The Right to Food: A Global Overview (original) (raw)
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Reflection of the UN Special Rapporteur on right to food.pdf
In March 2015, international law and human rights scholars, practitioners,and students participatedin a symposium at the UCLA School of Law focusing on the challenges and opportunitiesin realizingthe rightto food in the 21"' Century. I delivered the keynote address at this event, in which I utilized my experience as the UN Special Rapporteuron the Right to Food to reflect on the current status of the right to food worldwide. In this Essay, I further elucidate issues confronting the right to food. I begin by emphasizing the importance of adopting a human rights based approach to addressinghungerandfood security. Next, I explore the development of the right to food, and the implementation of that right domestically through an analysisofthejusticiabilityoftherighttofood.I identify globalchallenges affecting the eradicationof hunger, and examine alternativesto the current food system. Finally, I conclude this Essay by offering my recommendations for fostering a coordinated internationalresponse aimed at ensuring the protectionandimplementationofthe righttofood.
The paper focuses on the problem of hunger. Hunger can be challenged, and the outcome of this challenge depends a great deal on domestic policies targeted at food security. Consequently, the role of international law in facilitating and spurring this process through the affirmation of the human right to food is examined. The right to food has developed from the formal expression embodied in the United Nations International Covenant on Economics, Social and Cultural Rights to a substantive, well-built and comprehensive legal concept also enshrined in customary norm. Its prescriptive reach spans the conduct of States in their national and international affairs; of international organizations; of transnational corporations; of individuals in their official and private capacity. A synopsis of some issues arising at the national and international level relating to agriculture and development – the principal means, in my view, for the realization of the right to food – is provided. Finally, the enforcement mechanisms for ensuring the right to food are assessed.
The right to food: Progress and pitfalls
Canadian Food Studies / La Revue canadienne des études sur l'alimentation, 2015
Over the course of the past decade the human right to adequate food has definitively emerged as a normative response to widespread food insecurity, global food crises, and to the related phenomenon of agricultural "land grabbing." This article considers both the progress and pitfalls in using the "right to food" framework to meet the paramount challenge of ensuring equitable and sustainable access to sufficient, nutritious food for all. The right to food under international human rights law The right to food, as codified under international human rights law, calls on states to ensure that all people are free from hunger and that they have physical and economic access at all times to sufficient, nutritious food that is sustainably produced. 1 As part of their duty to respect the right to food, states must refrain from measures that prevent existing access to food. The duty to protect requires states "to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of 1 As codified under the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and as interpreted by the U.N. Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ESCR Committee), this framework calls on states to immediately ensure that all people are free from hunger and to progressively ensure: "The availability of food in a quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals, free from adverse substances, and acceptable within a given culture; The accessibility of such food in ways that are sustainable and that do not interfere with the enjoyment of other human rights."
International Economic Law and the Right to Food
Rethinking Food Systems: Structural Challenges, New Strategies, and the Law (Nadia Lambek, Adrienna Wong, Leah Brilmayer & Priscilla Claeys, eds.), 2014
This chapter examines the historic and current policies and practices that have contributed to food insecurity in the global South. It analyzes the impact of international economic law on the patterns of trade and production that perpetuate food insecurity, and recommends concrete measures that the international community might take through law and regulation to promote the fundamental human right to food. Part I provides a short introduction to the right to food framework and its implications for international trade, investment, and finance. Part II places the current food crisis in historical perspective by discussing the trade and aid policies that laid the foundation for food insecurity in the global South from colonialism until the early 1980s. Part III explains how food insecurity was exacerbated by the free market reforms implemented in the global South in the last three decades pursuant to structural adjustment programs mandated by international financial institutions and to multilateral and bilateral trade agreements. Part IV discusses the impact on food security of the financial crisis, the climate crisis, and the growing acquisition of agricultural lands in the global South by foreign investors. Part V describes concrete steps that states could take to respect, protect and fulfill the right to food, both nationally and globally. Part VI concludes with a variety of proposals to better integrate human rights law, environmental law, and international trade and investment law, so as to create a more enabling global environment for the realization of the right to food.
Right to Food and Food Security: A Comparative Perspective
International Food Law How Food Law Can Balance Health, Environment and Animal Welfare, 2021
FIn the past three decades, the right to food has evolved, multiplied and diversified in such a way that it has led to an innovative definition of food security, also in the light of global health emergencies. This has also revealed the multisectorial and multidi- mensional aspects of the rights related to food, whose implementation requires the appropriate use of new technologies and scientific innovations and the benefits of which should be available for the whole society, including future generations. In this chapter, the author focuses on the attention of the essential features of the international human right to food, its evolution and its impact on regional and national legal systems. This enhances the role of the framework laws regulating the monitoring and evaluation mechanisms of the right to food and food security which, on the other hand, explains the function of the judiciary and the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights. That implies the right to equal access to adequate food and the right to live in an inclusive, safe, non-polluted environment.
From Justiciability to Justice: Realizing the Human Right to Food
The international human rights regime has recognized the right to food since its inception, yet chronic hunger remains one of the most flagrant human rights violations of our time. Food security—the ability to access adequate, nutritious food—continues to elude almost 1 billion people. In 2008, the economic downturn, coupled with environmental events affecting crop yields, caused global food prices to skyrocket. The resulting food crisis created an even greater urgency to resolve the issue of global food insecurity. This article explores the state’s role in facilitating the realization of food security in two contexts: India and Ethiopia. Le régime international des droits humains a reconnu le droit à l’alimentation depuis le tout début. Pourtant, la faim chronique demeure une des violations des droits humains les plus flagrantes de notre époque. La sécurité alimentaire – la capacité d’un individu à accéder adéquatement à des aliments nutritifs – continue d’échapper à près d’un milliard de personnes. En 2008, la récession économique, ajoutée aux incidents environnementaux ayant affecté les récoltes, a engendré une montée en flèche mondiale des coûts des aliments. La crise alimentaire qui en a résulté a rendu l’urgence de résoudre cette problématique mondiale de l’insécurité alimentaire d’autant plus importante. Cet article aborde le rôle de l’état dans la facilitation de la réalisation de la We analyze the normative content of the right to food in international law and examine the promise and realization of food security in each country. The article sets out key principles for a justice-based framework to food security, an approach based on the state’s obligation to ensure the progressive realization of the right to food and reform corrupt or dysfunctional institutions that perpetuate systemic inequality. The approach emphasizes the primacy of four interconnected strategies: (i) strengthening institutions; (ii) improving access to justice; (iii) empowering rights holders; and (iv) supporting food sovereignty.
International Law as a Meta-Framework for the Protection of the Right to Food
1. The need for an integrated approach. -2. The interplay of quantitative and qualitative aspects of the right to food. -3. The concept of 'adequacy': moving towards a human right to food in international law? -4. The normative content explained in General Comment No 12. -5. State obligations under the Covenant. -6. Breach of the standards of protection established by the Covenant. -7. Limits inherent in the universal protection system. -8. Distribution of competence in setting standards. -8.1. The role of private governance. -8.2.
Food Security Within The Framework Of Human Rights Development At International Level
2014
At the beginning of 21st century, the global society is confronted with specific phenomena as chronic starvation of entire populations, malnutrition, limited access to natural resources, urbanization, migration, pollution, industrial damages produced to natural environment, global climate change etc. As direct consequences of these phenomena, international contemporary law must develop and consolidate accordingly. The paper is making an analysis of “food security” concept from a juridical point of view, precisely from the perspective of human rights (from already consecrated human rights – as the right to life, the right to corporal and psychical integrity, the right to health, the right to have a healthy natural environment –, to new rights as the right for adequate food).