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On 13 October 2021, the FAO Development Law Service, in collaboration with Université Laval, WHO, UNICEF, IDLO and UN Nutrition, held a successful Side Event at the 49^th Session of the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) on ‘Human Rights, Nutrition and Law: Keys to Transforming Food Systems’. UN Nutrition moderated the event.

An FAO Legal Officer along with the Legal Research Chair in Food Diversity and Security presented the first keynote presentation which provided an overview of the recent publication ‘Transforming agri-food systems - Legislative interventions for improved nutrition and sustainability - Preliminary version for public consultation’. In their presentation, the duo stressed the roles and importance of legal frameworks, looking at international and regional instruments, and at the national level, constitutions, framework laws and sectoral legislation regulating the food environment and the food value chain. WHO presented the human rights based approach in its normative work and linked it to the newly adopted CFS Voluntary Guidelines on Food Systems and Nutrition.

The panelists then discussed their experiences on a variety of issues related to human rights, nutrition and law, such as, the Latin American experiences with framework law on food security and nutrition; Sri Lanka’s front of pack traffic light system for beverages; India’s Supreme Court case on the right to food and its National Food Security Act. In Uganda, they have been using strategic public interest litigation to fight for restrictions on marketing of junk food to children.

In Kenya, civil society organizations have been taking a human rights based approach to HIV/AIDS work and were talking about what that means and how the methodologies can be used for food security and nutrition.

More information about the event is available at the CFS website (under Side Event 9).

You can also look at the Flyer the Agenda and Watch the recording of the event.