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The Right to Food

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THE RIGHT TO FOOD A fundamental human right affirmed by the United Nations and recognized in regional treaties and numerous national constitutions Brochure prepared by Christophe Golay, advisor to the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food and Melik Özden, director of the CETIM’s Human Rights Program and permanent representative of the CETIM to the United Nations in Geneva Part of a series of the Human Rights Programme of the Europe-Third World Centre (CETIM) INTRODUCTION The right to food is a human right. It is universal , acknowledged at the national, regional and international level, and applies to every per- son and group of persons. Currently, however, some 852 million persons throughout the world are seriously – and permanently – undernourished, 815 million of whom are in developing countries, 28 million in countries in transition and 9 million in developed (“industrialized”) countries. Furthermore, every five seconds, a child under ten years of age dies of hunger or malnutrition 1 – more than 5 million per year! Out of these 852 million persons, 50% are small farmers, 20% are landless rural dwellers, 10% are nomadic herders, or small-scale fish- ermen, and 10% live in urban poverty. Barely 5% are affected by food emergency situations arising from armed conflicts, by exceptional cli- matic conditions (mainly drought or floods) or by violent economic transitions 2. Of the 5 million children dying each year from hunger and the side effects of malnutrition, only 10% are victims of armed conflict or famine. Thus, the causes of undernourishment and of death from hunger and malnutrition are immensely complex, and they cannot be simply attrib- uted to war or natural catastrophes . They are primarily due to social injustice , to political and economic exclusion and to discrimination . Hundreds of millions of undernourished persons suffer from politi- cal and social exclusion while their right to food is violated . Political and Social Exclusion These hundreds of millions of persons are effectively excluded from all decision-making processes, even when their lives are directly af- fected by the decisions. They have no political power, nobody repre- sents them, and nobody asks them their opinion. They are equally 1 United Nations Food and Agricultural Organization, The State of Food Insecurity in the World , 2004: http://www.fao.org/documents/show_cdr.asp?url_file=/docrep/007/y5650e/y5650e00.htm 2 Ibid. 3 excluded from all access to those resources that would enable them to lead a dignified life , free from hunger . Indeed, although the quantity of food available throughout the world today is more than sufficient to feed the entire world’s population, these 852 million persons remain undernourished because they do not have access to sufficient produc- tive resources, (essentially, land, water, seeds, but also fishing) nor an income sufficient to allow them to provide themselves, as well as their families, with a dignified life free from hunger. This situation is inti- mately linked to the unequal terms of North-South trade. Josué de Castro (1908-1973), a Brazilian sociologist and chairman of the executive committee of the United Nations Food and Agricul- tural Organization (FAO), summed it up thus: “Hunger is exclusion – exclusion from the land, from income, jobs, wages, life and citizenship. When a person gets to the point of not having anything to eat, it is because all the rest has been denied. This is a modern form of exile. It is death in life ...” 3 Violation of the Right to Food If there are 852 million persons undernourished in the world, the right to food is being violated at any given moment in practically all countries. Except for some rare cases, no complaint has ever been lodged, no government has ever been sued, no victim has ever obtained redress and compensation . The right to food is a human right and not a political option that governments can choose to implement or to ignore. Acknowledging this means obligations for governments. It is neither normal nor toler- able that governments observe only their obligations arising from eco- nomic and commercial agreements on the international level, and this to the detriment of their obligations regarding human rights, which are, moreover, often incompatible with trade agreements. Yet the primacy of human rights over any economic or commercial agreement has been affirmed over and over again by resolutions adopted by U.N. bodies and by its member states. 3 Right to Food Case Study: Brazil, February 2004, p. 9, FAO Documents IGWG RTFG /INF 4/APP.1: www.fao.org/righttofood/common/ecg/51629_fr_template_case_study_Brazil_Annex.pdf 4 In point of fact, the means of demanding one’s right to food and the chances of obtaining redress depend for the most part on the information and enforcement mechanisms available at the national, regional and international level. With this in mind, this brochure can be said to have a double purpose: - to contribute to a clarification of the available information about the right to food; - to set out the monitoring and enforcement mechanisms, on the na- tional, regional and international level, to which victims can have recourse when their right to food is violated. The majority of social movements, groups, and non-governmental organizations committed to the defense of the rights of the oppressed master neither the theory of the international instruments nor the workings of their practical application at the national level. It is hoped that this document will provide a tool for these movements so that, in their continuing struggles, they may demand recognition and realization of the right to food. • The first part of the brochure deals with the definition and the sub- stance of the right to food. • The second part deals with pertinent international and regional texts. • The third discusses governments’ obligations and practices. • The fourth covers practical aspects of realizing this right and the mechanisms for monitoring and redress available at the national, re- gional and international level to protect those persons or groups of persons who are most vulnerable and whose right to food has been violated. 5 I. DEFINITION AND SUBSTANCE OF THE RIGHT TO FOOD 1. Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food For the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, Mr. Jean Ziegler, the right to food is the right to have regular, perma- nent and free access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to food that is quantitatively and qualitatively adequate, corresponds to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and that ensures a physical and mental life, both individual and collective, that is fulfilling and dignified, free of fear. 4 The right to food includes the right to be helped if one cannot take care of oneself, but it is, above all, “the right to be able to feed oneself in dignity” 5. It also includes access to resources and to the means to en- sure and produce one’s own subsistence: access to land, to security and to prosperity; access to water and to seeds, to credit, to technology and to local and regional markets, including (and especially) for groups that are vulnerable and subject to discrimination; access to traditional fish- ing areas for fishing communities that depend on such areas for their subsistence; access to a level of income sufficient to enable one to live in dignity, including for rural and industrial workers, as well as access to social security and to social assistance for the most deprived. 2. The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights According to the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (cf. chapter IV.3), the main U.N. body concerned with overseeing the implementation of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights: 4 Cf. United Nations Document E/CN.4/2001/53, par. 14 : http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G01/110/35/PDF/G0111035.pdf?OpenEl ement 5 This is the position that Mr. Jean Ziegler, Special Rapporteur on the Right to food, defended before the General Assembly in November 2004, A/59/385, Paragraph 5: http://daccessdds.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N04/525/17/PDF/N0452517.pdf. 6 “the right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to the inherent dig- nity of the human person and is indispensable for the fulfillment of other human rights enshrined in the International Bill of Human Rights 6. It is also inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social poli- cies, at both the national and international levels, oriented to the eradication of poverty and the fulfillment of all human rights for all.” 7 The Committee further asserts: “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement 8.” The right to food thus has two essential components: the availability of food and access to it. First, a culturally acceptable diet, sufficient in both quantity and quality to satisfy the nutritional needs of the individual, must be avail- able to each person. In other words, each person should be able to ob- tain it either directly from the land or other natural resources or from distribution systems that purvey the food to those who require it. Second, every person must have access, physically and economi- cally, to food. Physically means that every person, including those physically vulnerable such as infants and young children, the aged, the handicapped, the sick in terminal phases of their illnesses and the in- firm suffering from persistent medical problems, must have access to an adequate diet. Economically means that the spending of a person, of a household or of a community to ensure an adequate diet should not jeopardize the enjoyment of other human rights, such as the right to health, the right to adequate housing, the right to education, etc.
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