REFLECTIONS ON THE RIGHT TO FOOD UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF NIGERIA 1999 (original) (raw)
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The Civil Society and the Political Economy of Food Security in Nigeria: A Rights–Based Advocacy
Nwanolue, BOG & Victor Chidubem Iwuoha, 2012
The reality of human existence is highly consequential upon food intake. Therefore, food is life. In paradox, however, a considerable proportion of the Nigerian population is food insecure. Hence, as estimated, well over 65 percent Nigerians, languishing in abject hunger and malnutrition do not have genuine life at all in them. Obviously, the productive capacity of the agro economy has diminished dramatically. Critical factors such as human conflict, poor agro-based research, deforestation, overconcentration on bio-fuel usage, climate change, i.e. desertification/desert encroachment, flood, drought, erosion, etc, are major challenges. On its part, the government has flopped tragically in fulfilling its social contract with the people. No tangible effort has been gallantly invested in cushioning or addressing the question of food crisis in the country. Amidst these concerns, hereto, the role of the civil society becomes of utmost value in questing for elaborate food security in the country. Therefore, this paper adopts qualitative mechanism of data collection and analysis. We argue that the rights perspective to food security is germane. It is therefore the responsibility of the people to collectively demand their food rights from the leadership. As such, safety and relevant enforceable laws must be set in motion if food security is to be anticipated in Nigeria.
THE STATE, GLOBALISM AND MALNUTRITION: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF FOOD AND NUTRITION POLICY IN NIGERIA
ABSTRACT The intent of this paper is to examine the politics of Nigeria’s food and nutrition policy, as well the political economy of its associated intervention programmes. The focus is on the interplay of forces that informed the character of food and agricultural production, and their attempts to shape Nigeria’s Food and Nutrition Policy along the line of their dominant interest. The ideas and values attached to the dominant trend, which informs the courses action pursued in the process of making available what is necessary in terms of food to the majority of populace is also examined. In Nigeria, like in most Third world countries that were engulfed in a severe economic crisis associated with the transition to market economy driven by globalism, the problems of malnutrition were hardly the priority of the state. This was the trend in Nigeria until such a stage was reach in which the severity and apparent consequences of malnutrition had reached an alarming proportion. Global capitalist economic crisis has made the first decade of the twenty-first century a very difficult period for the Nigerian people. The rising level of malnutrition and household food insecurity has become the dominant trend among the families of the majority of the populace. This has been the trend since the incorporation of the Nigerian political economy into global capitalism. The process has become more intense at the close of the century, with the return of virtually almost disappeared poverty stricken diseases that were associated with malnutrition. Economic restructuring initiated by both colonial and post-colonial state in Nigeria, which was aimed at generating development under the aegis of capitalism, had failed. It is not any longer in doubt that the adverse development in Nigeria’s political economy has engendered the ‘feminisation of poverty’. This has increased substantially the number of poverty-stricken people among the peasantry, most especially children who were exposed to poor food and nutrient deficiencies. This situation that the majority of Nigerian people found themselves in which 43% of their children under the age of five years were stunted and suffer from chronic malnutrition, no doubt call forth for a comprehensive national food and nutrition policy, as well as nutrition intervention programmes.
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.
Food Security in Nigeria: An Overview
European Journal of Sustainable Development
No doubt, food is life; hence, food has become an instrument of national power. It iswithin that imperatival need for food that this paper takes a cursory look at the issue inall its ramifications. The paper with a comprehensive review of Nigeria’s agriculturalpolicy noted that much still needs to be done if the crisis in the sector will not escalatemore so, in a supposedly democratic dispensation which expectedly should promote thevalue of welfarism. The paper infers that Nigeria needs to come up with food policywhich for now it lacks. What public policy makers pursue is merely an agricultural policythat still suffers enormously from a wide gap between intent and actual practices.
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
Challenges of Food Security in Nigeria : Options before Government
Oman Chapter of Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review, 2014
There has been renewed interest in food security related issues in many developing nations. This revival is occasioned by the dramatic rise in food prices across the globe occasioned by increased global food demand, diminishing global food reserves, erratic weather patterns, increased cost of petroleum products and illegal land use among others. In Nigeria, several agricultural policies have been formulated to curtail food security challenges. Unfortunately, these policies have not yielded the desired results of increase food production. This paper, thus, explores the various challenges confronting food security in Nigeria with a view of highlighting the reasons that account for these problems. The paper also suggests ways of address these challenges and concludes by positing that the task of feeding the populace adequately constitutes an increasing challenge, requiring the coordinated efforts and interaction of food producers, transporters, market operators and a myriad of retailers.
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.