Right to food
Areas of work
Areas of work
The Right to Food team provides technical assistance, fosters dialogue, and facilitates knowledge sharing to place the right to food at the heart of policy discussions. It offers practical information and guidance on integrating the right to food into various areas, including monitoring, accountability, and enforcement, conflicts and crises, private sector engagement, multi-level governance, and global initiatives.
The Right to Food Team engages in a wide range of activities to promote and protect the right to food across different sectors and levels. Here is a snapshot of our main activities:
The team assesses policy frameworks on the right to food in selected countries and provides recommendations to strengthen their integration into sectoral policies. It also offers technical assistance to support policy development.
It works on strengthens right to food monitoring by developing common methodologies, analyzing existing mechanisms and building a legislative repository. The team also promotes awareness, coordinates an informal working group and provides training.
The team strengthens access to justice by supporting training and capacity development for justice systems, civil society organizations and other stakeholders. Knowledge sharing and collaboration help rights-holders claim their right to food.
It promotes the integration of human rights and the right to food in climate and environmental policies. The team supports FAO climate initiatives, provides technical inputs, guidance, and capacity development to integrate the right to food into biodiversity and environmental governance.
The team supports urban food councils and promotes the integration of the right to food into local governance and policy frameworks through knowledge exchange, capacity development and global events.
It supports the integration of human rights and the right to food into small-scale fisheries policies and initiatives. It contributes to global processes, supports national plans of action, provides capacity development and promotes rights-based legal and policy frameworks.
The team strengthens the protection of the right to food in conflict and protracted crisis settings through research, expert consultations, training and the integration of rights-based approaches into food security interventions.
It works with partners including parliamentary fronts, Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Committee on World Food Security and the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism to promote the integration of the right to food in policies and programmes.
As part of these efforts, the team coordinates the Group of Friends of the Right to Food, an informal platform of FAO Member States and other actors that raise awareness, promotes the Right to Food Guidelines, and advances the realization of the right to adequate food. Two FAO Member States co-chair the platform on a rotational basis. Members meet regularly to exchange experiences, support joint initiatives and promote the integration of the right to food in the policies, programmes and decision-making processes of FAO and other stakeholders.