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Assessing a decade of progress on the right to food 2013, para. 19
- Paragraph text
- Despite the significant progress made in recent years, some dimensions of the right to food remain underdeveloped. This is especially the case as regards its extraterritorial dimensions. According to the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the duties associated with the right to food extend to all situations, whether located on a State's national territory or abroad, over which a State may exercise influence without infringing on the sovereignty of the territorial State (see E/C.12/2000/4, para. 39, E/C.12/2002/11, para. 31 and E/C.12/2011/1). This is reaffirmed in the Maastricht Principles on the extraterritorial obligations of States in the area of economic, social and cultural rights, adopted by a group of international law experts on 28 September 2011, as well as in the Guiding Principles on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, endorsed by the Human Rights Council on 27 September 2012 (see A/HRC/21/39, para. 61). Yet, the mechanisms allowing victims of violations of the right to food in extraterritorial situations are often non-existent or hardly accessible in practice. On the whole, however, the examples above show a remarkable progress of the right to food since the Right to Food Guidelines were adopted.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Assessing a decade of progress on the right to food 2013, para. 58h
- Paragraph text
- [In particular, the Special Rapporteur encourages:] National social protection systems to redefine benefits as legal entitlements so that individual beneficiaries are informed about their rights under social programmes and have access to effective and independent grievance redressal mechanisms;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Equality & Inclusion
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2013
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 18
- Paragraph text
- Individual titling can also become a source of conflict and legal insecurity if it conflicts with customary rules regarding tenure, for example, as regards communal land ownership. Indeed, individual titling, combined with the marketability of land, may not be compatible with the recognization of customary forms of tenure with respect to communal land and common property resources, putting groups that do not use the land intensively or do not occupy it permanently at a particular disadvantage.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 42a
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- [In order to ensure the enjoyment of the right to food, States should:] Implement the conclusions set out in the Final Declaration of the International Conference on Agrarian Reform and Rural Development and prioritize "improved" State-led land redistribution programmes. States should implement land redistribution programmes where a high degree of land ownership concentration (which could be defined as a level of inequality higher than a Gini coefficient of 0.65) is combined with a significant level of rural poverty attributable to landlessness or to the cultivation of excessively small plots of land by smallholders. Redistributive agrarian reforms should: (a) include comprehensive rural development policies that follow the recommendations resulting from the International Assessment of Agricultural Science and Technology for Development, including extension systems, access to credit and agricultural research and support beneficiaries, provided with sufficient budgets; (b) make use of land ceiling laws and be based on legal frameworks that clearly define beneficiaries and exempted land; (c) encourage communal ownership systems, rather than focusing solely on individual beneficiaries; (d) be implemented in accordance with the principles of participation, transparency and accountability, in order to prevent their appropriation by local elites; (e) be grounded in constitutional provisions regarding the social functions of land, where such provisions exist. All States should monitor land inequalities before and after the implementation of such programmes;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Economic Rights
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- All
- N.A.
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 41a
- Paragraph text
- [In order to protect the right to food, States should:] Conduct decentralized mapping of various users' land rights and strengthen customary systems of tenure. Mapping should be performed at the level of the local community and in a participatory manner. While customary systems of tenure may receive legal recognition, public authorities should ensure that appropriate safeguards are established in order to ensure that control by the community will not be exercised arbitrarily or in ways that lead to discrimination or inequitable outcomes, in keeping with international norms and standards. States should establish appropriate mechanisms for the resolution of land conflicts between landlords and tenants, between land users and the State or between private-sector entities involved in development projects;
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Food & Nutrition
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
Access to land and the right to food 2010, para. 38
- Paragraph text
- While State-led agrarian reforms can generally be quite effective in addressing deeply entrenched inequalities in access to land provided certain conditions are met, market-led agrarian reforms have been less successful in that regard, sometimes even leading to the reconcentration of land, for reasons similar to those that explain the limits of titling as a means to ensure security of tenure. Important lessons can be drawn from past experiences: the success of State-led land reform programmes depends not only on effective land ceiling laws and other appropriate safeguards, such as legal frameworks that clearly define beneficiaries and exempted land, but also on continued social mobilization by peasant organizations, which can be vital partners in the implementation of policies to provide support to new beneficiaries. However, if the redistribution of land is to be sustainable, the beneficiaries must also be supported through comprehensive rural development policies. It has been estimated that improving access to credit and markets, as well as rural extension, can account for 60 to 70 per cent of the total costs of a land reform, exceeding the costs of acquiring and transferring the land. The failure of Latin American reforms when compared with Asian reforms has been attributed to the fact that Latin American reforms have traditionally focused solely on access to land, neglecting rural development policies. In order to be successful, land redistribution must be accompanied by broader agrarian reform policies that support smallholders and improve their ability to compete against larger farms; otherwise, there will be strong incentives for land reform beneficiaries to sell their land to large landowners. Women should be prioritized in such programmes, as under the Young Farm Women's Training Programme in the Canadian province of Manitoba or in the strategy currently being developed in Norway by the farming sector and the Ministry of Agriculture and Food, aimed at achieving 40 per cent participation by women in agriculture. Land ceiling laws can also help. Although such laws are often circumvented by large landowners - for example, by registering land under the names of proxies - they can increase the amount of land available for redistribution to the poorest households and limit the risk of land reconcentration following reform. A similar result can be achieved by subjecting land transactions to administrative authorization, which enables the administration to object to transactions that would lead to the unacceptable concentration of land, as in Germany under section 9 (1) of the Land Transactions Act.
- Body
- Special Rapporteur on the right to food
- Document type
- Special Procedures' report
- Topic(s)
- Governance & Rule of Law
- Social & Cultural Rights
- Person(s) affected
- N.A.
- Year
- 2010
- Date added
- Aug 19, 2019
Paragraph
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