ACC SUB-COMMITTEE ON NUTRITION SYMPOSIUM ON THE SUBSTANCE AND POLITICS OF A HUMAN RIGHTS APPROACH TO FOOD AND NUTRITION POLICIES AND PROGRAMMES

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Geneva, 12 April 1999
Palais des Nations, Room XVI


“THE HUMAN RIGHT TO FOOD AND NUTRITION”


Mary Robinson
High Commissioner for Human Rights



Ladies and gentlemen,

I am delighted to welcome so many eminent experts on food and nutrition as well as my colleagues from UN agencies and bodies at this Symposium on a human rights approach to food and nutrition and the 26th session of the ACC Sub-Committee on Nutrition. This meeting is a practical example of the extensive cooperation between your agencies and my Office towards the full realization of the human right to food and nutrition.

Let me state my approach. I am committed to giving equal importance to all human rights, be they civil, cultural, economic, political or social rights. While it was reconfirmed by the World Conference on Human Rights in 1993, that “all human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated”, economic, social and cultural rights in reality have in the past received too little attention. This is being rectified and we now have numerous projects on the implementation of human rights on a broad front. These include the work of CESCR, implementation of a Memorandum of Understanding with UNDP and close working relations with ILO, WHO, FAO, UNESCO, the World Bank and other agencies and several rapporteurs of the Commission. Later this year, the Commission will be discussing the report of its expert on the right to development. If we are to treat all human rights on an equal footing, more attention needs to be paid to clarifying the minimum core content of economic, social and cultural rights. Meetings such as this one can help greatly.

Few economic rights are violated on such a scale as food and nutrition rights. According to UN estimates, more than 800 million people, specially women and children, throughout the world - and particularly in developing countries - do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs, which infringes their fundamental human rights.

Since the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, the right to adequate food has been recognized as an important component of the right to an adequate standard of living. It has also been confirmed in the principal human rights conventions, in particular Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.

The right to adequate food derives from Article 11 (1) and that to freedom from hunger and malnutrition from Article 11 (2) of the ICESCR. While the first provision is much broader, the latter is a key element of the minimum core content of the right to adequate food.

The right to adequate food is indivisibly linked to other human rights and its ultimate objective is to achieve nutritional well-being which, in turn, is dependent on parallel achievements in the fields of health and education.

The concept of adequacy is particularly significant in relation to the right to food. It means that the overall supply should cover overall nutritional needs in terms of quantity and quality.

The realization of the right to adequate food is inseparable from social justice, requiring the adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social policies, both at the national and international level, oriented towards the eradication of poverty and the satisfaction of basic needs.

In emergency situations, such as conflicts and disasters, people have the right to receive food aid and States must grant access to impartial humanitarian organizations to provide food aid and other humanitarian assistance. Under no circumstances can States deprive people of their access to food, be it by forced evictions, by destroying food crops or by destroying production resources.

It is important to highlight the need to eliminate gender inequality and to acknowledge the specific needs of children and other vulnerable groups.

In all circumstances, starvation must be prohibited as a method of warfare.

The right to adequate food and nutrition imposes three types of obligations on States parties to the ICESCR: the obligations (a) to respect, (b) to protect and (c)to fulfil. Failure to comply with any one of these three obligations constitutes a violation of the right to adequate food.

The obligation to respect access to adequate food under all circumstances for everyone under their jurisdiction requires States parties not to take political or other measures that would result in preventing access to adequate food for vulnerable populations.

The obligation to protect includes the State’s responsibility of ensuring that private entities or individuals, including transnational corporations over which they exercise jurisdiction, do not deprive individuals of their access to adequate food.

Whenever an individual or a group is unable to enjoy the right to adequate food, States have the obligation to fulfil that right. This requires that States must identify the vulnerable groups among their populations and provide food and assistance using strategies that ensure the achievement of a long-term capability of people to feed themselves. This obligation also applies to persons who are victims of natural or other disasters.

The fulfillment of the right to adequate food requires steps to be taken by all appropriate means, including in particular the adoption of legislative measures, and supported by the necessary administrative capacity within the public and private sectors where appropriate. These measures should address all aspects of the food system, including the production, processing, distribution and consumption of food, as well as parallel measures in the fields of health, education, employment and social security.

The realization of the right to food has to happen at the country level. Art. 2 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights seeks implementation at the national level by all appropriate means, including particularly the adoption of legislative measures. Incorporating the right to food into a national framework legislation would be essential in establishing the ground work for a real accountability of the “duty bearer” -the State- towards the “claim holders”.

All States have an obligation to co-operate in order to create the conditions under which human rights can be realized worldwide. States not only have obligations in regard to those individuals under their domestic jurisdiction but also, under the United Nations Charter, to co-operate in solving problems of a social and humanitarian nature outside their domestic jurisdiction. In times of emergencies States have at least a moral duty to share among themselves the burdens of food aid and other measures of relief.

I would also strongly appeal to the UN agencies to adopt a rights based -approach to their mandates. While cooperation between the agencies and the treaty bodies in many instances has developed well during the last few years, greater emphasis should be put in the future on the sharing of information and the development of joint indicators or benchmarks to measure achievements and shortcomings in the realization of food and nutrition rights.

I encourage agencies to establish internal mechanisms to ensure that their own policies or programmes do not impact negatively on the implementation by States of the rights to food and nutrition.


The United Nations Development Assistance Framework (UNDAF) constitutes an important tool for strengthening inter-agency co-operation at the country level in order to reach the goals of the global conferences of the 90s -including those related to hunger, women and children- to identify key actions and to pool resources.

Ladies and gentlemen,

In supporting and promoting a rights-based approach to development, UN agencies could help to encourage States to redirect their efforts in a way that would optimize the satisfaction of basic needs in a sustainable way. Agencies could provide not only legal, political and administrative advice to States on how to better meet their obligations regarding the right to food and nutrition, but also help States in monitoring the implementation and eventual breaches of their obligations related to the right to adequate food.


Thank you.