Human Rights Day
11 December 2000

Since its inception, FAO has worked to alleviate poverty and hunger by promoting agricultural development, improved nutrition and the pursuit of food security - defined as the access of all people at all times to the food they need for an active and healthy life. FAO collects, analyses, interprets and disseminates information relating to nutrition, food, agriculture, forestry and fisheries.

FAO does not specialize in human rights education. Nevertheless, human rights education is broadly relevant to several areas of the organization’s work and mandate.

The main areas of relevance are

• the right to food and freedom from hunger
• raising public awareness on food security
• education and food for all initiative
• rural extension and farmer field schools
• the empowerment of rural men, women and youth
• a gender perspective

The right to food and the fundamental right to be free from hunger

One of FAO’s primary goals, according to its Constitution, is ensuring humanity’s freedom from hunger. The right to food is thus at the heart of the Organization’s mandate. Indeed, the Rome Declaration on World Food Security, adopted by the World Food Summit in November 1996 reiterates that everyone has the right to adequate food, and gave a specific mandate to the High Commissioner for Human Rights and other human rights organs to better define the content of the rights related to food and seek better ways of implementing those rights.

Many other rights are indispensable for the full enjoyment of the right to adequate food, notably the right to education and information, cultural rights, the right to engage in economic activities, and the right to democratic participation. Given the important role that women play in food production and preparation, gender equality is also of primary importance.

FAO has been an active collaborator of the High Commissioner for Human Rights in work for the right to food. The Organization took the opportunity of the 50^th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights to issue two publications intended to explain to the general public what the right to food is. These are a book entitled "The Right to Food in Theory and Practice, and a leaflet with the heading "What is the Right to Food".

Raising public awareness of food security

FAO is committed to raising the profile of hunger and food security related-issues at the national, regional and international levels. To keep these issues high up on the international agenda, and to increase outreach to all sectors including civil society, important initiatives include World Food Day, the World Food Summit and TeleFood.

World Food Day has been celebrated on 16 October, FAO’s anniversary, since 1981. World Food Day's objectives are to heighten public awareness of the problem of world hunger and to focus attention on agriculture and food production. In the context of World Food Day, the right to food has always underlined FAO's concern on the issue of access to adequate food as a universal human right and collective responsibility.

In order to mobilize political will at the highest level, the World Food Summit in November 1996 brought together representatives from 185 countries and the European Community. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security and the World Food Summit Plan of Action, have helped to influence public opinion and has provided the political, conceptual and technical blueprint for an ongoing effort to eradicate hunger in all countries with the target of reducing by half the number of undernourished people by no later than the year 2015.

Born directly out of the Summit n an effort to involve, in particular civil society, the TeleFood campaign was launched in 1997 within the framework of the World Food Day. TeleFood aims to mobilize support for the battle against hunger and food insecurity through public broadcasts, concerts and other events, involving over 70 countries and providing resources for the implementation of over 700 hunger-fighting special projects. WFD/TeleFood activities are undertaken at both the country level with the establishment of national committees as well as internationally and also include publicly broadcast debates, teleconferencing, and the provision of information materials to national groups on hunger and food security related matters. An important part of these activities are awareness-raising through public information campaigns which utilize inter alia publications such as FAO’s annual State of food insecurity in the world, issues papers and other information materials.

Education and Food for All

More than 50 years ago, the nations of the world, speaking through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, asserted that "everyone has a right to education". Education is considered by FAO as a human right and a basic need, which has to be met if the right to food is to be enjoyed to all. This is why FAO has launched an internal informal Task Force on Education and Food for All cutting across the Organization's fields of competence, and aiming at identifying, co-ordinating and strengthening our initiatives aimed at expanding and improving basic education for agriculture, rural development and food security.

Two thirds of the word’s poor live in rural areas. Most of the 800 million under nourished people are also illiterates, and the out of school children are a category more at risk of being among the undernourished. The majority of the 113 million children out of school and of the 880 million illiterates accounted for in 1998 live in rural areas in developing countries. Access to education is more difficult for rural populations, and quality of education in rural areas is lower than in urban areas. Basic education affects the productivity of smallholder subsistence farmers in a positive manner. Moreover, farmers with more education generate more income from the use of new technologies and adjust more rapidly to technological changes. The expansion and improvement of provision of basic educational services in rural areas can substantially improve productivity and livelihoods. In the globalisation era and knowledge based economies access to quality education will become the yardstick that will differentiate and increase the gap among rich and poor.

Halving the number of hungry people by the year 2015 implies expansion of quality primary education and non-formal basic education (literacy and basic skill training) for rural population. How can education be placed at the core of the global and national development and food security agendas?

Expanding access to education and improving school attendance in rural areas can be promoted by focusing on:

• Initiatives aiming at improving children’s health, providing food for students, easing the financial burden on parents who usually have to feed their children, and in some cases generating income for the school, such as school canteens and school gardens, fish ponds and raising of animals.
• The use of information and communication technology, and distance education.
• Education of rural girls and women.

Improving the quality of education for rural development and food security can be attained by placing emphasis on:

• Participatory curriculum development, and teacher training to respond to rural development needs and farmers’ demands, at all level of the education system
• Environmental education, across the curriculum, and awareness rising in relation to sustainability of current patterns of consumption.
• Nutrition education, including school gardening and small animal care which brings alive the content of science and social studies, provides shared experiences for language development and settings for mathematics.
• Basic financial literacy for children and adults (through, for example, schools saving clubs) and marketing, and rural financial management education in intermediate and higher education
• HIV/AIDS prevention to address its impact on agriculture and rural livelihoods.
• Agricultural universities and vocational training institutions to improve their role of service to farmers, rural children, youth, and adults, and their interaction with basic and intermediate education

Strengthening institutional capacity in planning and managing education for rural development and food security requires actions leading to:

• Inter-institutional co-ordination and interdisciplinarity at national, regional and global levels can be promoted by establishing National Plans of Action for Food for All and Education for All. This requires a systemic approach involving government (Ministries of Education, Ministries of Agriculture, Health, Finance, Universities etc), private organisations, civil society, local government, the mass media, and religious organisations.
• The development of new partnerships at national, global and regional levels among UN and other development agencies in promoting education for rural development and in training of policy makers and managers in how to promote and improve education for rural development and food security.
• Research and dissemination of best practices and case studies which illustrate the contribution of education to sustainable agriculture and rural development and food security.

Empowerment of rural men, women and youth

An example of how FAO seeks to empower rural men, women and youth is the Integrated Pest Management (IPM) Programme and its Farmers Field Schools (FFS).

• IPM programmes incorporate a basic programme on training for the development of group processes within communities and for strengthening individual decision making. Group building skills are essential for the emergence of community organisations around which further training and group action can take place. IPM Clubs, FFS Alumni Associations, and other organisations have been formed to self-finance community activities.
• Specialised programmes include training with disabled persons. In July 1999, Handicap International (HP) started a close co-operation with FAO to run a pilot-project in the provinces of Takeo and Siem Reap in Cambodia, under the framework of the Community IPM Programme. This programme seeks to empower all members of rural communities, starting from field experiments by farmers to create a combination of scientific insights and management strategies that they use to minimise the impact of pests and diseases on their crops.
• Work with indigenous persons and traditional farming communities is carried out through Farmer Field School training activities.
• HIV/AIDS topics are included in all levels of training, based on the brochure, which is on display.

A gender perspective

FAO is more involved in promoting development as the premise to peace while recognising the close correlation between development and peace. In developing countries the poorest people, and specially women, fight for control over and access to natural resources. Conflict situations often emerge as a result of this struggle, which destroy productive capacities and damage the environment making it difficult to obtain a sustainable livelihood and ensure food security. Therefore, hunger can be considered as a form of violence, because it affects the enjoyment of one of the most fundamental human right: the right to food. By aiming at food security for all FAO is contributing to mainstreaming of human rights.

Through this approach human rights are tackled from the broader perspective of agricultural and rural development, aiming at empowering men, women and youth. FAO is implementing a series of capacity-building programmes including gender training and outreach activities to upgrade technical skills. Two examples are given below.

 

1. SEAGA

The Socio-economic And Gender Analysis (SEAGA) Programme is the single most important programme to facilitate gender mainstreaming in the organisation and in member countries. It is a set of methods and tools including didactic materials aiming at raising awareness about gender and strengthening practitioners’ capacities to plan and promote a more equitable and sustainable socio-economic development.

In effect, the SEAGA Programme recognises the importance of gender analysis, and bases itself on - while also adding to - the range of methods and tools that have proved successful in analysing gender relations.

SEAGA emphasises the fact that the outcome of development activities (in both public and private spheres) is affected by a range of factors that are or can be broader than those that are generally dealt with in the context of gender analysis, such as sociocultural patterns, economic trends and political issues.

To give an example, as a reflection of their lack of power, discrimination against women can result in their having lack of access to and control over resources such as land, technology, credit, markets and labour. This can also mean reduced access to farmers and food producers and, in areas where women have a major responsibility for producing food crops, such discrimination is an important issue to factor into the food security equation. The lack of food security in a village could also stem from environmental problems such as drought, from economic problems such as the lack of waged labour opportunities or access to markets, or from institutional problems such as inadequate extension training or access to the rural financing necessary to acquire agricultural inputs.

In other words, the SEAGA approach recognises that the issues that affect women such as poverty, lack of power and vulnerability to environmental degradation, while partly attributable to women's inequality and traditional roles, are also related to the same social and economic factors that keep men poor and politically alienated.

The SEAGA Programme is guided and shaped by the major development challenges of the 1990s, which increasingly emphasise a multitude of socio-economic issues that are relevant to the success of development efforts, such as poverty reduction, social equality and empowerment, and environmental sustainability. These issues are often interrelated and cross-sectoral. This agenda has been highlighted in recent international conferences and conventions.

International conferences include:

• The United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED), 1992
• The International Conference on Nutrition (ICN), 1992
• The International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD), 1994
• The World Summit for Social Development (WSSD), 1995
• The Fourth World Conference on Women, (FWCW), 1995
• The United Nations Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat II) 1996
• The World Food Summit, (WFS) 1996

Cross-sectoral issues include:

• Education and training
• Human rights and democratisation
• Gender and equality
• Laws and statutes
• Population and demographics
• Natural resource management and sustainable development
• Health and nutrition
• Household resource management
• Food security
• Macro-economic policies
• Poverty reduction
   

  2. Management and use of biological resources

Important international policies and legal agreements acknowledge the key role that women play, especially in the developing world, in the management and use of biological resources. Despite this increased recognition at the international levels, little has yet been done to clarify the nature of the relationship between agrobiological diversity and the activities, responsibilities and rights of men and women.

Women’s key roles, responsibilities and intimate knowledge of plants and animals sometimes remain "invisible" to technicians working in the agriculture, forestry and environmental sectors as well as to planners and policy makers.

Through their daily activities and knowledge women have a major stake in protecting biological diversity. However, at national and local levels rural women are still hampered by a lack of rights resources they rely on to meet their needs. In general their rights of access to and control over local resources and national policies do not match their increasing responsibilities for food production and management of natural resources

FAO is supporting a regional project in Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Mozambique entitled "Gender, Biodiversity and Local Knowledge Systems to Strengthen Agriculture and Rural Development in Southern Africa" (LinKs). The project’s main aim is to strengthen the capacity of key partner organisations to understand and apply farmer’s knowledge and experience for the sustainable use of biodiversity for food and agriculture. The project works with a diverse group of partners in each country. These include NGOs, government institutions, universities and training and communications centres. The LinKs programme provides training workshops for various groups and institutions listed above, on the importance of, and the links between biodiversity, local knowledge and gender in food security issues. During the course of these workshops discussions are held on intellectual property right, patents and the international agreements effecting biodiversity conservation which usually leads the group to work on evolving draft guidelines on how to raise awareness at the level of the community of the effect of these international agreements (such as: The CBD, TRIPS etc) on their everyday activities. The guidelines also attempt to address the issue of lobbying with politicians, to ensure that they are raising public awareness of how the terms of these agreements are being implemented and met by government bodies. Some of the issues explored Farmers' Rights and Intellectual Property Rights and how they affect seed security and biodiversity conservation at the grassroots/household level.

Conclusion

In conclusion, education in general and human rights education in particular, especially as it relates to FAO’s mandate for food security for all, is of growing importance to the Organization. The Organization believes that human rights education can be a powerful tool for food security and sustainable livelihoods and looks forward to closer cooperation in the future with other organisations that are more specialised in the subject.