“A social forum will start its work in 2002 to follow up on situations of poverty and destitution throughout the world, bearing in mind that this amounts to complete and permanent denial of the rights of persons. The first session will focus on the relationship between poverty reduction and the realization of the right to food.”

The persistent hunger suffered by hundreds of millions in a world of plenty is widely recognized to be an affront to humanity. The leaders of the world assembled in Rome in 1996 for the World Food Summit declared it intolerable and unacceptable that more than 800 million people, most of them in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. They therefore pledged their commitment and political will to eradicate hunger. When they meet five years later to follow up the World Food Summit, they should move from generalities to adoption of concrete steps conducive to the implementation of the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. That right is set out in core human rights instruments, notably in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Each State party to that Covenant is obliged to ensure that everyone under its jurisdiction has access to the minimum essential food.

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This is sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe food to ensure freedom from hunger. The United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has pointed out that this right imposes three levels of obligations on States parties: to respect, protect and fulfil. The obligation to respect existing access to adequate food requires States parties not to take any measures that result in preventing such access. The obligation to protect requires measures by the State to ensure that enterprises or individuals do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food. The obligation to fulfil, or facilitate, means the State must engage in activities intended to strengthen people's access to and utilization of resources and means to ensure their livelihood, including food security. Whenever an individual or group is unable, for reasons beyond control, to enjoy the right to adequate food by the means at their disposal, States have the obligation to fulfil (provide) that right directly. This obligation also applies for persons who are victims of natural or other disasters. Steps to ensure everyone's freedom from hunger requires proper mapping and monitoring to find out which groups are food insecure, the factors causing their insecurity, and whether the steps taken to redress this have the intended effect. The cause of hunger is generally not to be found in a lack of sufficient food on the world market, but in the inability of food-insecure groups to produce or procure food. Many living in the rural areas of developing countries are either landless or unable to produce enough, including food, to make a decent living. Their sources of livelihood are sometimes destroyed. The land rights of indigenous peoples have sometimes remained unrecognized and their land encroached upon by others.

Part of the problem of hunger arises from discrimination against women. In sub-Saharan Africa, a large part of the small farmers are women. Their rights to land or their inheritance rights are precarious or non-existing. The HIV/AIDS epidemic has further weakened their possibility to make a living for themselves and their families, and made the lack of inheritance rights an even greater obstacle for widows. In South Asia, another factor underlying serious malnutrition is discrimination of women within the household, with particularly serious consequences for malnutrition in the poorer sections. Undernourished mothers give birth to undernourished children, whose learning capacities are thereby often weakened. These children are likely to fail in the educational institutions and live a new generation of poverty, causing an intergenerational cycle of poverty and malnutrition.

Any discrimination in access to food or to the means and entitlements for its procurement, on the grounds of race, colour, sex or other factors, constitutes a violation of the right to food and to be free from hunger. Under international human rights law, everyone has a right to enjoy the benefit of the progress in science and technology. The FAO Panel of Eminent Experts on Ethics in Food and Agriculture pointed to the dangers of the increasing privatization of research, conducted mainly by large multinational corporations. There is a strong need for publicly funded research, which can generate methods and technologies to increase the productivity of the small farmers in developing countries.

Not only States but all members of society, including the private business sector, have responsibilities in the realization of the right to adequate food. States should adopt, in cooperation with civil society and the private sector, a national strategy to ensure food and nutrition security for all, setting up benchmarks for steps to be taken in its progressive realization, and monitor progress made and difficulties encountered in the implementation of their obligations. States have a joint and individual responsibility to cooperate in providing disaster relief and humanitarian assistance in times of emergency, though food aid should not be provided in ways which adversely affect local producers and local markets. The aim must be to facilitate the return to food self-reliance of the beneficiaries.

States should comply with their commitment under the UN Charter and international conventions to take joint and separate action to achieve the realization of everyone’s right to be free from hunger. The fundamental ethical commitment of FAO to ensure humanity’s freedom from hunger is set out in its Constitution and subsequent commitments. Together with the other food organizations - the World Food Programme and the International Fund for Agricultural Development - FAO has a primary role to play in coordinating cooperation for this purpose, in conjunction with the United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Children’s Fund, the World Bank and regional development banks. The entire United Nations family needs to be involved in promoting the realization of the right to food, particularly through the United Nations Development Assistance Framework, at the country level.

FAO Photo/R. Grisolia

Under the Subcommission on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights, a social forum will start its work in 2002 to follow up on situations of poverty and destitution throughout the world, bearing in mind that this amounts to complete and permanent denial of the rights of persons. It will propose standards and initiatives of a juridical nature, guidelines and recommendations for the consideration of other relevant UN bodies, and follow up on the agreements reached at the major world conferences and the Millennium Summit. The first session, in 2002, will have as its main item the relationship between poverty reduction and the realization of the right to food.