20 years, 15 years, binding, voluntary guidelines to ensure the R2F - and yet, no progress! Rather, in respect of SDG2/Indicators 2.1.1 and 2.1.2, “[t]he world is not on track to achieve Zero Hunger by 2030. If recent trends continue, the number of people affected by hunger would surpass 840 million by 2030.” (Food Coalition: A Covid-19 Response, FAO (2021).
Worse, according to the State of Food Security and Nutrition in the World 2022, "[t]he world is moving backwards in its efforts to end hunger, food insecurity and malnutrition in all its forms. The distance to reach many of the SDG 2 targets is growing wider each year."
One major reason for this multilateral governance failure is that many governments support their farmers at the expense of unsubsidised farmers in poor developing countries. They do so within or outside their so-called Amber Box entitlement to distort trade, negotiated in the Uruguay Round. Regrettably, what economists call dumping is not incompatible with the rules of the WTO Subsidy Agreement (ASCM). However, it violates the "do no harm" principle under Public International Law which IS binding on all states under the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (https://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/1_1_1969…).
But nobody seems to care. And the WTO is unwilling and incapable of addressing the #1 problem for improving WTO Law in respect of the R2F.
WTO is a part of the problem: what we need is not MORE but BETTER trade!
Dr. Christian Häberli