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The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 14
- Paragraph text
- In addition to encouraging Governments to adopt national plans to scale up nutrition in their various sectoral policies, SUN includes the establishment of partnerships linking business, civil society and Government to foster scaling up nutrition through nutrition-sensitive interventions along the value chain at the country level. Private-sector interventions include the production of fortified food products, the promotion of nutritionally healthy behaviour, the shaping of work environments allowing women to ensure good nutrition for themselves and their children, ensuring that lower-income groups can access nutritionally valuable products, and building local capacity through the transfer of knowledge and technology. Some of these partnerships are supported by the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition (GAIN). A public-private partnership, GAIN was launched at the 2002 special session of the General Assembly on children. It has since established links with 600 companies across 36 large projects in more than 25 countries to improve access to missing micronutrients in diets. According to GAIN promoters, it reaches nearly 400 million people with nutritionally enhanced food products.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Women
- Year
- 2012
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 83
- Paragraph text
- Much remains to be done to end the inappropriate marketing of breast milk substitutes, and countries are encouraged to adopt, amend and strengthen legal measures in line with the International Code and relevant World Health Assembly resolutions. In particular, it is necessary to ensure that national legislation adequately covers substitute products aimed at children older than 12 months.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Older persons
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 65
- Paragraph text
- The protection and promotion of breastfeeding is also enshrined in the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, adopted by the World Health Assembly in 1981. The Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding, adopted in 2002, sets out the obligations of States to develop, implement, monitor and evaluate comprehensive national policies addressing infant and young child feeding, accompanied by a detailed action plan.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Infants
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 54
- Paragraph text
- In 2010, the Scaling Up Nutrition movement, a new type of multi-stakeholder and multisectoral partnership, was launched by the Secretary-General together with donors, businesses, researchers, Governments and civil society to provide support to 57 Member States to improve food policies during the first 1,000 days of child feeding. While the movement's goals are welcomed and have seen success in reducing child malnutrition in several countries, especially in increased funding, capacity-building, advocacy and establishing a civil society network and coordinating with the United Nations, the initiative has also been subject to criticism. As a self-described "movement", it has no accountability to the United Nations or other intergovernmental body or process. While business partnerships are promoted, there is no careful management of corporate involvement to ensure that it is confined to implementation, without influencing public health and nutrition policymaking. Conflicts of interest have also been identified where businesses involved in the initiative were simultaneously marketing foods leading to obesity and non-communicable diseases. While efforts were recently made, for example by excluding infant formula manufacturers that violate the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, it remains unclear as to how the initiative prevents companies from gaining improper access to markets and policymaking, or how violations are detected and evaluated.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 41
- Paragraph text
- In 2011 the WHO Global Action Plan for the Prevention and Control of Non Communicable Diseases initiated action to tackle malnutrition comprehensively, including unbalanced nutrition and obesity. In 2012, the World Health Assembly endorsed six global nutrition targets to improve maternal, infant and young child nutrition by 2025. Commitment to reach those targets was reaffirmed at the Second International Conference on Nutrition, held in Rome in 2014.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Infants
- Youth
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 40
- Paragraph text
- At the height of the food price crises in 2008, it was suggested that global governance of nutrition was dysfunctional. Since then, significant initiatives have been undertaken at the global level. Examples include the Scaling Up Nutrition movement and two major campaigns of the Secretary-General: "Every woman, every child" and the Zero Hunger Challenge.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Women
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 34
- Paragraph text
- While the globalization of food chains has meant that a diversity of foods are available year-round to certain consumers, it has had negative impacts on local food systems and increased the ecological footprint of food systems. It has also led many consumers to shift towards an increased consumption of staple grains, meat and dairy products, vegetable oil, salt and sugar, and a lower intake of dietary fibre. For instance, the rapid increase in vegetable oil consumption (and thus of fats in diets) can be explained largely by the sudden availability of vegetable oil (particularly soybean oil) at low prices on the world market. Increased foreign direct investment in the processing industry and supermarket expansions have made processed foods, including in particular soft drinks, accessible to a larger range of consumers (albeit not to the poorest among them). For instance, following the entry into force of the North American Free Trade Agreement, United States companies massively increased investments in the Mexican food processing industry (from $210 million in 1987 to $5.3 billion in 1999) and sales of processed foods in Mexico soared at an annual rate of 5 to 10 per cent in the period from 1995 to 2003. The resulting rise in soft drink and snack consumption by Mexican children is at the source of the very high rates of child obesity in the country.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Environment
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Year
- 2012
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 13
- Paragraph text
- A number of recent efforts have sought to address micronutrient deficiency, moving beyond the classic focus on low calorie intake. The World Food Programme and the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) launched in 2006 the Ending Child Hunger and Undernutrition Initiative. In 2008, FAO, WHO and UNICEF launched the Renewed Efforts against Child Hunger and Undernutrition (REACH) initiative, which aims to scale up interventions addressing child undernutrition through the coordinated action of United Nations agencies, civil society, donors and the private sector, under country-led plans. The Secretary-General's 22-member High-Level Task Force on Food Security has now updated the Comprehensive Framework for Action so that it explicitly addresses food and nutrition security with a focus on links between agriculture, food systems and nutritional outcomes. Finally, the Scaling Up Nutrition (SUN) multi-stakeholder initiative, which was launched in 2009 and has gained momentum since the presentation of the SUN Framework in April 2010, seeks to promote targeted action and investment to improve nutrition for mothers and children in the 1,000-day period from pregnancy to age 2, when better nutrition can have a life-changing impact on a child's future.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Year
- 2012
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Integrating a gender perspective in the right to food 2016, para. 16
- Paragraph text
- The second disconnect concerns the structural separation of nutrition from the human right to adequate food, which has focused on increasing food production and not on broad and equal food access. UN treaty law, whether ICESCR, CEDAW or the Rights of Child (CRC), does not develop nutrition as constitutive of a right to food for all women, but rather for women who are pregnant or breastfeeding, thus focusing on women in their reproductive role as mothers.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Women
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 79
- Paragraph text
- Advertisements influence people's food preferences and habits. Recognizing that children are especially exposed to aggressive marketing and promotion strategies by food and beverage companies, some States prohibit media advertising to children for certain "restricted" food and drink products. In Chile, for example, where children form more than 20 per cent of the audience, mandatory regulations restrict advertising to children under 14, while Taiwan Province of China bans the advertising of restricted foods on channels dedicated to children, levying fines for violations of its regulations. Brazil imposes strict regulations, prohibiting any "abusive publicity" and strategies that appeal directly to children and adolescents. In practice, however, there seem to be many difficulties in implementing such restrictions.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Adolescents
- Children
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 70
- Paragraph text
- Those efforts indicate that business has a responsibility to protect the right to adequate food and nutrition, especially with regard to children. Yet in practice it can be difficult to hold companies to account, especially in cross-border cases involving complex corporate structures. In this regard, home States have extraterritorial obligations to seek to prevent and address human rights abuses abroad by companies domiciled within their jurisdictions. For example, if a host country is unwilling to hold a company responsible, or even provides tax-free or other incentives, the home country of the enterprise should exercise extraterritorial responsibility.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Right to food and nutrition 2016, para. 69
- Paragraph text
- In the technical guidance on the application of a human rights-based approach to the implementation of policies and programmes to reduce and eliminate preventable mortality and morbidity of children under 5 years of age (A/HRC/27/31) Member States are urged to regulate private actors over which they exercise control, including producers and marketers of breast milk substitutes and other relevant companies (para. 70 (g)). The Committee on the Rights of the Child, in its general comment No. 15, also calls upon private companies to comply with the International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes and relevant World Health Assembly resolutions. In its most recent resolution on ending inappropriate promotion of foods for infants and young children, adopted in May 2016, the World Health Assembly called upon manufacturers and distributors of foods for infants and young children to end all forms of inappropriate promotion.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Infants
- Year
- 2016
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to justice and the right to food: the way forward 2015, para. 60
- Paragraph text
- General comments do not establish legal obligations, but elaborate on the practical implications of those obligations. The treaty bodies, however, have legally binding powers. In February 2013, the Committee of the Rights of the Child adopted general comment No. 16 (2013) on State obligations regarding the impact of the business sector on children's rights to elaborate on the practical implications of those obligations. The Committee also noted that the existing instruments and guidance did not sufficiently address the particular situation and needs of children. The treaty bodies have also contributed to the protection of the rights of groups such as indigenous people and small-scale farmers, whose rights are routinely disregarded by foreign States and private actors based in third countries. Moreover, in recent years a number special procedure mandate holders have sent various communications to States concerning the application of extraterritorial obligations, especially in cases involving allegations of corporate abuse of human rights in host States.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Ethnic minorities
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to justice and the right to food: the way forward 2015, para. 20
- Paragraph text
- In 2013, a coalition of NGOs Guatemala sin Hambre engaged in strategic litigation to claim the right to food of children suffering from chronic malnutrition and living in conditions of extreme poverty. The judgements were delivered in April 2013 by the Child and Adolescence Court of the Zacapa Department which, based on the facts, found violations of the right to food, the right to life, the right to housing and the right to an adequate standard of living. Specifically with regard to the right to food, the court grounded its reasoning on article 51 of the Constitution, which protects the right to food for children, as well as on article 11 of the Covenant and article 25 of the Universal Declaration. To define the right to food and the obligations that stem from it, the court cited general comment No. 12.
- 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
- Children
- Year
- 2015
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 60
- Paragraph text
- The Global Strategic Framework for Food Security and Nutrition of the Committee on World Food Security must also be used as a key reference tool for the implementation of effective models of governance concerning food, agriculture and nutrition for States, intergovernmental actors and the corporate private sector. Although it is not a legally binding document, it constitutes a commitment for countries to adopt its principles, options and policy base, as suited to their local needs and circumstances. The document includes provision for the rights of women and children in relation to food security and recognizes the central role played by smallholder farmers, agricultural workers, artisanal fisher folk, pastoralists and indigenous peoples. The primacy of food security and nutrition as a basic human right is the primary responsibility of the State and should be given priority over any other government policy.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Ethnic minorities
- Women
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 39
- Paragraph text
- Maintaining breast-feeding programmes, especially in countries experiencing the HIV epidemic poses a major challenge. The Special Rapporteur intends to coordinate with the United Nations Children's Fund the World Health Organization and other relevant stakeholders to help develop policies for strengthening specific programmes for young children. She also encourages States to fully implement the Global Strategy on Infant and Young Child Feeding, to position breastfeeding as the norm and to respect and promote community-based food sovereignty approaches to complementary feeding. The International Code of Marketing of Breast-milk Substitutes, adopted by the World Health Assembly at its thirty-fourth session in 1981 as a minimum requirement to protect and promote appropriate infant and young child feeding, should also be supplemented by further monitoring and regulation to ensure that companies responsible for the production of baby food follow similar quality control regulations for domestic use to those for export products.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Infants
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Vision of the mandate 2014, para. 20
- Paragraph text
- The priorities identified by the Special Rapporteur are interrelated. It is not possible to develop a successful sustainable policy framework to eradicate hunger and provide adequate and nutritious food accessible to all without considering the specific requirements of women and children. It should be understood that the mandate encompasses issues relating to corporate responsibility with respect to global food policy and practices and linkages between private sector behaviour, food security and the right to food. The Special Rapporteur intends to address those issues in future reports. In so doing, she will coordinate her efforts with the relevant work being done by civil society and non-governmental organizations (NGOs).
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Women
- Year
- 2014
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Women’s right and the right to food 2013, para. 24
- Paragraph text
- However, partly because of concerns with the fiscal sustainability of unconditional cash transfer programs, and partly in order to encourage poor families to invest more in their children and thus reduce the inter-generational transmission of poverty, conditional cash transfers (CCTs) have been expanding in recent years. Such CCTs generally target certain poor regions and, within those regions, poor households. They generally provide cash or sometimes nutritional supplements, usually to the mother or primary caregiver, provided certain conditions are met. These conditions relate most often to children's school enrolment and attendance level, and attendance at pre- and postnatal health-care appointments to ensure that children receive appropriate vaccinations and to check their growth. In previous mission reports, the Special Rapporteur discussed the well-known CCTs that have been launched in Mexico (Progresa/Oportunidades) and in Brazil (Bolsa Familia) (A/HRC/13/33/Add.6 and A/HRC/19/59/Add.2). An early example is Bangladesh's Female Secondary School Assistance Project (FSSAP) launched in 1993 (see para. 16 above), which was complemented, in July 2002, by the Primary Education Stipend Project (PESP). The PESP aimed to increase the educational participation (enrolment, continued attendance and educational performance) of primary school children from poor families throughout Bangladesh (initially estimated at more than 5 million pupils) by providing cash payments to targeted households. Despite significant targeting problems during its initial phase, the programme is credited for improving educational attainments.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Poverty
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Families
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Assessing a decade of progress on the right to food 2013, para. 9
- Paragraph text
- The right to food is increasingly stipulated in domestic constitutions, as recommended by Guideline 7 of the Right to Food Guidelines. In 1994, South Africa included the right to food in article 27 of the post-apartheid Constitution. Other countries have followed suit. The new Constitution of Kenya, approved by a popular referendum in 2010, states the right of every person "to be free from hunger and to have adequate food of acceptable quality"; like that of South Africa, the Constitution imposes on the State a duty to respect, protect, promote and fulfil that right. A 2011 study identified 24 States in which the right to food was explicitly recognized, although in about half of them, it was recognized for the benefit of a particular segment of the population only, such as children, and sometimes through another human right such as the right to life. Since that study was completed, articles 4 and 27 of the Constitution of Mexico were amended in order to insert the right to food. In El Salvador, Nigeria, and Zambia, processes of constitutional revision are under way that may lead to insertion of the right to food in the respective Constitutions. In other countries, such as Uganda and Malawi, ensuring access to adequate food and nutrition is defined as a principle of State policy. In Germany, the right to food is indirectly protected by the guarantee to a decent subsistence minimum so that everyone may live in dignity. In addition, among the countries that replied to the Special Rapporteur's questionnaire, a number, including Argentina and Norway, implicitly guarantee the right to food by granting constitutional rank or a rank superior to the Constitution to the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights and other international human rights treaties ratified by the State.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 46
- Paragraph text
- Premature deaths resulting from non-communicable diseases linked to bad diets are deaths that can be avoided, and States have a duty to protect in this regard. By implementing the Global Strategy for Infant and Young Child Feeding and the Global Strategy on Diet, Physical Activity and Health, as well as the Political Declaration of the High-level Meeting of the General Assembly on the Prevention and Control of Non-communicable Diseases, States are not only making political commitments but also discharging their duty under international human rights law to guarantee the right to adequate food.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Health
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Infants
- Year
- 2012
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
The right to an adequate diet: the agriculture-food-health nexus 2012, para. 15
- Paragraph text
- Assessments of these various nutrition promotion initiatives and the projects under the umbrella of the SUN initiative fall outside the scope of the present report. The increasing international profile of nutrition should be welcomed. It is positive too that SUN acknowledges the need for efforts to scale up nutrition to be driven by national authorities with a cross-sectoral approach, and that it brings together commitment and support from developing country Governments, donors, civil society, development agencies and the private sector. In providing assistance however, these actors must not overlook the entitlements that have been established under international law for women, children, minorities, refugees and internally displaced persons, and other groups that may be subjected to marginalization and discrimination. The Special Rapporteur, while welcoming the progress made through SUN, calls for an explicit alignment of its initiatives with human rights, including the right to food. A number of observations should be made in this regard.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Person(s) affected
- Children
- Persons on the move
- Women
- Year
- 2012
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
21 shown of 21 entities