: Right to Food :: (original) (raw)

Jean Ziegler is member of the UN Human Rights Council’s Advisory Committee with an expertise on economic, social and cultural rights, in particular the right to food. For the period 2000-2008, Jean Ziegler was the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food.

Member of the Advisory Committee

In March 2008, Jean Ziegler was elected Member of the UN Human Rights Council's Advisory Committee. One year later, the Human Rights Council decided, by acclamation, to re-elect Jean Ziegler as a member of the Advisory Committee, a post he will now hold until 2012. In August 2009, the members of the Advisory Committee elected Jean Ziegler as Vice-President of the forum.

Jean Ziegler participated, with the other members of the Advisory Committee, in the drafting of the recommendation on the right to food adopted by the Committee at its second session, in January 2009. In the context of the food crisis, the Advisory Committee recommends that the Human Rights Council consider taking a number of measures to limit price volatility and ensure market stability, and consider re-establishing international buffer stocks to stabilize the price of food commodities. The recommendation also entails provisions on agricultural subsidies of developed states, on bioenergy technologies that use staple foods, on international trade agreements and their impact on the right to food.

In its resolution from 10/12 of 26 March 2009, the Human Rights Council mandated the Advisory Committee to undertake a Study on Discrimination in the Context of the Right to Food. A drafting group on the right to food, consisting of José Bengoa Cabello, Chinsung Chung, Latif Hüseynov, Jean Ziegler and Mona Zulficar has been established to work on the Study.

In August 2009, during the third session of the Advisory Committee, Jean Ziegler presented two studies - 'The tragedy of Noma' and 'Peasant Farmers and the Right to Food: a History of Discrimination and Exploitation' - intended to serve as background papers for the Study on Discrimination in the Context of the Right to Food. The first background study deals with noma, a disease that affects preponderantly malnourished children living in conditions of extreme poverty. The paper analyzes noma from a right to food perspective since malnutrition is the main risk factor of this child-mutilating disease. The second background paper focuses on peasants and the ways they are discriminated and exploited in many parts of the world. Expropriation of land, forced evictions and displacements are explored as some of the main causes of violations suffered by peasants. The paper addresses the extreme vulnerability of women peasants and the importance of transformative and redistributive agrarian reform in this context, as well as for the realization of the right to food of farmers more generally. Lastly, the background study looks at the proposals put forward by social movements such as Via Campesinaintended to structurally tackle the widespread discrimination against peasants. An outstanding example is the Declaration of Rights of Peasants - Women and Men by Via Campesina.

The food crisis, the economic crisis and the environmental crisis have deepened already existing inequalities between the world’s regions and the vulnerability of the poorest members of developing countries. In 2009, for the first time in history, more than 1 billion people were undernourished worldwide. The people most vulnerable to hunger and malnutrition include people working in rural areas, the urban poor, women, children, refugees, indigenous people, disabled people, the elderly and other minorities. Most of these people are hungry because they suffer from many forms of discrimination (para 85).

In January 2011 the Committee also adopted the Preliminary Study on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas prepared by the drafting group on the right to food. This Study was mandated by the Human Rights Council (resolution 13/4 of 19 March 2010) as an effort to research the ways and means to further advance the rights of people working in rural areas, proven to be one of the most discriminated and vulnerable groups in respect to the right to food.

Former Special Rapporteur

In September 2000, Jean Ziegler was appointed by the UN Commission on Human Rights as the UN’s first Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He fulfilled this mandate until 30 April 2008 and was followed since May 2008 by Olivier de Schutter.

As Special Rapporteur, Jean Ziegler's job was to ensure that governments were meeting their obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food of all people. In their Resolution 2000/10, the Commission outlined the mandate of the Special Rapporteur. His role was to:

- Receive information and highlight violations of the right to food.

- Cooperate with UN agencies, international organisations and NGOs to put the right to food into practice around the world.

- Identify emerging issues related to the right to food.

In Resolution 2001/25, the Commission asked him also to:

- Look at the question of drinking water and its relation to the right to food.

- Contribute to the review of the implementation of the World Food Summit 1996 Declaration and Plan of Action.

- Adopt a gender perspective in his work.

Each April, the Special Rapporteur submitted an annual report on his work to the Commission on Human Rights and since 2006 to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. At the request of the Commission, Jean Ziegler also submitted each November an annual report to the UN General Assembly. In these general conceptual reports, the Special Rapporteur focused on strengthening the normative framework of the right to food by examining emerging issues and those requiring urgent attention, such as gender discrimination, trade liberalisation, genetically modified food, food sovereignty, armed conflict, nutrition, and justiciability. For a full list of annual reports to the Commission on Human Rights and the Human Rights Council, as well as to the UN General Assembly see the Publicationssection of this website.

The Special Rapporteur undertook a series of country missions inquiring into the situation of the right to food in several countries from the different regions of the world. It is noteworthy that the Special Rapporteur could only carry out missions to countries where the Government had officially accepted his visit. During the country missions the focus of the UN Special Rapporteur was to examine the progress made by states in realising the right to food over time, to monitor the situation of vulnerable groups, especially those that suffer from discrimination, as well as to monitor compliance with the obligations to respect, protect and fulfil the right to food. See Publicationsfor a full list of his country mission reports.

As part of the protective role of the Special Rapporteur, Jean Ziegler received several communications from individuals, groups and NGOs during his mandate. Every year, since 2007, a report on communications to the governments and the reply of the latter has been published as Addendumto the respective annual reports to the Human Rights Council.