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Statement by Jean Ziegler Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food on the Occasion of World Food Day
16 October 2005
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16 October 2005
World Food Day is an occasion to highlight a number of current issues of concern in relation to hunger across the world. In accordance with my mandate as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, I will be presenting my report on the right to food before the UN General Assembly in New York on 27 October 2005.
The right to food is a human right
1. Hunger is a violation of human rights. All human beings have the right to live in dignity, free from hunger.
2. The right to food and the right to freedom from hunger are human rights protected under international human rights and humanitarian law. The right to adequate food is recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and has been authoritatively defined in general comment No. 12 (1999) in the following terms: “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement” (para. 6). Based on the general comment, the Special Rapporteur summarizes the definition of the right to food as follows:
“The right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear”.
Hunger continues to increase in a world that is richer than ever before.
3. Despite the promise made by Member States to halve hunger in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals, the shocking news is that globally, hunger is continuing to increase. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004, reports that hunger has increased in 2004 to 852 million of people gravely undernourished children, women and men, up by 10 millions since 2003. Although important recent progress has been made in some countries, the overall trend is one of regression, rather than the progressive realization of the right to food. In fact, it appears that hunger has increased every year since the World Food Summit in 1996 (FAO, 2004), even though the world is richer than ever before can already produce enough food to feed more than double the world’s population. According to FAO (2002), the world can already produce food to provide 2,100 kcals per person per day to 12 billion people, double the current world population of 6 million people.
Food crises are spreading across Africa
4. The situation in Africa is particularly disturbing. A new study by the well-respected International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has found that chronic food insecurity in Africa has increased substantially since 1970, with the number of malnourished people in sub-Saharan Africa soared from 88 million to 200 million in 1999-2001, even though the relative percentage of malnourished remained constant at about 35%.
5. The situation has been deteriorating this year, with famine and food crises spreading across Africa, in Niger, but also in spreading to Burkina Faso, Mali , Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Zimbabwe, Mauritania and Ethiopia, largely as a result of poor harvest in 2004 caused by drought, locusts and other factors. In Niger, drought has brought tragedy. In Burkina Faso food shortages of up to 70% have created a food crisis. In Mali, up to 10% of the population does not have enough to eat. In Sudan, in the midst of violent conflict, 3.5 million people are victims of hunger and widespread insecurity and closure of roads is severely affecting humanitarian access. Half of the country of Chad is seriously affected by drought and up 3.8 million Ethiopians and 2 million Eritreans need emergency food assistance.
6. The Special Rapporteur carried out an urgent mission to Niger from 8 to 12 July 2005, when almost a third of the population, around 3.6 million people, including 800,000 children, were facing acute malnutrition, and in some regions vulnerable people, in particular infant children, are dying from starvation. According to the Government’s surveillance of the hunger situation in July 2005, only 19 out of 106 zones were in a satisfactory food situation, the situation in all other zones being critical or extremely critical. During visits to Ouallam and Tondikiwindi, the Special Rapporteur saw evidence that thousands of farmers were reduced to subsisting on seeds gathered from termite mounds and roots and poisonous fruits called Anza.
7. The response of the international community to this catastrophe has been tragically slow. Despite numerous appeals by the Government and the United Nations agencies since November 2004, there was little response to the crisis until August 2005. At a press briefing on 24 May 2005, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland described Niger as “the number one forgotten and neglected emergency in the world". An appeal for US$16.2 million launched by the United Nations in May 2005 to cover basic essential needs, but only $3.8 million had been received by July 2005. However, an extra-ordinary visit of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, on 23 August 2005 to Niger, following the visit of the Special Rapporteur, focused attention of the world on the crisis. The Arab States, including Algeria, Morocco, the Libyan Arab Jamahirya, Saudi Arabia and Dubai sent emergency food aid and promised funds. The European Union, France, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the United States of America also sent emergency aid and announced that they would contribute US$10 million. Venezuela alone announced that it would contribute $3 million.
8. Today, food aid is beginning to arrive, but now it may be too late and may even cause a new catastrophe. After recent rains, farmers are looking forward to producing a good crop of millet for this year, but if the newly harvested millet will reaches the market at the same time as imported food aid, driving down prices and driving down the incomes of Niger’s farmers possibly precipitating a new crisis of hunger and poverty (New York Times, September 21, 2005).
9. The food crisis has also not been helped by the role of the World Bank and the IMF, which have not created an environment conducive to resolving extreme hunger and poverty in Niger. The introduction of VAT in the January budget, on the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, established VAT of 19% on consumer items, including food and water. This came at a time when Niger was already grappling with serious food shortages. After protests from civil society, the Government agreed in April 2005 to exempt flour and milk from the tax and establish a higher ceiling on water bills before VAT can be applied.
Food rations for refugees are being cut, even in Africa
10. The UN World Food Programme and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have appealed to donors to alleviate funding shortages that are forcing these agendies to cut back essential food rations for refugees in camps across Africa (UNHCHR Press Release, 14 September 2005). These two agencies currently support 2 million refugees in the developing world through providing essential rations. It only costs Euro 0.25 to provide 2,100 calories to each person every day, the minimum necessary to sustain healthy life, but the WFP is facing a shortfall of US$219 million and the UNHCR a shortfall of US$181.5 million this year, which means that they wil have to cut daily rations to below 2,100 calories, to below the minimum daily calorie requirements. According to the WFP, in recent months they have been obliged to cut food rations for hundreds of thousands of refugees in Africa, especially in West Africa and the Great Lakes Region. For the past eleven months, WFP has only been able to provide two-thirds of the 2,100 minimum calorie requirement to 400,000 refugees in Tanzania’s refugee camps. In Chad, only incomplete and irregular rations have been available for refugees from the Central African Republic.
Extensive natural disasters threaten food security
11. The earthquake that hit northern Pakistan and India on 8 October killed at least 40,000 people, but more will die if effective humanitarian aid, particularly food and water, does not reach an estimated 1 million survivors soon. After Hurricane Stan brought deadly floods and more than 900 mud landslides in Guatemala affecting 15 out of the country’s 22 departments, hundreds of people have been killed but it has been estimated that uup to 200,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes, lands and livelihoods, leaving them without secure access to food and clean water. 540,000 people in El Salvador and thousands in Mexico have also been badly affected by the floods. After Hurricane Katrina that devastated the US and killed 973 people, up to 68,000 people have been left without jobs and need support to revive their livelihoods to ensure their capacity to feed themselves.
12. The right to food means that national governments have legal obligations to protect the capacity of people to feed themselves, and to provide emergency humanitarian support in times of need when people are unable to feed themselves. Where countries do not have sufficient resources, appeals must be made to the international community, which also has the duty to respond to the extent that resources permit. The right to food is a human right that must be guaranteed by governments to the best of their ability. A rights-based approach to food security emphasises the satisfaction of people’s basic needs as a matter of rights, rather than of benevolence (FAO, 2004).
Food and water used as weapons of war in Iraq
13. International law prohibits the use of food and water as weapons of war or as instruments of political or economic pressure, in order to safeguard the right to food of all people.
14. In Iraq, information has been brought to the Special Rapporteur’s attention from a number of sources, including the NGO, CASI (Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq) http://www.casi.org.uk which suggest that military strategies of parties to the conflict, including both Coalition Forces and the insurgents, have adopted the cutting of food and water supplies to cities under attack Given that insurgents frequently use civilian populations as human shields, the strategy of Coalition Forces for military assaults on cities have followed a pattern of firstly encircling the city under attack, secondly encouraging the civilian population to flee before the attack by cutting off their food and water supplies, in order to isolate insurgents within the encircled city However, while it is clear that the strategy of restricting access to food and water, might be understood as effective military strategies, such strategies are prohibited under international human rights and humanitarian law because of their impacts on the right to food and water of displaced civilian populations
15. For example, in the latest assault on the town of Tal Afar in September 2005, it has been reported that Iraqi and Coalition forces restricted delivery of food, in order to encourage residents to flee. Water supplies were also cut off, although it was unclear who was responsible. Reports suggested that insurgents were responsible for cutting off water supplies to Shi’a areas. As a result, residents have been forced to flee to camps outside the city, but access to these camps for international agencies for the provision of food aid is said to be sporadic and the lack of potable water is reported to be contributing to death and disease amongst children. Earlier reports from last year, in September and October 2004, including from the NGO, CASI, also reported that during military assaults on Tal Afar, Samarra and Fallujah water supplies were cut off to residents in the cities under attack by Coalition Forces, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. As the Washington Post reported on 16 October 2004, ‘Electricity and water were cut off to the city ¨(Fallujah) just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that US forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra”. The Coalition forces also prevented shipments of water into Fallujah by the Red Cross during the assault.
16. International human rights law requires protection of the right to food in times of peace and in times of war. International humanitarian law contains many rules which protect the right to food for populations caught in armed conflict. All parties to an armed conflict have a duty to ensure that all the basic needs of the civilian population, such as food and water, in the territory under their control. In particular, the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflict. First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention, art. 54, para. 1, and second Additional Protocol, art. 14. That prohibition is violated not only when denial of access to food causes death, but also when the population suffers hunger because of deprivation of food sources or supplies. The prohibition of starvation is elaborated upon in provisions prohibiting attacks against or destruction of items necessary for the survival of the civilian population, including foodstuffs and drinking water: First Additional Protocol, art. 54, para. 2, and second Additional Protocol, art. 14.
Jean Ziegler
October 2005
World Food Day is an occasion to highlight a number of current issues of concern in relation to hunger across the world. In accordance with my mandate as Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food, I will be presenting my report on the right to food before the UN General Assembly in New York on 27 October 2005.
The right to food is a human right
1. Hunger is a violation of human rights. All human beings have the right to live in dignity, free from hunger.
2. The right to food and the right to freedom from hunger are human rights protected under international human rights and humanitarian law. The right to adequate food is recognized in the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and has been authoritatively defined in general comment No. 12 (1999) in the following terms: “The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement” (para. 6). Based on the general comment, the Special Rapporteur summarizes the definition of the right to food as follows:
“The right to food is the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensures a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear”.
Hunger continues to increase in a world that is richer than ever before.
3. Despite the promise made by Member States to halve hunger in accordance with the Millennium Development Goals, the shocking news is that globally, hunger is continuing to increase. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2004, reports that hunger has increased in 2004 to 852 million of people gravely undernourished children, women and men, up by 10 millions since 2003. Although important recent progress has been made in some countries, the overall trend is one of regression, rather than the progressive realization of the right to food. In fact, it appears that hunger has increased every year since the World Food Summit in 1996 (FAO, 2004), even though the world is richer than ever before can already produce enough food to feed more than double the world’s population. According to FAO (2002), the world can already produce food to provide 2,100 kcals per person per day to 12 billion people, double the current world population of 6 million people.
Food crises are spreading across Africa
4. The situation in Africa is particularly disturbing. A new study by the well-respected International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) has found that chronic food insecurity in Africa has increased substantially since 1970, with the number of malnourished people in sub-Saharan Africa soared from 88 million to 200 million in 1999-2001, even though the relative percentage of malnourished remained constant at about 35%.
5. The situation has been deteriorating this year, with famine and food crises spreading across Africa, in Niger, but also in spreading to Burkina Faso, Mali , Sudan, Somalia, Chad, Zimbabwe, Mauritania and Ethiopia, largely as a result of poor harvest in 2004 caused by drought, locusts and other factors. In Niger, drought has brought tragedy. In Burkina Faso food shortages of up to 70% have created a food crisis. In Mali, up to 10% of the population does not have enough to eat. In Sudan, in the midst of violent conflict, 3.5 million people are victims of hunger and widespread insecurity and closure of roads is severely affecting humanitarian access. Half of the country of Chad is seriously affected by drought and up 3.8 million Ethiopians and 2 million Eritreans need emergency food assistance.
6. The Special Rapporteur carried out an urgent mission to Niger from 8 to 12 July 2005, when almost a third of the population, around 3.6 million people, including 800,000 children, were facing acute malnutrition, and in some regions vulnerable people, in particular infant children, are dying from starvation. According to the Government’s surveillance of the hunger situation in July 2005, only 19 out of 106 zones were in a satisfactory food situation, the situation in all other zones being critical or extremely critical. During visits to Ouallam and Tondikiwindi, the Special Rapporteur saw evidence that thousands of farmers were reduced to subsisting on seeds gathered from termite mounds and roots and poisonous fruits called Anza.
7. The response of the international community to this catastrophe has been tragically slow. Despite numerous appeals by the Government and the United Nations agencies since November 2004, there was little response to the crisis until August 2005. At a press briefing on 24 May 2005, the Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland described Niger as “the number one forgotten and neglected emergency in the world". An appeal for US$16.2 million launched by the United Nations in May 2005 to cover basic essential needs, but only $3.8 million had been received by July 2005. However, an extra-ordinary visit of the UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, on 23 August 2005 to Niger, following the visit of the Special Rapporteur, focused attention of the world on the crisis. The Arab States, including Algeria, Morocco, the Libyan Arab Jamahirya, Saudi Arabia and Dubai sent emergency food aid and promised funds. The European Union, France, Sweden, Norway, Switzerland, Belgium, Denmark, Germany and the United States of America also sent emergency aid and announced that they would contribute US$10 million. Venezuela alone announced that it would contribute $3 million.
8. Today, food aid is beginning to arrive, but now it may be too late and may even cause a new catastrophe. After recent rains, farmers are looking forward to producing a good crop of millet for this year, but if the newly harvested millet will reaches the market at the same time as imported food aid, driving down prices and driving down the incomes of Niger’s farmers possibly precipitating a new crisis of hunger and poverty (New York Times, September 21, 2005).
9. The food crisis has also not been helped by the role of the World Bank and the IMF, which have not created an environment conducive to resolving extreme hunger and poverty in Niger. The introduction of VAT in the January budget, on the advice of the IMF and the World Bank, established VAT of 19% on consumer items, including food and water. This came at a time when Niger was already grappling with serious food shortages. After protests from civil society, the Government agreed in April 2005 to exempt flour and milk from the tax and establish a higher ceiling on water bills before VAT can be applied.
Food rations for refugees are being cut, even in Africa
10. The UN World Food Programme and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees have appealed to donors to alleviate funding shortages that are forcing these agendies to cut back essential food rations for refugees in camps across Africa (UNHCHR Press Release, 14 September 2005). These two agencies currently support 2 million refugees in the developing world through providing essential rations. It only costs Euro 0.25 to provide 2,100 calories to each person every day, the minimum necessary to sustain healthy life, but the WFP is facing a shortfall of US$219 million and the UNHCR a shortfall of US$181.5 million this year, which means that they wil have to cut daily rations to below 2,100 calories, to below the minimum daily calorie requirements. According to the WFP, in recent months they have been obliged to cut food rations for hundreds of thousands of refugees in Africa, especially in West Africa and the Great Lakes Region. For the past eleven months, WFP has only been able to provide two-thirds of the 2,100 minimum calorie requirement to 400,000 refugees in Tanzania’s refugee camps. In Chad, only incomplete and irregular rations have been available for refugees from the Central African Republic.
Extensive natural disasters threaten food security
11. The earthquake that hit northern Pakistan and India on 8 October killed at least 40,000 people, but more will die if effective humanitarian aid, particularly food and water, does not reach an estimated 1 million survivors soon. After Hurricane Stan brought deadly floods and more than 900 mud landslides in Guatemala affecting 15 out of the country’s 22 departments, hundreds of people have been killed but it has been estimated that uup to 200,000 people have been forced to flee from their homes, lands and livelihoods, leaving them without secure access to food and clean water. 540,000 people in El Salvador and thousands in Mexico have also been badly affected by the floods. After Hurricane Katrina that devastated the US and killed 973 people, up to 68,000 people have been left without jobs and need support to revive their livelihoods to ensure their capacity to feed themselves.
12. The right to food means that national governments have legal obligations to protect the capacity of people to feed themselves, and to provide emergency humanitarian support in times of need when people are unable to feed themselves. Where countries do not have sufficient resources, appeals must be made to the international community, which also has the duty to respond to the extent that resources permit. The right to food is a human right that must be guaranteed by governments to the best of their ability. A rights-based approach to food security emphasises the satisfaction of people’s basic needs as a matter of rights, rather than of benevolence (FAO, 2004).
Food and water used as weapons of war in Iraq
13. International law prohibits the use of food and water as weapons of war or as instruments of political or economic pressure, in order to safeguard the right to food of all people.
14. In Iraq, information has been brought to the Special Rapporteur’s attention from a number of sources, including the NGO, CASI (Cambridge Solidarity with Iraq) http://www.casi.org.uk which suggest that military strategies of parties to the conflict, including both Coalition Forces and the insurgents, have adopted the cutting of food and water supplies to cities under attack Given that insurgents frequently use civilian populations as human shields, the strategy of Coalition Forces for military assaults on cities have followed a pattern of firstly encircling the city under attack, secondly encouraging the civilian population to flee before the attack by cutting off their food and water supplies, in order to isolate insurgents within the encircled city However, while it is clear that the strategy of restricting access to food and water, might be understood as effective military strategies, such strategies are prohibited under international human rights and humanitarian law because of their impacts on the right to food and water of displaced civilian populations
15. For example, in the latest assault on the town of Tal Afar in September 2005, it has been reported that Iraqi and Coalition forces restricted delivery of food, in order to encourage residents to flee. Water supplies were also cut off, although it was unclear who was responsible. Reports suggested that insurgents were responsible for cutting off water supplies to Shi’a areas. As a result, residents have been forced to flee to camps outside the city, but access to these camps for international agencies for the provision of food aid is said to be sporadic and the lack of potable water is reported to be contributing to death and disease amongst children. Earlier reports from last year, in September and October 2004, including from the NGO, CASI, also reported that during military assaults on Tal Afar, Samarra and Fallujah water supplies were cut off to residents in the cities under attack by Coalition Forces, affecting up to 750,000 civilians. As the Washington Post reported on 16 October 2004, ‘Electricity and water were cut off to the city ¨(Fallujah) just as a fresh wave of strikes began Thursday night, an action that US forces also took at the start of assaults on Najaf and Samarra”. The Coalition forces also prevented shipments of water into Fallujah by the Red Cross during the assault.
16. International human rights law requires protection of the right to food in times of peace and in times of war. International humanitarian law contains many rules which protect the right to food for populations caught in armed conflict. All parties to an armed conflict have a duty to ensure that all the basic needs of the civilian population, such as food and water, in the territory under their control. In particular, the starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is prohibited in both international and non-international armed conflict. First Additional Protocol to the Geneva Convention, art. 54, para. 1, and second Additional Protocol, art. 14. That prohibition is violated not only when denial of access to food causes death, but also when the population suffers hunger because of deprivation of food sources or supplies. The prohibition of starvation is elaborated upon in provisions prohibiting attacks against or destruction of items necessary for the survival of the civilian population, including foodstuffs and drinking water: First Additional Protocol, art. 54, para. 2, and second Additional Protocol, art. 14.
Jean Ziegler
October 2005