the implementation of the IYQ.

The IYQ has thus become a platform to focus world attention on the role that quinoa plays in biodiversity and its nutritional value with respect to food security and the poverty eradication in support of the Millennium Development Goals.

Additional links:

• International Year of Quinoa   
• What is #quinoa & why was 2013 designated as Intl Year of Quinoa? Learn more from the FAO & follow @aiq2013 | @FAOnews
• Watch the launch of the Intl Year of Quinoa with special ambassador Bolivia President Evo Morales & more: http://webtv.un.org/
• Leaflet - International Year of Quinoa