Food is a Human Right, Not a Privilege of Some

By Carolina Garcia

       Olivier de Schutter, UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food

On the Right to Food 

         Elusive as the term has been since it was first mentioned more than sixty years ago, the concept of the right to food has evolved considerably, particularly in the past two decades. It has been mentioned in numerous documents since the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, but more specifically since 1966, in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).  Article 11 of the ICESCR states the recognition of the right to “an adequate standard of living, including adequate food,” and “the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger.” It calls upon State Parties to take the necessary measures for the realization of this right: “to improve methods of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and scientific knowledge, by disseminating knowledge of the principles of nutrition and by developing or reforming agrarian systems in such a way as to achieve the most efficient development and utilization of natural resources.” 

           Unfortunately, right to food has not been fully implemented, although recently, due perhaps to impending climate changes that threaten to affect the entire world’s food supply, there has been a spark on the interest of the international community in making it a priority. 

World leaders have gathered numerous times in recognition of the right to food, but tangible measures towards its realization have been slow to come. In 1996, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) held the World Food Summit in Rome, to “reaffirm the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger." Once again the world reiterated that access to adequate and nutritious food is a fundamental right, but the number of hungry people worldwide continued to rise. At the time of the World Food Summit, it was estimated that 800 million people around the world were undernourished. Today, there are over 925 million people who cannot meet their nutritional needs.

 At the 2000 United Nations Millennium Summit, 189 world leaders, and several international organizations, signed the Millennium Declaration in recognition of the need to consider freedom, equality, solidarity, tolerance, respect for nature and shared responsibility, as fundamental and “essential values to international relations in the twenty-first century.” At the summit, member states also agreed to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), a set of eight key objectives for the improvement of the poorest people’s livelihoods. Those goals are:

·               End poverty and hunger

·               Universal Education

·               Gender equality

·               Child health

·               Maternal health

·               Combat HIV/AIDS

·               Environmental sustainability

·               Global partnership

Ending poverty and hunger is at the top of the list, with an aim to halve, by 2015, the number of people who suffer from hunger, and the number of people who live on less than one dollar a day. Opinions in this respect are divided between those who deem this goal idealistic and unrealistic, and others, like philosopher Thomas Pogge, who considers that given the current food production rates and the technological resources available, affluent countries have the capacity to achieve much more. Pogge deems these goals “grotesquely underambitious.”

In 2006, United Nations Member States adopted FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food, aiming to tackle hunger and malnutrition through a rights-based approach, where covering people’s basic needs is a matter of human rights, rather than of generosity on the part of governments and developed countries. The Guidelines, as the name implies, are a blueprint for the accomplishment of the First Millennium Development Goal, an actual tool for countries to achieve the 2015 hunger reduction target. For the first time in forty years, countries discussed concrete procedures to implement and realize “a recognized economic, social and cultural right.” 

The concept of food as a fundamental human right has been slow to evolve, but in recent years, significant changes towards a more effective approach bring hope to the idea of poverty and hunger eradication. The goals are set and the tools are ready, it is now a matter of governments implementing them, and of the international community to hold violators of the right to food accountable for their actions, as they would for any other crime against human rights.