In Ghana rice and beans are mixed together and cooked to make wakye
The right to food means access to enough food to meet the basic nutritional needs of
everyone. |
The Heads of State and Government gathered
in Rome at the World Food Summit at the invitation of FAO, reaffirmed on November 13 1996
the right of everyone to have access to safe and nutritious food, consistent with the
right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. They
considered it intolerable that more than 800 million people throughout the world, and
particularly in developing countries, do not have enough food to meet their basic
nutritional needs, and pledged their political will and their common and national
commitment to achieving food security for all and to an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger
in all countries. They formally renewed their commitment to the right to adequate food and
recommended that the content of this right be defined more clearly and ways to implement
it be identified.
The international human rights system
The contemporary international human rights system was born in 1948 when
the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights
(UDHR) as "... a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to
the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration
constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these
rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure
their universal and effective recognition and observance."
The "Four Freedoms" address of United States President
Roosevelt, in January 1941, was of special importance in the preparation of the
Declaration, which included freedom from want as one of those rights.1
In the negotiations for the UDHR in 1947-1948, the United States delegation played a major
role, emphasizing that economic and social rights should be included as well as the civil
rights that set out the fundamental freedoms, since - in the words of the United States
delegation - "a man in need is not a free man". In his 1944 State of the Union
address, Roosevelt had advocated the adoption of an "Economic Bill of Rights",
saying that:
"We have come to the clear realization of the fact that true
individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. `Necessitous
men are not free men.` People who are hungry and out of jobs are the stuff of which
dictatorships are made."2
The great contribution of the UDHR is that it extended the human rights
platform to embrace the whole field - civil, political, economic, social and cultural -
and interrelated the different rights, making them mutually reinforcing.
The International Bill of Human Rights includes the UDHR and the two
Covenants prepared on the basis of that Declaration, the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and
Cultural Rights (ICESCR), both adopted in 1966.
Economic, social and cultural rights constitute three interrelated
components of a more comprehensive package, with links to civil and political rights. At
the core of social rights is the right to an adequate standard of living (UDHR Article 25;
ICESCR Article 11; the International Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) Article
27). The enjoyment of these rights requires, at a minimum, that everyone shall enjoy the
necessary subsistence rights - adequate food and nutrition, clothing, housing and the
necessary conditions of care. Closely related to these rights are the right of families to
assistance, the right to property, the right to work and the right to social security, all
of which can be found in the international instruments.
The right to adequate food
According to UDHR Article 25(1), "everyone has the right to a
standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family,
including food, clothing, housing...". Under ICESCR Article 11, the States Parties
"recognize the right of everyone to an adequate standard of living for himself and
his family, including adequate food, clothing and housing...". In paragraph 2 of the
same article, the States Parties to the Covenant recognize the fundamental right of
everyone to be free from hunger and list measures to be taken individually and through
international cooperation in order to bring hunger to an end.
Under CRC Article 27, "States Parties recognize the right of every
child to a standard of living adequate for the child's physical, mental, spiritual, moral
and social development".
The right to an adequate standard of living sums up the underlying
concern of all economic and social rights, which is to integrate everyone into a humane
society. This right is closely linked to the guiding principle of the whole human rights
system, that everyone is born free and equal in dignity and rights and should act towards
each other in a spirit of fraternity (UDHR Article 1).
The general concept of adequate food can be broken down into several
elements: the food supply should be adequate, which means that the types of foodstuffs
commonly available (nationally, in local markets and, ultimately, at the household level)
should be culturally acceptable (fit in with the prevailing food or dietary culture); the
available supply should cover overall nutritional needs in terms of quantity (energy) and
quality (it should provide all the essential nutrients, including micronutrients such as
vitamins and iodine); and, last but not least, food should be safe (free of toxic elements
and contaminants) and of good quality (in terms of, for example, taste and texture).
The UDHR envisaged that everyone throughout the world should enjoy the
rights contained therein. These rights were to be absorbed into the legal, administrative
and political culture of nations, through recognition followed by implementation in
national law and administration, including any necessary political and social reforms.
Global institutions had to be set up, some of them to monitor the implementation of human
rights worldwide and others, such as FAO, to provide assistance and cooperation in
facilitating the enjoyment of these rights for all. The UDHR was initially an expression
of ideal goals to be achieved. The process of transforming these ideals into hard law at
the international level started with the adoption of the two Covenants in 1966, followed
by numerous more specific conventions. While these created obligations for states under
international law, the main task was to ensure that rights were incorporated into national
law and administrative practice, and that conditions were created under which it would be
possible for states to meet their obligations.
State obligations
Under ICESCR Article 2, States Parties have undertaken legally binding
obligations to take steps, to the maximum of their available resources, to achieve
progressively the full realization of the economic and social rights in that Covenant.
A basic misconception, which has had a negative affect on the
implementation of economic and social rights, is that such rights must be provided by the
state. In the past, this misconception caused many people to oppose economic and social
rights, on the assumption that they were costly, undermined creativity, removed incentives
and led to an overgrown state apparatus. It is now widely recognized that this view
resulted from a misunderstanding of the nature of these rights and particularly of the
corresponding state obligations.
A realistic understanding of state obligations must take into account, as
is stated in the United Nations Declaration on the Right to Development Article 2, that
the individual is the active subject, not the object, of economic and social
development. Most human beings strive to take care of their own livelihoods through their
own efforts and resources, individually or in association with others. If individuals are
to be able to use their own resources, however, they must have resources that can be used.
Typically, an individual's usable resources are land or other capital and/or labour,
combined with the knowledge necessary to achieve optimal utilization of all the other
resources he or she controls. The realization of many of an individual's economic, social
and cultural rights will, in most cases, take place within the context of a household as
the smallest economic unit. This means that attention must also be paid to the female/male
division of labour and control over production and consumption, and to various forms of
wider kinship arrangements that influence the nature and practical operation of the
concept of "family".
Since state obligations must be seen in the light of the assumption that
human beings, families and wider groups seek to find their own solutions to their needs,
states should, at the primary level, respect the resources owned by the
individual and the individual's freedom to find a job of preference, to make optimal use
of her or his own knowledge and to take the necessary actions and use the necessary
resources - alone or in association with others - to satisfy his or her own needs.
The state cannot, however, be passive in its acknowledgement of these
rights and freedoms. Third parties are likely to interfere negatively with the possible
options that individuals or groups otherwise might have had to satisfy their own needs. At
a secondary level, therefore, state obligations include active protection against
other, more assertive or aggressive subjects, in particular against more powerful economic
interests. There is a need for state protection from fraud, unethical behaviour in trade
and contractual relations, and the marketing and dumping of hazardous or dangerous
products. This protective function of the state is widely used and is the most important
aspect of state obligations with regard to economic, social and cultural rights, similar
in importance to the role of the state as protector of civil and political rights.
Significant components of the obligation to protect are already spelled
out in the existing law of most states, and legislation of this kind must be based on the
specific requirements within the individual country concerned. This is one of the reasons
for the relative vagueness in the formulations of economic and social rights in
international instruments - such rights should be clarified by specific legislation within
each country, taking into account the situation prevailing there.
At the tertiary level, the state has the obligation to facilitate
opportunities by which the rights listed can be enjoyed or, when the other obligations are
insufficiently met, to provide such opportunities and thus fulfil the rights.
Facilitation takes many forms. With regard to the right to food, for
example, under ICESCR Article 11(2), the state shall take steps to "improve measures
of production, conservation and distribution of food by making full use of technical and
scientific knowledge and by developing or reforming agrarian systems."
The obligation to fulfil rights by providing the needs listed in the
instruments is important both during emergencies and under normal circumstances. During
emergencies, when the conditions for survival are temporarily disrupted (as a result of,
for example, severe draught or flood, armed conflict or the collapse of economic
activities within particular regions of a country), the obligations of the state on whose
territory the emergency occurs must be supplemented by assistance from outside. The
existence of international obligations to cooperate when such needs arise is increasingly
recognized.
A more permanent feature of the obligation to fulfil is that it becomes
more important with increasing rates of urbanization and the decline of group or family
responsibilities. Obligations towards the elderly and disabled, who in traditional
agricultural society were taken care of by their families, must increasingly be borne by
the state and, thus, by the national society as a whole.
The obligation to fulfil therefore consists of the direct provision of
basic needs such as food or resources which can be used for food (through direct food aid
or social security) when no other possibility exists, for example: i) when unemployment
sets in (such as during economic recession); ii) for the disadvantaged and elderly; iii)
during sudden situations of crisis or disaster; and iv) for those who are marginalized (as
a result of, for example, structural transformations in the economy and production).
Concluding remarks
Economic and social rights are an important part of the human rights
system as it has been formulated and consolidated since the adoption of the UDHR in 1948,
but there has been limited political will to enforce them. The Declaration and Plan of
Action adopted by the World Food Summit has changed this situation significantly. The
follow-up, through cooperation between the High Commissioner for Human Rights, FAO and its
Committee on World Food Security as well as other food organizations, the United Nations
Children's Fund (UNICEF), the Sub-Committee on Nutrition of the United Nations
Administrative Coordinating Committee (ACC-SCN) and other bodies, is likely to place the
issue of the right to food more centrally on the international agenda. The outcome that is
hoped for is that a long-standing commitment be transformed into reality and that by the
early decades of the next millennium everyone will be able to enjoy the right to adequate
food.
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