Generally understood as the right to feed oneself in dignity, the right to adequate food is a long-standing international human right to which many countries are committed. Over the last decades, a number of countries have developed and implemented constitutional amendments, national laws, strategies, policies and programmes that aim at the fulfilment for all of the right to food.
The right to adequate food is realized when every man, woman and child, alone or in community with others, has the physical and economic access at all times to adequate food or means for its procurement.
– General Comment 12 (Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, CESCR, 1999).
FAO's role in the fulfilment of the Right to Food
Despite the substantial progress made in reducing hunger and undernutrition in the past 25 years, malnutrition in all its forms currently affects one in three people worldwide, and over 820 million people experience hunger on a daily basis.
The realization of the right to adequate food is not merely a promise to be met through charity. It is a human right of every woman, man and child that is to be fulfilled through appropriate actions by governments and non-state actors. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development prioritizes scaled up, transformational action to eradicate poverty and end hunger and all forms of malnutrition, recognizing that permanent eradication of hunger and the realization of the right to adequate food for all are achievable goals. [...]
