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Food and agriculture: the future |
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| The most basic of human rights is the right to adequate food and nutrition. | FAO seeks to mobilize international and national support for the establishment of world food security. |
No human right is more fundamental than the right to food. Other human rights mean relatively little to those who are starving. Yet, although the world has enough food for all - and its average availability per caput has increased over the past three decades - some 800 million people are still chronically malnourished. Although the diets needed to provide the nutrients essential for a healthy and productive life are known, an estimated 2 000 million people still suffer from micronutrient deficiency diseases.
The United Nations, since its inception, has insisted that access to adequate food is a universal human right and a collective responsibility of the world community. In 1948 the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognized that "everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and his family, including food...". In 1966, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights developed this more explicitly, stressing the "right of everyone to... adequate food" and specifying that everyone's fundamental right is to be free of hunger. The same rights were reaffirmed at the 1974 World Food Conference.
FAO's Constitution clearly sets out its intention of ensuring humanity's freedom from hunger and calls on governments to take action, individually and collectively, to help to bring this about. The Organization looks beyond promoting food production to examining conditions for a stable food supply and to aiming to ensure that everyone always has both physical and economic access to basic food needs. In 1983 the FAO Conference adopted three key guidelines for world food security: ensuring adequate food availability; providing access to food, particularly for the poor; and enhancing the stability of food supplies. FAO continues to press for wider recognition of the right to food and, in 1992, it initiated the Declaration of Barcelona which emphasizes food rights and seeks to mobilize support from international organizations, governments, non-governmental organizations and individuals. This right to food found a practical expression in the Plan of Action adopted by the joint FAO/WHO International Conference on Nutrition in 1992.
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