E/C/12/1999/5
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2.
The Committee has accumulated significant information pertaining to the
right to adequate food through examination of State parties’ reports over the
years since 1979. The Committee has noted that while reporting guidelines are
available relating to the right to adequate food, only few States parties have
provided information sufficient and precise enough to enable the Committee to
determine the prevailing situation in the countries concerned with respect to
this right and to identify the obstacles to its realization. This General
Comment aims to identify some of the principal issues which the Committee
considers to be important in relation to the right to adequate food. Its
preparation was triggered by the request of Member States during the
1996 World Food Summit, for a better definition of the rights relating to food
in article 11 of the Covenant, and by a special request to the Committee to
give particular attention to the Summit Plan of Action in monitoring the
implementation of the specific measures provided for in article 11 of the
Covenant.
3.
In response to these requests, the Committee reviewed the relevant
reports and documentation of the Commission on Human Rights and of the
Sub-Commission on Prevention of Discrimination and Protection of Minorities on
the right to adequate food as a human right; devoted a day of general
discussion to this issue at its seventh session in 1997, taking into
consideration the draft international code of conduct on the human right to
adequate food prepared by international non-governmental organizations;
participated in two expert consultations on the right to adequate food as a
human right organized by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner
for Human Rights (OHCHR), in Geneva in December 1997, and in Rome in
November 1998 co-hosted by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the
United Nations (FAO), and noted their final reports. In April 1999 the
Committee participated in a symposium on “The substance and politics of a
human rights approach to food and nutrition policies and programmes”,
organized by the Administrative Committee on Co-ordination/Sub-Committee on
Nutrition of the United Nations at its twenty-sixth session in Geneva and
hosted by OHCHR.
4.
The Committee affirms that the right to adequate food is indivisibly
linked to the inherent dignity of the human person and is indispensable for
the fulfilment of other human rights enshrined in the International Bill of
Human Rights. It is also inseparable from social justice, requiring the
adoption of appropriate economic, environmental and social policies, at both
the national and international levels, oriented to the eradication of poverty
and the fulfilment of all human rights for all.
5.
Despite the fact that the international community has frequently
reaffirmed the importance of full respect for the right to adequate food, a
disturbing gap still exists between the standards set in article 11 of the
Covenant and the situation prevailing in many parts of the world. More than
840 million people throughout the world, most of them in developing countries,
are chronically hungry; millions of people are suffering from famine as the
result of natural disasters, the increasing incidence of civil strife and wars
in some regions and the use of food as a political weapon. The Committee
observes that while the problems of hunger and malnutrition are often
particularly acute in developing countries, malnutrition, under-nutrition and
other problems which relate to the right to adequate food and the right to