In response to North Korea's famine issue, Argentina's ambassador to Sweden, Juan Carlos Vignaud, said on Monday in Tokyo that the Food and Agriculture Organization should go wherever it is needed.
Vignaud is in Japan to lobby support for his bid to take over the reins of the U.N. body.
The organization's main aims are to help increase levels of nutrition around the world, make food production and distribution more efficient and to "raise the standard of living of the impoverished," Vignaud said.
Vignaud called for streamlining of the FAO, saying that the agency "has lost its efficiency.
While criticizing the "extremely autocratic and vertical" nature of the current FAO administration, Vignaud said in a news conference in Tokyo that he laments the "sharp decrease" in the past six years of investment by the FAO into its field programs, which provide assistance for agricultural projects in needy regions.
Vignaud said investment between 1992, when current FAO Director General Jacques Diouf began his six-year tenure, and the present had nearly halved, from $880 million to less than $420 million.
Such decreases "are really difficult to accept," the ambassador said, especially in Africa where investment cuts are "even more dramatic."
Vignaud also criticized the "lack of transparency in the investment of resources," the "lack of accountability of what FAO is doing" and the "increase in the bureaucracy" of the FAO.
About 85 percent of the organization's regular budget is spent on salaries, he said. Japan contributes more than 20 percent of the FAO's budget, he said.