Framework Law on the Right to Food: An International and South African Perspective (original) (raw)
Related papers
The Human Right to Food , 2019
Abstract This dissertation examines the state of the human right to food and the post-1991 [Ethiopian] state’s compliance with its human right to food obligations as envisaged by the relevant international human rights instruments, i.e. the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and the International Convention on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). The study was undertaken in varying socio-economic contexts of Ethiopia, among the communities living in the rural Simada Woreda in the Amhara National Regional State and urban Gulele Sub-city of the Addis Ababa City. Deriving from the right to existence, the human right to food guarantees every human being the entitlement to be free from hunger and to have unrestricted access to food that is adequate in both quantity and quality that in turn would enable the right holder to live a healthy and active life. In this respect, in its very essence, the human right to food entitles right holders to have access to the means to feed themselves in dignity. Despite the affirmation of the right by the UDHR and the ICESCR since the second quarter of the 20th century, the right to food remains to be one of the most violated human rights around the world. As per the recent estimates of the FAO (2017), about 1 billion people around the world and about 40 million people in Ethiopia have been victims of hunger and undernutrition. The central aim of this study is, therefore, to investigate the state of the realization of the human right to food in varying socioeconomic contexts of Ethiopia, in the rural Simada woreda of the Amhara National Regional State and Gulele Sub-city of Addis Ababa City Administration. For this purpose, the study has adopted a qualitative multidisciplinary case study approach. Accordingly, information was gathered through document analysis, interviews, and focus group discussion. The state of the realization of the human right to food has been analyzed based on the human right to food constituting elements; availability, accessibility, and adequacy and correspondingly, the compliance of the state to the right to food obligations has been investigated on the basis of state obligation normative standards; recognition, respect, protection and fulfilment of the right, respectively. The finding of the study reveals that the human right to food is currently a mass violated right in the case study areas. The existing national legislation and policies of the state are not adequately addressing the demands of the realization of the human right to food. Often, as discussed in chapter four and following chapters, the national legislation and policies of the state and their implementation rather than providing the required respect and protection, they themselves contravene with the right. Though the Constitution of Ethiopia has paid tribute to the ICESCR by giving it access to the local legal system (Article 9(4) and Article 13(2)) and the human right to food can also be presumed as a guaranteed right within the purview of right to life, Article 15, an overt and express provision protecting the human right to food is lacking. At the level of practice, apart from foreign-funded food aid and the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP) of the government which is currently under implementation only in selected rural Woredas, there has been no alternative or available social security scheme to the most and the chronically food-insecure people in Ethiopia. Particularly, to the dismay of the urban poor, PSNP and other safety net program are not yet functionally available. On top of this, the government is not opting to put the right to food among its policy priority list, in both rural and urban contexts. This thesis, therefore, argues, there is a compelling need to recognize the human right to food expressly and unequivocally under the human rights chapter of the FDRE constitution. For such a recognition would be a major milestone, though not a panacea, to address the problem. It would facilitate the realization of the right to food, and help the state and its agencies to comply with their constitutional obligations to the right and to hold them accountable accordingly. Apart from this, a human right to food legal framework would support the effort to better realize the right by providing the details on the right and its means of enforcement. Moreover, it is argued here that there is a need for a paradigmatic shift in policy approach from ‘food security’ to ‘food sovereignty’. For food security is a technical term, not a legal one, and does not put a duty on the state for the realization of the same. On the other hand, food sovereignty, both as a policy alternative and a grass-root social movement, underscores food as a fundamental human right. Therefore, as discussed in chapter seven, it would be instrumental to the realization of the right. Finally, yet importantly, this study has suggested that through more democratic governance that ensures participation, accountability, non-discrimination, transparency, human dignity, empowerment, and rule of law the human right to food can be better realized. Key Terms: Freedom, Hunger, Malnutrition, Poverty, Right to Food, State Obligation
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."
The interface between the rights to social protection and to adequate food lies primarily in the ‘transfers’ that enable individuals to have physical and financial access to the food they need for an active and healthy life in dignity. The right to adequate food will not be realized through the right to social protection alone, but the latter can play a critical role, for those who are not able to earn a living or grow their own food because of their age, health or disability. Social protection can also be crucial for those who are able to work and do have some resources for food production, but are not able to optimize this because of poverty. This paper intends to contribute to the evolving thinking about the interface between the right to social protection and the right to adequate food, and to advocate for the need for legal underpinnings.
Ensuring Food Security Through the Human Right to Adequate Food
By considering how the right to adequate food has been interpreted and applied in international law, I argue that there are important pragmatic reasons to appeal to the right to adequate food in promoting and ensuring food security. I respond to practical and conceptual objections against recognizing the right to adequate food as a human right. First, I consider the objection that the right to adequate food, like other socio-economic rights, is not a real human right because it cannot be enforced by courts in the same way as civil-political rights (the justiciability objection). In addition to considering how the right to adequate food and other socio-economic rights have been legally enforced by courts or monitoring bodies in international law and in other domestic legal systems, I also consider how some socio-economic rights have been protected in state constitutions within the United States and how courts have enforced these, an area that is often neglected in discussions of socio-economic rights in the United States. I also respond to a more conceptual objection that the right to adequate food and other rights to goods and services are not real rights or real normative claims since it is not clear who has a duty to fulfill these rights (the claimability objection). Onora O’Neill provides the strongest defense of this objection. While I agree that these rights will remain empty manifesto rights until corresponding duties are specified and allocated, I argue that duties need to be defined automatically from the idea of the right itself or pre-institutionally, as O'Neill suggests. In my response, I consider different dimensions of the right to adequate food and recent issues in the United States that can be addressed by this right, such as food deserts.
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.
The judicialisation of the right to adequate food: a comparative study of India and South Africa
Commonwealth Law Bulletin, 2017
This article discusses the normative framework for the recognition of the right to adequate food under international and regional human rights law. It then examines the relevance of judicialisation of the right to food in India and South Africa. The article observes that while the right to food is not explicitly recognised in the Indian Constitution, the courts have purposively interpreted the Constitution with a view to holding the government accountable to its obligation under international and national law. It concludes by examining lessons South Africa can draw from the Indian experience.