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to the UN Commission on Human Rights |
to the UN Commission on Human
Rights
Thank you Mr. Chairman for this opportunity to address the Commission on behalf of the Director-General of FAO to report on the outcome of the World Food Summit and its decisions on the subject of human rights and, in particular, the right to food. The Director-General, Mr. Jacques Diouf, has asked me to convey to you his sincere regrets at being unable to make this presentation to you in person due to his other commitments and to convey to you the full support of FAO in the implementation of the decisions of the Summit with respect to the Right to Food.
The World Food Summit was convened by FAO at FAO Headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 13 to 17 November 1996 and was attended by political leaders from 185 countries and the European Community. The Summit was convened in response to the intolerable plight of more than 800 million people throughout the world, particularly in developing countries, who do not have enough food to meet their basic nutritional needs. At the Summit the world's highest leaders adopted the Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the Plan of Action committing themselves to achieving food security for all with an immediate view to reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level no later than the year 2015.
The Plan of Action takes the form of 7 Commitments to ensure that all people at all times have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food. The Commitments aim at ensuring an enabling political, social and economic environment, implementing policies aimed at eradicating poverty and inequality, and improving physical and economic access by all, at all times, to sufficient, nutritionally adequate and safe food and its effective utilization, pursuing participatory and sustainable agriculture and rural development practices, fostering a world trade system that is conducive to food security, preventing or reacting in a timely and effective way to natural disasters and crises, encouraging the optimal application and use of public and private investment, and finally implementing, monitoring and following-up the Plan of Action.
Copies of the Rome Declaration and Plan of Action have been made available to this Commission.
As you will see, the Commitments undertaken at the World Food Summit are ambitious, far-reaching and run deep. Indeed, they could not be otherwise given the vastness and gravity of the problem of hunger and the desperate need for concerted action. So great is the magnitude of the undertaking facing the world, that it can only be confronted by a concerted response of all partners in the United Nations System, the international financial institutions, bilateral and multilateral agencies, non-governmental organizations, and all concerned actors in civil society.
FAO is working with its Member Nations and with all the above agencies and actors in building up an appropriate framework for concrete action to implement the decisions of the Summit. FAO's Special Programme for Food Security will be spearheading the fight against rural poverty in the 82 low-income food deficit countries; it is already under way in 15 countries and will soon be extended to others. The programme should help raise productivity through the transfer of appropriate technology and safeguard production thanks to the harnessing of water and the construction of small irrigation schemes with the involvement of rural communities. The emergency prevention system for transboundary animal, and plant pests and diseases (EMPRES), which presently focuses on rinderpest and the desert locust, should help protect the rewards of farmers' labour.
But the Summit should also be seen not only as a significant political event in its own right, as it undoubtedly was, but also as a further building block in a series of commitments by the world’s leaders taken at summits and other conferences such as those at Rio, Cairo and Beijing. Similarly the work of FAO should not be viewed in isolation but as part of a multifaceted thrust by the world community towards food security in which all agencies, non-governmental organizations and other actors in both the public and private sectors have their roles to play. Indeed one of the essential messages of the Summit is that the problems of hunger, malnutrition and poverty cannot be confronted by one agency alone but call for concerted action by the entire international and national communities.
Throughout the seven Commitments adopted by the World Food Summit, stress is continuously laid on the need to ensure full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms including the right to development and the progressive realization of the right to adequate food for all.
One of the human rights most central and fundamental for the fight for food security for all is that in Article 11 of the International Covenant on Economic, social and cultural rights, the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. This right is referred to at the beginning of the first Commitment adopted by the Summit and at the end of the last Commitment and indeed is reflected throughout the whole set of Commitments. The world's leaders recognize however that further work needs to be done to clarify the content of the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger and that particular attention needs to be given to the implementation and full and progressive realization of this right as a means of achieving food security for all. To this end, the Governments gathered at the Rome Summit have committed themselves, in partnership with all actors of civil society, as appropriate, to make every effort to implement the provisions of Article 11 of the International covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and relevant provisions of other international and regional instruments.
They urged States that are not yet parties to the Covenant to adhere to it at the earliest possible time.
They invited the Committee on Economic Social and Cultural Rights to give particular attention to the Rome Plan of Action in the framework of its activities and to continue to monitor the implementation of the specific measures provided for in Article 11 of the Covenant.
They invited relevant treaty bodies and appropriate specialized agencies of the UN to consider how they might contribute, to the further implementation of this right, within the framework of the co-ordinated follow up by the UN System to the major international UN conferences and summits, including the World Conference on Human Rights in Vienna 1993 within the scope of their mandates.
Finally, they also committed themselves to invite the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in consultation with relevant treaty bodies and in collaboration with relevant specialized agencies and programmes of the UN system and appropriate intergovernmental mechanisms, to better define the rights related to food in Article 11 of the Covenant and to propose ways to implement and realize these rights as a means of achieving the commitments and objectives of the World Food Summit, taking into account the possibility of formulating voluntary guidelines for food security for all.
As I mentioned earlier in my intervention, the Summit stressed the necessity for co-ordinated action by all Member States, UN System and all actors in civil society if the ambitious goals of the Summit are to be realized. FAO's Committee on World Food Security will be providing a focal point for this co-ordinated action, and FAO itself, working closely with the world's financial institutions and other partners in civil society, will be providing the main thrust for concrete action to help the farmers and rural communities in the developing world to achieve food security.
Your Commission on Human Rights, the Committee on Economic and Social rights, the High Commissioner and the UN Centre on Human Rights are being asked take the lead in the area of human rights thus providing a uniting normative thrust to the programme for achieving world food security and reducing the number of undernourished people to half their present level by the year 2015.
FAO pledges its technical support to your Commission and to the High Commissioner for Human Rights in the challenging task of implementing the commitment of the world's leaders in the area of the right to food.
Thank you.