The global Food Challenge Towards a Human rigHTs approacH To Trade and invesTmenT policies Table of ConTenTs The Global food Challenge: Introduction 3 Sophia Murphy and Armin Paasch Executive summary 6 Sophia Murphy and Armin Paasch A. FundamenTals 13 I. A Human Rights Approach to Trade and Investment Policies 14 Olivier De Schutter II. Agricultural Trade Liberalization in Multilateral and Bilateral Trade Negotiations 29 Tobias Reichert B. Case StudIes on Trade, InvesTmenT and The rIGhT To food 39 III. World Agricultural Trade and Human Rights – 40 Case studies on violations of the right to food of small farmers Armin Paasch IV. Foreign Investment and the Right to Food 50 Rolf Künnemann V. Women at the Center of the Global Food Challenge 60 Alexandra Spieldoch C. New ChallenGes and ThreaTs 67 VI. The Role of Speculation in the 2008 Food Price Bubble 68 Peter Wahl VII. Deepening the Food Crisis? 79 Climate change, food security and the right to food Thomas Hirsch, Christine Lottje and Michael Windfuhr 1 THe GLobal FooD CHALLenge – Towards a human rIGhTs approaCh To Trade and InvesTmenT polICIes D. Human rIGhTs based alTernaTIves and Tools 91 VIII. An overview of Human Rights Instruments to Raise Concerns 92 About Trade and Investment Policies Elvira Domínguez Redondo and Magdalena Sepúlveda Carmona IX. Towards a Convention on the Rights of Peasants 102 Christophe Golay X. Bridging the Divide: A human rights vision for global food trade 112 Sophia Murphy and Carin Smaller List of abbreviations 125 List of authors 127 Imprint 128 2 The Global food ChallenGe: InTroduction t started with the tortilla crisis in mexico. slum vestment in agriculture. reduced orders and bankrupt- dwellers had to renounce their daily staple food cies, especially in export sectors, destroyed the jobs of I because of exploding corn prices. Their loud pro- millions of people. and extreme inflation in a number test in January 2007 was just the first in a series of of developing countries meant domestic food prices food riots1 in about 40 countries. The last straw came did not drop, despite lowering world market prices in april 2008, in haiti, when car tires burned in, barri- for agricultural commodities. To top it all off, the Inter- cades were built and the prime minister was overthrown. national monetary fund (Imf) says overseas develop- finally the global food crisis was a story for primetime ment aid (ODA) might decline by 25 percent in 2009 in the international media. an almost unprecedented (FAO 2009b). price explosion for important agricultural commodi- ties on the global market triggered the crisis. The price It would be unfair to say that the world’s governments hikes were caused by growing use of commodities (such and the international community remained passive as soybean and maize) for agrofuels; excessive specula- in the face of the food crisis. In 2008, this global hu- tion on commodities’ futures markets; increased meat man disaster (which was a long time in the making) consumption; poor harvests in the united states, aus- finally attracted the public attention it deserves. a range tralia and Turkey; increased oil and energy prices; of international conferences like the high level Confer- and, depleted food stocks. In the first half of 2008 ence on world food security organized by the FAO in alone, prices for food staples such as rice and cooking oil June 2008 in rome, a high level Conference in January doubled (FAO 2009a). 2009 in madrid and the G8 summits in 2008 and 2009 made it clear that hunger had reached the top of the particularly in those countries that most relied on food international agenda. since april 2008, the reaction imports, this international development was almost of the international community to the food crisis has immediately reflected in the prices of food on grocery been coordinated by the high level Task force on the store shelves. and within these countries, the people Global food Crisis (hlTf), which was initiated by un who were most affected were the poor. several hundred secretary General ban Ki-moon and which is composed million more people joined the ranks of those unable of all un organizations dealing with food and agri- to afford their daily food. The food and agriculture culture, as well as the world bank, the Imf and the organization (FAO) of the united nations (un) esti- world Trade organization (wTo). mates that, because of higher food prices, the number of chronically undernourished people increased from In July 2008, the hlTf released a Comprehensive frame- 850 million to 915 million between 2005 and 2009. work for action (CFA). The document sets out the joint In June 2009, the news worsened: for the first time in position of hlTf members on proposed action to over- human history the number of hungry people passed come the food crisis (hlTf 2008). like other recent one billion. It is striking that record hunger in 2009 reports of intergovernmental organizations (IGos), such followed record grain harvests in 2008. FAO clearly as the world development report 2008 of the world stated: The increase in undernourishment is not a re- bank (wb 2008a), the CFA recommended that policy- sult of limited international food supplies (FAO 2009b). makers pay more attention to agriculture and increase In 2009 the global grain harvest would only modestly their support for the sector for smallholder farmers in fall short of the previous year’s record output level of particular. The CFA calls for developing countries to 2,287 million metric tons. increase public spending in agricultural and rural de- velopment to at least 10 percent of the budget, and Instead, FAO identifies the main cause of still-rising for developed countries to increase the percentage of hunger levels as the global financial and economic ODA dedicated to food and agricultural development crisis, whose effects overlap with and worsen those of from 3 percent (where it is today) to at least 10 per- the food price crisis. since autumn 2008, international cent within the next five years. These are propos- agricultural commodity prices have dropped signifi- als that point in the right direction. also welcome is cantly but real domestic average prices for food staples the declared objective to strengthen social protection are still 24 percent above June 2007 levels. as a conse- systems. all of these measures, against the backdrop quence of financial market deregulation and specula- of soaring food prices, are more important than ever. tion on commodity exchanges in industrialized coun- on the other hand, social movements and nGos are tries, the economic crisis hit the global south with full critical of the CFA for promoting the old paradigm strength. scarcity of loans blocked badly needed in- of trade liberalization, ignoring the need for land 3 THe GLobal FooD CHALLenge – Towards a human rIGhTs approaCh To Trade and InvesTmenT polICIes reforms and more sustainable methods of production and however, governments and intergovernmental organi- following a very narrow understanding of social security zations (IGos) are still largely neglecting these human (fIan International 2008). There is still a lot of work rights obligations and risk repeating many of the same to be done to get the global policy agenda right. errors that caused the food crisis. The papers com- piled in this publication analyze some of these errors: The declarations and promises were followed by action the displacement of farming communities from their (brock and paasch 2009). since June 2008 alone, the local markets through a combination of export dumping world food programme (wfp) has spent $5.1 billion usd by industrialized countries and forced market access in on food aid (the larger share) and, to a lesser degree, on developing countries (see chapters 2 by Tobias reichert cash for work programs. The world bank set up a Glob- and 3 by armin paasch); forced land evictions of small- al food Crisis response programme (GFRP) in 2008 to scale farmers and rural workers as a result of investment grant immediate relief to those countries that were hit in large scale plantations for cash crops or agrofuels and particularly hard by high food prices and to assist coun- insecure land rights (see chapter 4 by rolf Künnemann) tries to meet higher production and marketing costs (WB and a systematic neglect and discrimination of women, 2009). The world bank announced a rapid financing fa- who make up around 70 percent of the hungry, in food cility of $1.2 billion usd to this end. The budget was and agriculture policies (see chapter 5 by alexandra increased to $2 billion usd in april 2009 (wb 2009). spieldoch). The right to food of these marginalized FAO launched its Initiative on soaring food prices (Isfp) food producers and poor urban consumers was further in 2007. between June 2008 and september 2009, it mo- undermined though excessive speculation in the fu- bilized around $37 million usd of its own resources and ture markets in the context of the mortgage and more received an additional $311 million usd in funding to general financial crises (see chapter 6 by peter wahl). assist governments to take emergency measures, in ef- furthermore, man-made climate change is heavily threat- forts to increase local production in the current planting ening harvests in poor countries in africa, latin amer- season as well as to expand plantings in the dry sea- ica and asia and will hit hardest those who are already son. FAO has also supported governments with policy facing hunger. (see chapter 7 by Thomas hirsch, Chris- advice (hlTf 2009). tine lottje and michael windfuhr). The question arises, however, as to why these joint efforts These and other root causes of hunger were the subject have not had the expected result of lessening the food of the international conference The Global food Chal- crisis.