Santiado de Chile- In framework of the first meeting of the national chapter of the Parliamentary Front Against Hunger in 2022, held this Monday in the Chamber of Deputies of CHile, the  parliamentarian Carolina Marzán, president of the Front, presented a draft framework law for the Promotion of Food and Nutrition Security and Sovereignty.

The purpose of the bill is to ensure the full realization of the human right to adequate food, through a legal framework, which facilitates the State the creation of policies and strategies to permanently guarantee the right to food, food and nutritional security and sovereignty of the Chilean population.

Marzán pointed out that “we seek to protect, guarantee and safeguard that all Chileans have access to healthy and balanced food, in quantity and quality, that allows them to have a dignified and active life.

“In Chile, about 3 million people do not have access to healthy food on a regular basis, and studies show that in 2021, about 700 thousand people had a serious food deficit, and many of them were even one, two or more days without eating anything at all,” she explained.

“The State must be accountable of this weakness. That is why this bill seeks to make at least the most essential foods accessible to the population. The project will allow the State to develop public policies so that this can be the case”, she concluded.

The deputy and president of the Chamber's Agriculture Commission, Consuelo Veloso, stated that "we will soon put this initiative on the table". She underlined: "it is a great progress to talk about a topic that today is not very well positioned, which is the tremendous food crisis that we have in the world and continues to escalate in our country. This will get worse as the effects of the climate crisis advance, because there is no water neither.”

"What we want today is to promote and guarantee that people who work on food production, family farming, which is less polluting, are most supported by the State," Veloso assured.

The Parliamentary Front Against Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean

This initiative in Chile takes as a reference the work of the Parliamentary Front against Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean, a plural and voluntary network, made up of more than 400 legislators of different political parties.

Luis Lobo, Officer of the Spain-FAO Program for Latin America and the Caribbean, said that “FAO and the Spanish Cooperation have been working with the parliamentarians over 12 years to put hunger and malnutrition on the political agenda of the countries”.

“We call on to parliamentarians “to be part of these fronts, of these plural platforms, to continue generating legislative work that helps citizens face hunger and malnutrition," he added.

The Parliamentary Front against Hunger in Latin America and the Caribbean was created 2009 with the aim of responding to the commitment of the Hunger-Free Latin America and the Caribbean Initiative 2025. Since then, it has the support of FAO and the Spanish Cooperation, as well as that of the Mexican Agency for International Cooperation for Development (AMEXCID), through the "Mesoamerica without Hunger AMEXCID-FAO" program. Currently there are 21 national and four regional parliamentary fronts in the region.

al platforms, to continue generating legislative work that helps citizens face hunger and malnutrition," added Lobo.

 This is a translation of the news published in Spanish here.