Sixty years after the first affirmation of the right to food, much remains to be done to make this a reality. In 2006, FAO’s State of Food Insecurity in the World report estimated the number of undernourished people at 820 million – down by only 3 million compared to 1990–92. While reductions in undernourishment have been achieved in regions like Asia and Latin America, in sub-Saharan Africa the number of undernourished people has increased from 169 to 206 million between 1990 and 1992 and 2001 and 2003 (FAO, 2006a). One-third of Africa’s population suffers from chronic hunger (FAO, 2006). Paradoxically, undernourishment significantly affects food producers in rural areas (Berthelot, 2005). In the rural areas of many developing countries, natural resources are an important source of food, both through direct consumption and through providing the basis for incomegeneratingactivities (e.g. cash crops, forest products) that enable people to purchase food. Because of this, measures to improve access to resources are an important element of strategies for the progressive realization of the right to food. Yet, for a long time, human rights and resource-access literatures and practitioners operated in a compartmentalized way. Human rights arguments were the reserved domain of lawyers and human rights campaigners, and prioritized civil and political rights like freedom from torture or freedom of expression. Resource-access issues were traditionally tackled through diverse combinations of technical interventions and political mobilization — more rarely through human rights arguments.