Right to Food
The right to food is a complex issue, subject to interpretation by different cultures and realities of Member Nations. FAO supports the universal values and principles that are inherent in the concept that access to adequate food should be considered a human right. For implementing the right to food, especially at national levels, a core Glossary of 37 concepts was initially developed in English, French and Spanish. A larger online right to food terminological database was subsequently developed for the sake of institutional memory, including revisions and additions on the concepts as they have evolved in FAO's work. The Arabic, Chinese and Russian languages have also been included.
The concepts have been selected from FAO and international documents and publications on right to food, as well as from the proceedings of meetings of experts discussing right to food and food security issues, including the Right to Food Forum in 2008. FAO pays particular attention to enhance a language use and to standardize technical terminology for its meetings, documentation and publications. It also promotes standard best practices for terminology management and storage, facilitating growth, interoperability and exchange.
The Glossary contains 418 concepts with synonyms, variants, definitions, remarks and context fields, as appropriate.
It should be noted that right to food involves many disciplines and subdomains such as:
- Participation
- Accountability
- Non-discrimination
- Transparency
- Human Dignity
- Empowerment
- Rule of Law
- International Humanitarian Law
- Information
- Emergencies
- Monitoring
- Food Security
- Assessment
- Consumer Protection
- Gender
- Natural Resources
- Policy
- Strategy
- Poverty Reduction
- Employment
- Markets
- Culture and Traditions
The selection of terms has therefore been restricted to those concepts directly related to FAO's work on right to food and to the most commonly used concepts in the domain.
This Glossary will serve to facilitate multilingual communication and documentation in FAO's long-term objective of enhancing food security and the right to food.