The right to adequate food on the global agenda – a 30-year review
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UNCCD Library
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Web resource
The year 2024 marks the 20th anniversary of the FAO Right to Food Guidelines, which have played a fundamental role in guiding policies to implement a human rights-based approach to food security and nutrition. This article provides an overview of key moments in the decade that preceded the adoption of the Guidelines and the two decades that followed, leading to an advanced normative framework of the right to adequate food.
The global political breakthrough for the right to adequate food came with World Food Summit 1996 and the first paragraph of the Rome Declaration: “We, the Heads of State and Government, (…), reaffirm 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.” Several factors enabled this new level of political expression in support of a human rights-based approach to food security.
Triggering growing attention – the invisibility of human rights
The right to adequate food had been recognised as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. Ground-breaking conceptual work was done by Norwegian human rights scholar Asbjørn Eide in his study on the right to adequate food for the UN Human Rights Commission in 1986. The international human rights organisation for the right to food, FIAN, was founded in 1986 and embarked on international advocacy. Fresh dynamics set in when the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights started to work with a mandate as treaty body in 1987.
After the end of the Cold War, the general bias in public attention between economic, social and cultural rights on one side, and civil and political rights on the other, became an issue of discussion. A key shift was achieved with the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 which recognised in Article 5 of the Vienna Declaration: “All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated.” This fundamental recognition brought more political attention to economic, social and cultural rights.
New initiatives opened the way to connect human rights with food security and nutrition. In 1993, the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee on Nutrition started a process on “ethics, nutrition and human rights”, with impulses coming from inside UN agencies, civil society and academics gathering in the World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights and some member states. The Civil Society preparatory conference for the World Food Summit (WFS), organised in Quebec/Canada in October 1995, agreed to include the promotion of the right to adequate food into its priorities for the preparation of the WFS and started a comprehensive advocacy strategy with governments and officials of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The WFS Plan of Action, adopted in Rome/Italy, then included a specific commitment (Objective 7.4.) that shaped the further process and set the agenda for the next ten years: “To clarify the content of the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, (…) and to give particular attention to implementation and full and progressive realization of this right as a means of achieving food security for all.” Two major tasks resulted from this objective: clarifying the normative content, and developing policy guidance for implementation.
Developing contents and supporting implementation
The follow-up to the WFS focused on these two tasks. Civil society organisations drafted their own Code of Conduct on the Right to Adequate Food, which was presented in 1997, endorsed by hundreds of organisations, and used in the further advocacy and negotiation process. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was asked by the WFS Plan of Action to do so, started working on its General Comment 12 on the right to adequate food, which was adopted in 1999 as an authoritative interpretation of the normative content. In 2000, the Mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food was established by the Human Rights Council. In 2002, the proposal to negotiate Voluntary Guidelines to foster and give guidance to the implementation of the right to food was brought to the WFS+5 Conference, which endorsed the initiative.
Between 2002 and 2004, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) became the venue for the negotiations of the Voluntary Guidelines for the Progressive Realization of the right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security. These were the first intergovernmental negotiations in Rome to actively involve civil society actors in such talks, although they only had the formal status of observers. The Right to Food Guidelines were adopted unanimously by all Member States of the FAO Council in November 2004. Hence, a global consensus document was reached on how to apply a human rights-based approach to food security.
From 2005 onwards, there was a strong focus on national application. The FAO Right to Food Unit was established to support countries in applying the Right to Food Guidelines in national policies, legal frameworks and programmes and was equipped with substantial resources over the next ten years. Many countries, governments, parliaments, civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, social movements, human rights defenders and academics collaborated and supported efforts on awareness raising, capacity building, policy initiatives, legislative or constitutional reforms or case-related justiciability and accountability campaigns.
The new Right to Food Project at the German Institute for Human Rights
One of the crucial and urgent tasks of the international community is a human rights-based transformation of food systems. How can countries transform their food systems in such a way that all people can feed themselves adequately and that the limits and challenges of the triple ecological crisis – climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification – can be respected? This is a central concern of a project run by the German Institute for Human Rights which aims to support the progressive realisation of the human right to adequate food.
The project, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, is being implemented in collaboration with committed actors of the international community, the United Nations, civil society and Indigenous Peoples. For the year 2024, the 20th anniversary of the Right to Food Guidelines, the focus is on strengthening the right to adequate food and to foster a human rights-based transformation of food systems in the relevant international fora, and supporting an enhanced use and application of the policy outcomes of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) at national level. The project started in December 2023 and runs until the end of 2025. REad further from the source
The global political breakthrough for the right to adequate food came with World Food Summit 1996 and the first paragraph of the Rome Declaration: “We, the Heads of State and Government, (…), reaffirm 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.” Several factors enabled this new level of political expression in support of a human rights-based approach to food security.
Triggering growing attention – the invisibility of human rights
The right to adequate food had been recognised as part of the right to an adequate standard of living in Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966. Ground-breaking conceptual work was done by Norwegian human rights scholar Asbjørn Eide in his study on the right to adequate food for the UN Human Rights Commission in 1986. The international human rights organisation for the right to food, FIAN, was founded in 1986 and embarked on international advocacy. Fresh dynamics set in when the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights started to work with a mandate as treaty body in 1987.
After the end of the Cold War, the general bias in public attention between economic, social and cultural rights on one side, and civil and political rights on the other, became an issue of discussion. A key shift was achieved with the UN World Conference on Human Rights in 1993 which recognised in Article 5 of the Vienna Declaration: “All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated.” This fundamental recognition brought more political attention to economic, social and cultural rights.
New initiatives opened the way to connect human rights with food security and nutrition. In 1993, the UN Inter-Agency Standing Committee on Nutrition started a process on “ethics, nutrition and human rights”, with impulses coming from inside UN agencies, civil society and academics gathering in the World Alliance on Nutrition and Human Rights and some member states. The Civil Society preparatory conference for the World Food Summit (WFS), organised in Quebec/Canada in October 1995, agreed to include the promotion of the right to adequate food into its priorities for the preparation of the WFS and started a comprehensive advocacy strategy with governments and officials of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).
The WFS Plan of Action, adopted in Rome/Italy, then included a specific commitment (Objective 7.4.) that shaped the further process and set the agenda for the next ten years: “To clarify the content of the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger, (…) and to give particular attention to implementation and full and progressive realization of this right as a means of achieving food security for all.” Two major tasks resulted from this objective: clarifying the normative content, and developing policy guidance for implementation.
Developing contents and supporting implementation
The follow-up to the WFS focused on these two tasks. Civil society organisations drafted their own Code of Conduct on the Right to Adequate Food, which was presented in 1997, endorsed by hundreds of organisations, and used in the further advocacy and negotiation process. The UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, which was asked by the WFS Plan of Action to do so, started working on its General Comment 12 on the right to adequate food, which was adopted in 1999 as an authoritative interpretation of the normative content. In 2000, the Mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food was established by the Human Rights Council. In 2002, the proposal to negotiate Voluntary Guidelines to foster and give guidance to the implementation of the right to food was brought to the WFS+5 Conference, which endorsed the initiative.
Between 2002 and 2004, the Committee on World Food Security (CFS) became the venue for the negotiations of the Voluntary Guidelines for the Progressive Realization of the right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security. These were the first intergovernmental negotiations in Rome to actively involve civil society actors in such talks, although they only had the formal status of observers. The Right to Food Guidelines were adopted unanimously by all Member States of the FAO Council in November 2004. Hence, a global consensus document was reached on how to apply a human rights-based approach to food security.
From 2005 onwards, there was a strong focus on national application. The FAO Right to Food Unit was established to support countries in applying the Right to Food Guidelines in national policies, legal frameworks and programmes and was equipped with substantial resources over the next ten years. Many countries, governments, parliaments, civil society and Indigenous Peoples’ organisations, social movements, human rights defenders and academics collaborated and supported efforts on awareness raising, capacity building, policy initiatives, legislative or constitutional reforms or case-related justiciability and accountability campaigns.
The new Right to Food Project at the German Institute for Human Rights
One of the crucial and urgent tasks of the international community is a human rights-based transformation of food systems. How can countries transform their food systems in such a way that all people can feed themselves adequately and that the limits and challenges of the triple ecological crisis – climate change, biodiversity loss and desertification – can be respected? This is a central concern of a project run by the German Institute for Human Rights which aims to support the progressive realisation of the human right to adequate food.
The project, which is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Food and Agriculture, is being implemented in collaboration with committed actors of the international community, the United Nations, civil society and Indigenous Peoples. For the year 2024, the 20th anniversary of the Right to Food Guidelines, the focus is on strengthening the right to adequate food and to foster a human rights-based transformation of food systems in the relevant international fora, and supporting an enhanced use and application of the policy outcomes of the UN Committee on World Food Security (CFS) at national level. The project started in December 2023 and runs until the end of 2025. REad further from the source
Keywords
food security
right to food
human rights
agriculture
nutrition
land tenure
land rights
human health impacts