The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

The FAO is a permanent international organization of 194 member nations, which aims to ensure humanity’s freedom from hunger through a mandate that covers nutrition, food, and agriculture. It performs its mandate through a range of competences and functions, which were revised in the Organization’s Strategic Framework 2022-2031. The chapter lays out the FAO’s revised functions, before contemplating: the Organization’s relationship with the UN; the nature of its decentralized organizational structure; and the roles, responsibilities, and functions of its core governing and statutory bodies, secretary general, and staff, as well as the various rules pertaining to these stakeholders. The chapter details the Organization’s cooperative activities with other organizations and programmes and highlights the FAO’s important standard-setting function. Crucially, the chapter clarifies and details the roles and competences of the Organization’s Legal Counsel, the Office of the Legal Counsel, and its two units: the General Legal Affairs Service (LEGA), which provides ‘in-house’ counsel services to the Organization, including advice, negotiation, drafting, and litigation work; and the Development Law Branch (LEGN), the unit concerned, inter alia, with the provision of advice and technical assistance on technical legal aspects relating to food and agriculture.