Statement by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

2nd Session of the Working Group of the Right to Development

29 January to 2 February 2001

In most developing countries, agriculture is the main source of livelihood for the majority of the population and remains the foundation for eradicating poverty, and improving food security and overall economic, social and cultural development. It is the key in the realization of the right to development for a large part of the world’s population.

The right to food is at the heart of FAO’s the mandate. E of FAOnsuring humanity’s freedom from hunger is set out as a main objective of the Organization is in the Preamble to its Constitution. Freedom from want was one of the fundamental freedoms identified by the founders of the United Nations in the wake of the Second World War. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations General Assembly of the United Nations on 10 in December 1948, therefore declares a range of human rights, all of which are indispensable for human dignity. The civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights proclaimed in the Universal Declaration were considered interdependent, interrelated, indivisible and equally important. One of those rights is the right to an adequate standard of living, including food, clothing and housing.

At the World Food Summit (WFS), convened by FAO in 1996 and attended by 186 heads of state or government or their representatives, the right to food received renewed attention. The Rome Declaration on World Food Security reaffirms "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." Objective 7.4 of the WFS Plan of Action calls for clarification of the right to food and its progressive realization and accords a central role to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights.

FAO is playing an active role in support of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights and the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. FAO participated in the two expert consultations held by the High Commissioner on the human right to adequate food and also provided extensive comments and participated in the deliberations of the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights on the adoption of its General Comment on the right to adequate food.

On the occasion of the 50th Anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, FAO published a book entitled "The rRight to fFood in tTheory and pPractice", together with a leaflet entitled "What is the rRight to fFood?", and a legislative study containing trilingual extracts of from relevant international and regional instruments and some selected authoritative texts with a direct reference to the right to food.e subject, also on the occasion of the

FAO’s operational concept of the right to food is that of food security. "Food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life." The food must be available in sufficient quantity and quality sufficient to satisfy the dietary needs of individuals. It must also be safe and free from adverse substances, as well as acceptable within a given culture.

The right to food is understood as being primarily realized by an individual’s own efforts. However, there may be numerous obstacles in the way, which is the reason why national and international action is necessary to complement the efforts of individuals. In this connection, FAO agrees with the analysis contained in the independent expert’s report on the right to development as an integrated process of development of all human rights and that the realization of all rights must be based on comprehensive national and international development programmes. We would like to add that in view of the critical role of agriculture in the overall economic development in most vulnerable countries, it must be placed at the centre of such national and international programmes and a much greater share of national and international resources must be devoted to agricultural development than it is presently the case.

As regards national action, the right to food would not necessarily imply direct state intervention in all spheres of the food system. In fact, where the markets often are efficient, the sState should primarily mainly establish and enforce rules to ensure fair play among the multitude of actors and factors that are relevant to the right to food; their behaviour must be regulated in accordance with human rights law. The main Mrole of the state is toly, it must create the an environment where in which other actors can assume take their responsibilities. The sState must ensure the rule of law, participation, non-discrimination and empowerment. It Sshould also ensure that the different actors of local and national government are accountable for their actions or inaction, and that people have access to remedies in of some sort form if their rights are violated.

 

The state has also the responsibility to monitor and ensure the implementation of the right to adequate food. It should establish policies, benchmarks and targets to be achieved for its progressive realization. An important part of monitoring is to collect information about food insecurity and vulnerability,; that is, to find out who is hungry or malnourished and why, which in turn enables the establishment of rectifying policies.

International action needs to complement national efforts. One example of action at the international level that relates directly to the role of the state just mentioned above in monitoring the attainment of the right to food, is the inter-agency Food Insecurity and Vulnerability Information and Mapping Systems (FIVIMS). FAO hosts the international secretariat for this initiative, which endeavours to build a technical consensus on standards for food security information systems and seeks to provide co-ordinated cross--donor technical and material support to these systems. The establishment of FIVIMS was called for in the WFS Plan of Action. Outputs from the FIVIMS system can feed directly into the possible monitoring mechanism proposed in the independent expert’s report.

 

The basic premise on which FIVIMS is based on is that effective food security information systems are a central component of the war against hunger and malnutrition. To design policies, programmes and legislation to realizse the right to food, answers are needed on following questions: who is food insecure and how many people are affected; what are the causes of food insecurity; and what is being done about the problem. These questions serve to assess the overall progress made towards the realizsation of the right to food. To know where to intervene, there is a need to identify which factors are most responsible for food insecurity. For example, if malnutrition is very strongly related to a high prevalence of water-borne diseases, improving access to clean drinking- wwater may be the priority action. Thus understanding some of the complex interactions that make people food insecure is the major challenge of to be addressed by FIVIMS in its effort to assist national efforts. In three critical areas, tThe FIVIMS initiative seeks to address these critical weaknessesweaknesses in three ways:

A final comment concerns the ideas contained in the independent expert’s report on operationalizing the right to development. FAO recognizes that much progress has been made towards reducing food insecurity and improving standards of living. But much remains to be done. FAO supports the findings of the independent expert that poverty has a "capability dimension" that prevents people from having the capacity to rise above the poverty line in a sustainable manner. Thus, priority should be given to the removal of constraints on access to food, primary health and primary education as a basic first step of alleviating the "capability-poverty" so that "income-poverty" eradication programmes can be made sustainable.

FAO shares the view that progress in this area can only be made by strong national commitments with the support of the international community. Such mutual commitments require also regular follow up to ensure that adequate progress is being made towards to set objective.

A specific case in point is

The World Food Summit set the common goal, the commitment made by world leaders, in the World Food Summit in 1996 for awith immediate view to reductioning in the number of undernourished people to half their the 1996 level by no later than 2015. The information to date assembled and analysed by FAO indicates that the estimated average annual reduction by eight million in the number of undernourished people in the world, which was achieved during much of the 1990s, is far below the average rate of 20 million per year necessary to reach the 2015 target set by the WFS. Unless early corrective action is taken, the Summit’s target will not be met.

Therefore it is crucial that we take stock of the situation as soon as possible, so as to ensure implementation of the necessary measures to step up the pace of change. In this connection a global forum, the World Food Summit: five years later, will take place in Rome in November 2001 during the biennial Conference of FAO. Heads of State and Government will review progress in the implementation of the WFS Plan of Action and outline the measures necessary to achieve the halving of the number of the world’s hungry by 2015.