Human rights: a normative basis for food and nutrition-relevant policies

This paper explores human rights as a basis for policy formulation and planning of programmes and activities that will enhance food and nutrition security. The right to adequate food and to be free from hunger forms part of the contemporary International Bill of Human Rights as adopted by the United Nations. It is expressly provided for in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and in the International Convenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966, as well as in other more recent instruments such as the Convention of the Rights of the Child of 1989. However, neither the right to food nor other rights pertaining to nutrition as an ultimate human development objective have so far been given sufficient attention by agencies dealing with food, health and nutrition. The paper discusses the right to food as recently elaborated within the human rights bodies of the United Nations, including the notion of the three levels of state obligations: to respect, to protect and to fulfil or assist the realization of the right to food. Furthermore, the paper considers an analytical framework for food security and its expansion into ‘nutrition security’ which can form a basis for translating food and nutrition development goals into rights and obligations as they are embedded in international legal instruments. The paper proposes a framework for analysing, at household, community and national levels, both causes of and solutions to food insecurity and malnutrition, as a basis for identifying state obligations to address food and nutrition security from a human rights perspective. The centrepiece of the paper is a ‘Food and nutrition security matrix’ that can help clarify state obligations, and which countries may find useful in their attempts to find effective solutions to the nutritional problems of their people. It may also serve in the dialogue between partners of official and non-governmental development operation, so as to identify where, how and, especially, at what level external assistance can best support integrated government efforts. The paper concludes with a set of general policy recommendations.