WHAT DRIVES THE NGOs?The motivation behind NGO and social movement action can best be summarized as follows: � While the right to food is fully recognized legally, its realization is still highly deficient. More concrete steps towards its implementation are needed from states. Nevertheless, an active civil society is indispensable to enhance efforts towards a better implementation of the right to food. � Hunger and malnutrition are fundamentally questions of justice. The right of every human being to food and the sustenance of life is an essential part of human rights, and the time has come to realize the importance of economic, social and cultural rights and, in particular, the fundamental right to food. This is a tough challenge for states, NGOs and social movements.
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While development policies in general advance, the development NGOs are taking the overall framework conditions of state policies more and more seriously. Government priorities and the general development orientation of government policies are among the issues that are increasingly judged to be the keys to successful development projects. The rights approach also focuses on government responsibilities, so development NGOs are starting to become more interested in using an economic, social and cultural rights approach as a reference point in their work. A growing number of NGOs emphasize that the responsibility of implementing the right to food lies not only with states, but also, and increasingly, with other actors. This was made especially clear in the Profit for Few or Food for All resolution of the NGO Forum at the WFS. The NGOs stated that "the globalization of the world economy, along with the lack of accountability of multilateral corporations and spreading patterns of overconsumption have increased world poverty." This statement highlights the fact that many actors - including civil society - have responsibilities in supporting the realization of the right to food. Nevertheless, the NGOs emphasized the special role of states in guaranteeing it: "The shame of global hunger and malnutrition compels action by all. At the same time, we insist that governments have the primary and ultimate responsibility to ensure national and global food security." NGO draft Code of ConductRegional and international NGOs embraced the idea of a code of conduct on the right to adequate food and made it one of their main lobbying aims for the WFS. The NGOs saw two of the functions of such a code as being particularly important. First, a code of conduct would reduce existing weaknesses in the human rights instruments that recognize the right to adequate food. One of these weaknesses is the lack of precise descriptions of the legal concepts contained in the right to adequate food and of the corresponding state obligations mentioned in the ICESCR. Second, there are legal lacunae as to what impact intergovernmental policies (e.g. the structural adjustment programmes of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - IMF) and private actors (e.g. transnational corporations) will have on the right to adequate food and these too could be addressed, in a first step, by formulating a code of conduct on the right to adequate food. During the WFS, the plenary of the parallel NGO Forum therefore proposed such a code of conduct as one of their two key demands. In their final political statement, Profit for Few or Food for All: Food Sovereignty and Security to Eliminate the Globalization of Hunger, the NGOs in Rome concluded under point 6: "International law must guarantee the right to food, ensuring that
food sovereignty takes precedence over macroeconomic policies and trade
liberalization.[...] A few NGOs were mandated at the NGO Forum to formulate a code of conduct in the course of 1997 for discussion at a subsequent international NGO conference. The NGOs' draft Code of Conduct on the Human Right to Adequate Food has been available since the end of September 1997. The aim of this process is to place the proposed Code of Conduct on to the agendas of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the FAO Committee on World Food Security (CFS). The NGOs behind this initiative have developed a two-pronged strategy for their campaign: "An international instrument should be adopted by states, drawing on the International Code of Conduct on the Human Right to Adequate Food. The mandate for the preparation of such an instrument was given by the World Food Summit to the High Commissioner for Human Rights. Such a new international instrument must therefore be adopted by the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and subsequently by the Economic and Social Council of the United Nations (ECOSOC). Due to the fact that improving the right to adequate food was identified in Rome as one of the major tools for the implementation of the World Food Summit results in general, it is also important to get the support of the FAO Committee on World Food Security (CFS)." The support of states for the development of an international instrument drawing on the draft Code of Conduct on the Human Right to Adequate Food can only be gained if promotion and lobbying are carried out on the national as well as the international level. The pressure on individual states to implement the right to food and Summit Objective 7.4 should come from their own national civil societies and national-level promotion and lobbying should, therefore, be done by national NGOs and social movements. The Code of Conduct can also be used as a tool for strengthening the understanding and implementation of the right to adequate food at the national level. As an educational instrument it can be used to:
It should be used by national NGOs to inform other NGOs and social movements about economic, social and cultural rights in general and the right to adequate food in particular. It can also be used to show how human rights and the procedures and advocacy they entail can be used at national and international levels for better implementation of the right to adequate food and nutrition. According to the strategy decision, as many NGOs as possible are now being asked to endorse the idea of the Code and, in 1999, coordinated lobbying will be carried out with the aim of placing the proposal on the CFS and CHR agendas. 3 See Extracts from international instruments. |
The draft Code of
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CONTENTS Preamble Section A PART IV
EXTRACTS PART II 1 a) the availability of food, free from adverse substances and culturally
acceptable, in a quantity and quality which will satisfy the nutritional and dietary needs
of individuals; Article 5 PART IV PART V
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