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Access to justice and the right to food: the way forward 2015, para. 21
- Paragraph text
- The constitutional jurisprudence of India provides for the justiciability of economic, social and cultural rights based on "the right to life". This constitutional right was central to the case of People's Union for Civil Liberties ("PUCL") v. Union of India. In mid-2001, public food and employment programmes failed to provide food to deprived people in the impoverished and drought-stricken State of Rajasthan. The Supreme Court of India was petitioned by PUCL to compel the Government to respond to the hunger emergency. In response to the submissions, the Supreme Court held that the right to food was enshrined in the Constitution under the right to life provision in article 47, which requires that the State undertake measures to improve the nutritional state of the population. The Court handed down a series of resolutions which commenced in 2001 requiring State governments in India to implement food distribution programmes for the most disadvantaged. The Court's resolution had a considerable impact on the realization of the right to food in India, and provides an example of the influential role played by the judiciary in encouraging a legislative body to develop human rights legislation.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Humanitarian
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The transformative potential of the right to food 2014, para. 35
- Paragraph text
- The modernization of food supply chains, together with the implementation of agricultural policies focused more on the production of commodities than on food, has led to the marginalization of local food systems over recent years (A/HRC/13/33, paras. 6-9). This trend must be reversed. Small-scale food producers must be provided with greater opportunities to sell on the local markets, which they can more easily supply without having to be dependent on large buyers. Furthermore, the poorest consumers, who now often rely on large retailers or fast food outlets to feed themselves, must have the possibility to purchase food that is fresh and nutritious, and therefore healthier. These include the urban poor, but in developing countries they also include many small-scale farmers, who often are net food buyers and combine other activities with their role as food producers. Local food systems can be rebuilt through appropriate investments in infrastructure, packaging and processing facilities, and distribution channels, and by allowing smallholders to organize themselves in ways that yield economies of scale and allow them to move towards higher-value activities in the food supply chain. This would support rural development and the reduction of rural poverty, and slow down rural-to-urban migration.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Human rights criteria for making contract farming and other business models inclusive of small-scale farmers 2011, para. 12
- Paragraph text
- States should also support farming communities by providing certain goods and services required to achieve an adequate standard of living through farming. Although private investors may provide some of the same goods and services, leading some commentators to view contract farming as a means to ensure the more efficient distribution of such goods and services, it would be misplaced to view contract farming as a substitute for the indispensable role of the State in this regard. Guideline 2.6 of the Voluntary Guidelines on the right to food recalls the duties of the State where poverty and hunger are predominantly rural. It is expected that States, for instance, will provide technical assistance to farmers through public agricultural extension services, ensure access to reliable and assured credit for small-scale farmers at reasonable rates and help to create basic price support mechanisms for small-scale farmers. Contract farming should not become a driver of the privatization of extension services, or serve as an excuse for Governments to neglect their duty to support farmers with the provision of public goods, since it is precisely the most marginalized farmers who would suffer most from the retreat of State support.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Impact of climate change on the right to food 2015, para. 13
- Paragraph text
- Changes in food production and quality affect market prices and, in turn, price increases affect accessibility to food, especially for the poor. Socially vulnerable groups may have to alter their diet, substituting less nutritious and lower-quality food items and. as a result, diminishing dietary diversity owing to dependence on a few staple foods.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 19
- Paragraph text
- Poverty and inequality are drivers of obesity and micronutrient deficiency, in addition to undernutrition. Low-income populations are particularly vulnerable to obesity. Processed foods tend to be highly accessible and relatively cheap and can be stored for long periods without spoiling. In the United States of America for instance, low-income neighbourhoods often lack food retailers that sell fruits, vegetables, whole grains and alternative low-fat options. Unable to afford healthier food options, individuals may become overreliant on poor-quality foods, essentially being forced to choose between economic viability and nutrition and exposed to "double malnutrition".
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 18
- Paragraph text
- In the Rome Declaration on Nutrition, adopted in 2014, States recognized that the root causes of malnutrition were complex and multidimensional. They include social, economic, political and cultural determinants. Poverty, social exclusion, gender inequality, low socioeconomic status and lack of control over productive resources, for example land-grabbing and seed patenting, are all major contributors to malnutrition. Similarly, malnutrition is aggravated by poor sanitation and the absence of safe drinking water and adequate housing, as well as a lack of education, health and social protection services.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Water & Sanitation
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Impact of climate change on the right to food 2015, para. 72
- Paragraph text
- The challenges are huge and each region is facing its own climate change issues. Approaches to food security and adaptation to climate change must be mutually supporting; they must have the common objective of empowering socially and economically excluded groups to reduce their vulnerability and increase their resilience. Climate change is leading to significant increases in the price of food; therefore, because the poor in the global South devote up to 80 per cent of their budget to food, the economically disadvantaged are much more vulnerable in this regard than those in the developed world. Public and private investments that improve options for the poor, such as improved agricultural production technologies, better-adapted financial instruments, diversified income opportunities, broader economic adjustments, the creation of specialized markets for the poor, development of local knowledge and expansion of irrigation and storage infrastructure will likely be critical in adapting food security to a changing climate.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Impact of climate change on the right to food 2015, para. 30
- Paragraph text
- Developing countries are likely to be the hardest hit by climate change not only because of their geographical location but also because of the way people earn their livelihoods. The majority of people living in poverty in developing countries dwell in rural areas and many of them depend on agricultural activities to provide food for their families and generate income. Both aspects have implications for non farm rural households, either through the availability of food, which can cause fluctuations in local prices, or as an indirect source of employment.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Impact of climate change on the right to food 2015, para. 25
- Paragraph text
- The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has expressed with high confidence that, despite regional variabilities, climate change is likely to have an overall negative effect on yields of major cereal crops across Africa. Climate change is expected to interact with non-climate drivers and stressors to exacerbate vulnerability of agricultural systems on the continent, particularly in semi-arid areas. Global projections suggest that the number of people at risk of hunger will increase by 10-20 per cent by 2050 and that 65 per cent of them will be in sub Saharan Africa. Sub-Saharan Africa is often cited as the most impoverished region in the world because hunger is most prevalent there, affecting 25 per cent of the population. Other African nations, including the Central African Republic and South Sudan, are similarly vulnerable to food insecurity, with the latter currently on the brink of famine.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The transformative potential of the right to food 2014, para. 48
- Paragraph text
- Indeed, it is now time to move from generous intentions to action. The eradication of hunger and extreme poverty is now placed at the top of the political agenda, and through the new sustainable development goals, monitoring will be strengthened at a global level. Grounding these efforts explicitly in the right to food will encourage all the actors involved in the implementation of these goals to acknowledge their duties towards those who are marginalized economically and politically disempowered, and to address the political economy of food systems - in other terms, the question of who decides, on the basis of what information, and under which accountability mechanisms.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The transformative potential of the right to food 2014, para. 42
- Paragraph text
- The gradual substitution of policies focused on low prices of foodstuffs by rights-based social protection, as a means of ensuring access to adequate food for the poorest groups of the population, again illustrates the importance of a careful sequencing of reforms. Today, 75 to 80 per cent of the world population still does not have access to social security to shield them from the effects of unemployment, illness or disability - not to mention crop failure or soaring food costs. There is now an international consensus in favour of making the full realization of the right to social security a priority. On 12 June 2012, the International Labour Conference adopted Recommendation No. 202 concerning national floors for social protection, with 453 votes in favour and 1 abstention. The G-20 has subsequently acknowledged the importance of this objective. In the long run, the establishment of robust social protection schemes in line with this recommendation should protect not only poor households but also vulnerable households against the risk of falling into poverty. Thus, governments would shift away from their exclusive focus on maintaining low prices of food items, a focus that has often come at the expense of food producers, particularly the least competitive among them. Cash transfers to poor families, such as the Oportunidades programme in Mexico (A/HRC/19/59/Add.2, paras. 21-27), the Bolsa Família in Brazil (A/HRC/13/33/Add.6, para. 33) or the Child Support Grant in South Africa (A/HRC/19/59/Add.3, para. 39), have shown their effectiveness in reducing child poverty, and hunger. As long as gaps remain in social protection, however, food price inflation will continue to be a serious threat to the right to food of low-income households. Thus, while low food prices may not be a long-term solution - both because of the fiscal cost of subsidies to farmers and because a policy focused on keeping prices low may ultimately harm the least competitive food producers - they remain, in the short term, vital. Social protection schemes should be strengthened in all countries, and the social protection agenda and the agricultural agenda should be better aligned with each other, to gradually succeed in making the transition.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The transformative potential of the right to food 2014, para. 23
- Paragraph text
- Finally, food and agricultural policies should address the distributional issues that result in large groups of the rural population in developing countries being too poor to satisfy their basic needs. Small-scale food producers and the landless rural poor, including many farmworkers who barely survive from their labour on large plantations, represent a majority of those living in extreme poverty. Yet, the promotion in the past of export-led agriculture, often based on the exploitation of a largely disempowered workforce, operated at the expense of family farms producing food crops for local consumption. This resulted in a paradoxical situation in which many low-income countries, though they are typically agriculture-based, raw commodity-exporting economies, are highly dependent on food imports, sometimes supplemented by food aid, because they have neglected to invest in local production and food processing to feed their own communities (A/HRC/9/23, annex I, para. 5). It also led to increased rural poverty and the growth of urban slums, and to the inability of governments to move to a more diversified economy: whereas such a diversification requires adequate infrastructure, a qualified workforce, and a consumer market allowing producers of manufactured goods, or service providers, to achieve economies of scale, none of this can happen when half of the population is condemned to extreme deprivation. Thus, the lack of support for small-scale farmers has not only weakened own-production as a means of access to food. It has also had severe impacts on the two other channels through which the right to food can be realized, as it has reduced employment opportunities in the industry and services sectors, making it impossible for governments to finance social protection schemes.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The transformative potential of the right to food 2014, para. 9
- Paragraph text
- Finally, because global food systems have been shaped to maximize efficiency gains and produce large volumes of commodities, they have failed to take distributional concerns into account. The increases in production far outstripped population growth during the period from 1960 to 2000. But these increases went hand in hand with regional specialization in a relatively narrow range of products, a process encouraged by the growth of international trade in agricultural products. The associated technological and policy choices concentrated benefits in the hands of large production units and landholders at the expense of smaller-scale producers and landless workers, resulting in the growth of inequality in rural areas and a failure to address the root causes of poverty. Of course, there were important evolutions throughout the period. The 1960s and 1970s were characterized by a State-led type of agricultural development, under which governments, eager to provide urban populations with affordable food or to export raw commodities in order to finance import substitution policies, either paid farmers very low prices for the crops produced or supported only the largest producers who could be competitive on global markets, thus accelerating rural migration. In the 1980s, the introduction in most low-income countries of structural adjustment policies resulted in a retreat of the State from agricultural development. It was anticipated that trade liberalization and the removal of price controls would encourage private investment, making up for the reduction of State support. Overproduction in the highly subsidized farming sectors of rich countries put downward pressure on agricultural prices, however, discouraging the entry of private investors into agriculture in developing countries. If there was private investment at all, it went to a narrow range of cash crops grown for export markets.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 43
- Paragraph text
- Climate change is already having a significant impact on approximately 1 billion of the world's poor. In achieving the target set out in Millennium Development Goal 1, poverty rates have been halved, with 700 million fewer people living in extreme poverty in 2010 than in 1990. In the Human Development Report 2013, however, the United Nations Development Programme warns that if environmental degradation continues at the current rate, the gains in poverty reduction will be reversed, plunging over 3 billion people into extreme poverty and hunger. Without the implementation of serious measures to combat climate change, the number of people at risk of hunger is projected to increase by 10-20 per cent by 2050.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Assessing a decade of progress on the right to food 2013, para. 47
- Paragraph text
- The increasing recognition of the importance of a legal and policy framework grounded in the right to food reflects a growing understanding that hunger is not simply a problem of supply and demand, but primarily a problem of a lack of access to productive resources such as land and water for small-scale food producers; limited economic opportunities for the poor, including through employment in the formal sector; a failure to guarantee living wages to all those who rely on waged employment to buy their food; and gaps in social protection.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Acroecology and the right to food 2011, para. 39
- Paragraph text
- Agroecological practices are best adopted when they are not imposed top-down but shared from farmer to farmer. Extension services play a key role in favouring the scaling up of agroecology. An improved dissemination of knowledge by horizontal means transforms the nature of knowledge itself, which becomes the product of a network. It should encourage farmers, particularly small-scale farmers, living in the most remote areas to identify innovative solutions, by working with experts towards a co-construction of knowledge to ensure that advances will benefit them as a matter of priority, rather than only benefiting the better-off producers. Co-construction is key for the realization of the right to food. First, it enables public authorities to benefit from the experience and insights of the farmers. Rather than treating smallholder farmers as beneficiaries of aid, they should be seen as experts with knowledge that is complementary to formalized expertise. Second, as the Special Rapporteur has previously illustrated in describing participatory plant-breeding, participation can ensure that policies and programmes are truly responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups, who will question projects that fail to improve their situation. Third, participation empowers the poor - a vital step towards poverty alleviation. Lack of power is a source of poverty, as marginal communities often receive less support than the groups that are better connected to government. Poverty exacerbates this lack of power, creating a vicious circle of further disempowerment. Fourth, policies that are co-designed with farmers have a high degree of legitimacy and thus favour better planning of investment and production and better up-take by other farmers. Participation of food-insecure groups in the policies that affect them should become a crucial element of all food security policies, from policy design to the assessment of results to the decision on research priorities. Indeed, improving the situation of millions of food-insecure peasants cannot be done without them.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Acroecology and the right to food 2011, para. 37
- Paragraph text
- Agroecological practices require the supply of public goods such as extension services, storage facilities, rural infrastructure (roads, electricity, information and communication technologies) and therefore access to regional and local markets, access to credit and insurance against weather-related risks, agricultural research and development, education, and support to farmer's organizations and cooperatives. While this requires funding, the investment can be significantly more sustainable than the provision of private goods, such as fertilizers or pesticides that farmers can only afford so long as they are subsidized. While many efforts have been made since 2008 to reinvest in agriculture, too little attention has been paid to the differences between the various types of investment required and to understanding their impacts on the reduction of rural poverty. This has led World Bank economists to note that "underinvestment in agriculture is […] compounded by extensive misinvestment" with a bias towards the provision of private goods, sometimes motivated by political considerations. Research based on the study of 15 Latin American countries over the period 1985-2001 in which government subsidies for private goods was distinguished from expenditures in public goods indicated that, within a fixed national agriculture budget, a reallocation of 10 per cent of spending to supplying public goods increases agricultural per capita income by 5 per cent, while a 10 per cent increase in public spending on agriculture, keeping the spending composition constant, increases per capita agricultural income by only 2 per cent. In other words, "even without changing overall expenditures, governments can improve the economic performance of their agricultural sectors by devoting a greater share of those expenditures to social services and public goods instead of non-social subsidies." Thus, while the provision or subsidization of private goods may be necessary up to a point, the opportunity costs should be carefully considered.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2011
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 37
- Paragraph text
- There are strong arguments, however, in favour of land reform as contributing to the progressive realization of the human right to food, at least in contexts characterized by (a) a high degree of concentration of land ownership (such as a level of inequality higher than a Gini coefficient of 0.65), combined with (b) a significant level of rural poverty attributable to landlessness or the cultivation of excessively small plots of land by smallholders. The implication is that States should monitor existing inequalities in terms of access to land and, where both circumstances are present, should allocate the maximum available resources to agrarian reform schemes and implement those programmes in accordance with the principles of participation, transparency and accountability, to protect them from being appropriated by local elites. Where States fail to establish land redistribution schemes, they should provide justifications for not having done so.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 29
- Paragraph text
- The poverty-reducing potential of more equitable land distribution is further illustrated by statistical analyses showing that "a decrease of one third in the land distribution inequality index results in a reduction in the poverty level of one half in about 12-14 years. The same level of poverty reduction may be obtained in 60 years by agricultural growth sustained at an annual average of 3 per cent and without changing land distribution inequality". Land reforms in Asia following the Second World War resulted in a 30 per cent increase in the incomes of the bottom 80 per cent of households, while leading to an 80 per cent decline in the incomes of the top 4 per cent.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
19 shown of 19 entities